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Edited on Sat Jan-15-11 09:07 AM by Axrendale
Ultimately it is a question that can only be determined by the historians of the future. The "Progressive Era" of the 20th Century is typically reckoned as being ushered in by the political ascendency of President Theodore Roosevelt in 1901, and having come to a definite end in 1920 when the Cox/Roosevelt ticket was crushingly defeated by the Harding/Coolidge ticket in the Presidential election of that year - a result that is often pointed to as a repudiation of the incumbent, Woodrow Wilson. The manner in which the Progressive Era began and ended has a somewhat pleasing symmetry; being bookmarked by the political careers of two Roosevelts, the younger of whom would go on to usher in a "Liberal Era" by means of the New Deal (its very name a composition of TR's "Square Deal" and Wilson's "New Freedom" after his own political ascendency in 1932 (but that is another story).
It is worth keeping in mind that it is only with the benefit of hindsight that we can label the 1901 - 1920 period as having been a "Progressive Era" - had the phrase actually been employed at the time, many would have been profoundly skeptical. Although those years did see the rise of two visionary progressive Presidents - Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson - who for all their faults both succeeded in enacting unprecedented domestic programs that changed the social and political landscape, this progress was often halting, came with great hiatuses, plentiful frustrations, and much feuding between the various factions in both parties that compromised "the left" of the body polity in those years. Roosevelt and Wilson both frequently managed to infuriate both the left and the right, the conservative establishment scored a number of victories (including the bumbling disaster that was the Taft administration), and the passage of progressivism was in short marked by highly unstable progress.
If the 21st Century does see the ushering in of a new "Progressive Era", or some varient, then I think that the Obama administration will be viewed as either its beginning or a prelude to it - with the number of legislative victories that he has under his belt it would be very hard for it not to be so. Some progressives/liberals might feel as though we are still living in a time of conservatism, but the truth is that a similar atmosphere existed in the time of Roosevelt and Wilson - and they showed their greatness by fighting their way through it.
It is also worth noting that the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, marking the beginning of the "Conservative Era" (1981 - 2009) was by no means a story of unadulterated success. In those years the Republicans were never able to take the House, they were often forced to compromise (witness six tax increases signed into law by Reagan), and often seemed to be fighting a losing battle against the enduring might of the Liberal Establishment. They were patient however, and were ultimately rewarded (and the rest of us are still paying for it).
If we want this to be the beginning of a new era, then we must work for it. It is not just going to fall into our laps.
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