Musings on American Culture, Politics, and Philosophy

Anyone who has been informed and enriched by Howe and Strauss' 1998 text,  The Fourth Turning  must also feel a certain sense of excitement at the appearance of Barack Obama  on the US political scene.  The venerable US historians who co-authored the aforementioned text created a wonderful synergy with their discourse on the natural cycles of history  - fueled in large part by generational ebb and flux   -  and have for many created a new lens through which to view current events .  That Obama's coming was sudden,  unexpected to a large degree,  and yet so precise in its timing and its details is an awe-inspiring event to many who view our current election process as one of the most important in our nation's history.

Obama is dynamic:  He is a great orator and rhetoritition;   he is highly intuitive in his thinking;  he evokes response and energy in an  unusual manner.  He is not altogether suited to the job as US president: His relative youth,  inexperience and his various and sundry problems (Rev. Wright among others) give some stern pause.  And yet he is poised for flight,  ready to view our current crises with a fresh eye  - a beautiful and masculine eye,  I do believe  -  and from a stance which seems to encourage the utmost confidence in him.  I suppose he is a phenomenal politician.  Many will be against him,  deride him,  take issue with him.  Yet I wager that it will not matter:  One might say he is destined to prevail. . . Susan Marie Kovalinsky