Jim Hoagland: 2006: A Pivotal Year
Decisive leaders make history before history turns around to unmake them. New Year's 2006 finds once again that we live in a time of transition. The politicians who dominated the scene two years ago are gone or greatly diminished. With one or two exceptions, those left standing face a year of living precariously as they cope with change that they helped unleash but could not control.
Their further diminution or likely removal gives 2006 the potential to be a global hinge year -- a moment like 1968, when generational change and explosive social tensions aligned to swing the world onto a path more suggestive of revolution than evolution. The death of Eugene McCarthy helps mark 2005 as the year in which the far-reaching changes of 1968 may have finally run their course. So does the political defeat of Gerhard Schroeder and Joschka Fischer, the 1968 rebels who mellowed to take power in Germany and defend the status quo for seven years.
Generational change also lunges forward in France, where Jacques Chirac enters his last full year as president. His conservative forces are split by a war of succession between Dominique de Villepin and Nicolas Sarkozy. War resisters Messrs. Schroeder and Chirac are not alone in experiencing shrinking horizons. Allies of George W. Bush in the Iraq coalition are in transition as well: Japan's Junichiro Koizumi ends his tradition-limited tenure in September. Rebels in Tony Blair's Labor Party embarrassed him in November by rejecting new security laws. They hope to inflict other parliamentary defeats on him and make 2006 the year in which Mr. Blair fulfills a promise to step down.
So the remainder of Mr. Bush's term may get lonelier. And American custom makes this his last year of full power. After congressional elections in November, attention and energy will turn to whether any Republican can stop John McCain, or any Democrat can derail Hillary Clinton....
Read entire article at WSJ
Their further diminution or likely removal gives 2006 the potential to be a global hinge year -- a moment like 1968, when generational change and explosive social tensions aligned to swing the world onto a path more suggestive of revolution than evolution. The death of Eugene McCarthy helps mark 2005 as the year in which the far-reaching changes of 1968 may have finally run their course. So does the political defeat of Gerhard Schroeder and Joschka Fischer, the 1968 rebels who mellowed to take power in Germany and defend the status quo for seven years.
Generational change also lunges forward in France, where Jacques Chirac enters his last full year as president. His conservative forces are split by a war of succession between Dominique de Villepin and Nicolas Sarkozy. War resisters Messrs. Schroeder and Chirac are not alone in experiencing shrinking horizons. Allies of George W. Bush in the Iraq coalition are in transition as well: Japan's Junichiro Koizumi ends his tradition-limited tenure in September. Rebels in Tony Blair's Labor Party embarrassed him in November by rejecting new security laws. They hope to inflict other parliamentary defeats on him and make 2006 the year in which Mr. Blair fulfills a promise to step down.
So the remainder of Mr. Bush's term may get lonelier. And American custom makes this his last year of full power. After congressional elections in November, attention and energy will turn to whether any Republican can stop John McCain, or any Democrat can derail Hillary Clinton....