Earlier this week, openUSA attended a lecture by Sidney Blumenthal at the RSA, where he plugged his new book, The Strange Death of Republican America. Blumenthal, a regular openDemocracy contributor until he took up an advisory position on the Hillary Clinton campaign, is an erudite and measured commentator on American politics in addition to being a committed Clintonite. Speaking fluidly without notes, Blumenthal charted the rise and demise of political conservatism, which grew from the ashes of the Nixon years in 1968 only to wither under the second Bush administration in 2008 (George Packer's New Yorker essay - blogged on openUSA - examined the same ascension and decline of the right).
"Nixon's dream of an unfettered presidency" was brought to its limits by Cheney, who inherited the ambitions of the Nixon era and turned them into 21st century reality. Yet, Bush's disastrous tenure has left the Republican vision in tatters. During the Reagan years - the zenith of American Republicanism - the American public was deeply suspicious of government. Attitudes have now changed. The country expects more from government and sees it as part of "the solution" rather than simply as the cause of "the problem".
Blumenthal finds in this shift the "aspect of an epic coming to end." But does the end of the conservative era, when a Republican agenda achieved social and political dominance, herald the dawn of a more liberal one? This is less clear, though Blumenthal certainly suggests that the moment is ripe for a Democrat - he believes Hillary Clinton - to steer the country in a different direction, away from war and economic crisis.
Pundits on both sides of the pond see parallels in the sinking of New Labour (and the associated rise of David Cameron) and the demise of the Republicans. The comparison rings true up to a point. The Bush years precipitated a Republican downfall largely without the aid of the Democrats, who consistently played petty politics and failed to articulate a clear alternative political vision. On the other hand, Cameron deserves some credit for reinventing - or at the very least repackaging - the Tories.
It is always tempting to suggest that politics are cyclical, and that falls coincide neatly with rises, but one doesn't necessarily follow logically from the other. Come November this year, the Democrats will have a commanding majority in the Congress and may well control the executive. Institutional ingredients, check. Moral message and political vision, still missing. Can the Democrats see the forest for the trees of electoral success?