The Orphaned ’90s

by Ross Douthat, Feb. 13, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/opinion/sunday/the-orphaned-90s.html?comments#permid=17565165

What Ross Douthat seems to forget is that 20+ years have passed since Bill Clinton's presidency. As in any administration where a Democratic President had to deal with a GOP dominated Congress - remember the "Contract with America"? - what was actually achieved was the result of compromises between the GOP Congress and the Dem President.

Since then we have had "W", the dumbest and most destructive President in my lifetime, and we have a GOP which is exclusively interested in waging dogmatic wars ("the highest priority is to make Obama fail"), rather than govern the country.

The "establishment" GOP wants to return to the Reagan years - note that the Reagan Presidency was the most corrupt in history, in terms of government officials indicted and convicted, and he popularized the notion that "government is the problem", which has now come back to haunt the GOP "establishment" itself.

The mood of the primary electorate has shifted to the extremes on both ends of the spectrum, with Trump/Cruz on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left. But that electorate has always in the past come to its senses and nominated candidates on both sides who actually had a clue on how to govern. I'm not sure on the GOP side, but on the Democratic side it will become increasingly obvious that Bernie Sanders, for all his skill at highlighting the ills of current American social, economic and political realties, has no clue on how to actually implement change, other than shouting slogans.