The Most Important Election of a Lifetime?

Seems like I'm hearing that a lot, either on blogs or on TV. And Professor John Pitney takes a look at the question --- and says not to worry. At Christian Science Monitor, "The important election of a lifetime? So say Gingrich et al.":

Newt Gingrich sometimes refers to 2012 as "the most important election since 1860," which set the stage for the Civil War. His Republican competitors are a bit less flourishing in their comparison, describing November as the vote of a lifetime (though Mr. Gingrich also uses that phrase). Across the political divide, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi agrees: It's "the most important election of our generation."

If such descriptions sound familiar, it's because Americans hear them every four years. "This is certainly the most important election in my lifetime – not just because I'm running," said Barack Obama to a Wisconsin crowd early in 2008. Democrats and Republicans applied similar language to the Bush-Kerry contest. In his 1976 campaign against Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford said, "Make no mistake – this election will decide the direction America is going to take in its third century of independence."

So every presidential race is the most momentous in modern times – until the next one.

Continue reading.

I tell my students the same thing. Every four years we're told this is the most important election ever. But I think this year, on the conservative side of things, there's a deep sense of foreboding over the possibility of Obama's reelection. Some argue that ObamaCare will never be repealed if we don't get the Democrats out now. And on top of that some fear that the left will continue to work its ways through the institutions, achieving a revolution of bureaucratic socialism on a scale to make the ghost of Antonio Gramsci do somersaults. But more than that, this election seems to reflect a realization that the Obama administration has signaled the decline of the American culture of individualism, affluence and unlimited opportunity. We've seen these trends before --- trends toward "malaise," in the 1970s, for example --- and the U.S. roared back with optimism and vigor. But this time the changes appear exponentially more dramatic --- the left's assault on our values is literally apocalyptic for conservatives who feel embattled in defending what they believe are the moral foundations of this nation.