Week of November 17, 2008

Obama is taking a radically different approach to the presidency than George W. Bush. Where Bush sought to polarize, Obama is taking the opposite approach. He wants to embrace the opposition in order to create his own kind of stealth presidency. Instead of trying to crush an already enfeebled Republican opposition, Obama is seeking to further weaken it by depriving it of an enemy -- himself.

Let's call John Kerry's loss in 2004 what it is: the luckiest thing to happen to Democrats in 40 years.

If you only look at numerical majorities, it might well seem that the story of the last 20 years in American politics is one in which voters have swerved erratically from one ideological pole to the next, embracing a harsh kind of conservatism in 1994 and then a resurgent liberalism in 2006. In reality, though, the American public doesn’t seem to move very much in its basic attitudes about government, which have remained mostly pragmatic and predictable; simply put, people tend to want a little more government when times are tough and a little less when things are going well. The number of voters who identified themselves in exit polls as conservative, liberal or moderate remained virtually unchanged between 2004 and 2008 — and in fact, those numbers have been more or less steady for decades.

The real trend line in our politics — from Ross Perot and Bill Clinton in 1992 to Obama this year — speaks not to any change in governing philosophy but to a growing frustration with incumbency and dogma, a sense that both parties are more concerned with perpetuating their own power than they are with adapting government to a fast-changing world. Voters aren’t really identifying more closely with one party or another when they periodically revolt; they are simply defining themselves against whoever happens to be in charge at the moment.

I saw it on election night, as I scrolled through the exit poll that somehow made its way online (at least at cbsnews.com) even before the polls closed in Ohio. It only took a little calculation for the result to be clear: Had the election been a contest between Hillary Clinton and John McCain, more of McCain's voters would have voted for Hillary than Obama voters for McCain. Based on the exit polls, Hillary not only would have won, but she would have won by more than Obama did. I believe that. Hillary would have meant no Sarah Palin. In the long run, that might have been good news for McCain and his reputation, but there is no denying that Palin gave him a temporary boost, bigger crowds and greater enthusiasm in the base. Without Palin, he would have been forced to play to the Republican base even more himself. With Hillary, there would have been no experience issue. With Hillary, the Democratic base of low-income white voters would have been solid.