Kristi Keck: Is it morning in America, or has hope given way to malaise?
Nearly a year after the presidential election, the excitement of Barack Obama's campaign has faded into the reality of an Obama White House.
As observers try to determine what time it is in American politics, they arrive at opposite conclusions.
To some, said Tulane University political scientist Thomas Langston, Obama is like Jimmy Carter, and the nation will soon hammer the nails into the coffin of a dying Democratic coalition just as voters, tired of the Carter "malaise" era, handed the White House to Republicans in 1980.
To others, Obama has come to usher in a new understanding of the relationship between the government and the people. To them, Langston said, it's the dawning of a new age, as depicted in a famous 1984 Ronald Reagan campaign ad that declared, "It's morning again in America."
Both Obama and Carter were elected into office at a time when voters were hungry for change. Carter represented the antithesis of President Nixon and a break from the disillusionment and mistrust of government caused by the Watergate scandal.
Carter, like Obama, learned the ropes in a state Senate. Critics accused Carter of being inexperienced, having served one term as the governor of Georgia. But the Democratic candidate presented himself as a politician outside of politics and a reformer uninterested in partisan games.
"With Carter himself, there was a sense of a kind of national renewal in some ways that people have said has been true after the very difficult years of the Bush presidency," said Russell Riley, chair of the Miller Center's Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia.
Shortly after taking office, Carter's approval rating peaked at 75 percent but dropped to the low 40s in a little more than a year. He entered office weighed down by a sagging economy, and eventually, the energy crisis, the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian hostage crisis took a toll on his administration...
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As observers try to determine what time it is in American politics, they arrive at opposite conclusions.
To some, said Tulane University political scientist Thomas Langston, Obama is like Jimmy Carter, and the nation will soon hammer the nails into the coffin of a dying Democratic coalition just as voters, tired of the Carter "malaise" era, handed the White House to Republicans in 1980.
To others, Obama has come to usher in a new understanding of the relationship between the government and the people. To them, Langston said, it's the dawning of a new age, as depicted in a famous 1984 Ronald Reagan campaign ad that declared, "It's morning again in America."
Both Obama and Carter were elected into office at a time when voters were hungry for change. Carter represented the antithesis of President Nixon and a break from the disillusionment and mistrust of government caused by the Watergate scandal.
Carter, like Obama, learned the ropes in a state Senate. Critics accused Carter of being inexperienced, having served one term as the governor of Georgia. But the Democratic candidate presented himself as a politician outside of politics and a reformer uninterested in partisan games.
"With Carter himself, there was a sense of a kind of national renewal in some ways that people have said has been true after the very difficult years of the Bush presidency," said Russell Riley, chair of the Miller Center's Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia.
Shortly after taking office, Carter's approval rating peaked at 75 percent but dropped to the low 40s in a little more than a year. He entered office weighed down by a sagging economy, and eventually, the energy crisis, the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian hostage crisis took a toll on his administration...