As 2012 nears an end, it is appropriate to add President Barack Obama to a short list of “transformative” Presidents, Chief Executives who have had a major impact on the nation in a way that makes them historic figures who have changed the politics of America for the long term!
The list of “transformative” Presidents is short and would include the following:
Thomas Jefferson
Andrew Jackson
Abraham Lincoln
Theodore Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosvelt
Lyndon B. Johnson
Ronald Reagan
Barack Obama
Each of the eight Presidents listed above changed our political system in a way that lasted way beyond their time, and it seems likely that Obama will have the same impact electorally!
Just as Thomas Jefferson co-opted the Federalist Party agenda; Andrew Jackson created a party of the masses; Abraham Lincoln saved the nation in the Civil War and made the Republican Party the dominant national party; Theodore Roosevelt made “progressivism” a term and a movement that would be pursued by Woodrow Wilson and others later on; Franklin D. Roosevelt would save the nation from the Great Depression via the New Deal, and World War II, and make the Democratic Party the dominant national party; Lyndon B. Johnson would transform the nation on civil rights and Medicare; Ronald Reagan would make conservatism the dominant national ideology for nearly thirty years; so will Barack Obama transform the nation on health care, gay rights, the growing role of women and minorities, and in fighting the war on terrorism!
There were Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans; Jacksonian Democrats; Lincolnian Republicans; TR Progressives; FDR Democrats; Johnson Loyalists of the Great Society; Reaganite conservatives; and now Obama Democrats who will affect the future for decades, as his predecessors did!
We are, indeed, living in very historic times!