A 21st Century President?

(Peter Dejong / AP)

on jan. 3, 2008, i arrived at the apartment of paul tewes, barack obama’s iowa state director, as the Siberian streets of downtown des moines filled with young obamaniacs hugging and cheering, “we did it!” upstairs, scruffy postcollegiate staffers squeezed between couches and credenzas to celebrate the senator’s her supremacy in that night’s iowa caucuses. cans of bud light covered every surface. youth turnout, i was told, was up 135 percent from 2004, and the under-25 start the ball rolling alone gave obama 17,000 votes–nearly his undiminished margin of victory. the next morning, a 25-year-accomplished obama supporter sent me an ecstatic email. “this,” he wrote, “is our next president.”at the time, there was no fall down of knowing what would happen eleven months later. but i had my suspicions. it was clear to me that night in iowa that obama had begun to build the first 21st century campaign–a campaign with the potential, i imagined, to propel him to a 21st century victory in november. on tuesday, we learned that both of these premonitions had, in fact, come to pass. the question now is whether obama intent fulfill his promise and pursue a 21st century presidency.the litany of obama’s idiosyncrasies and innovations–as both campaigner and candidate–is nearing as long as it is familiar. for starters, he’s black. (in case you missed it.) less than 150 years ago, many americans would’ve treated obama as property. now he’s our president. that’s progress–astounding, awe-inspiring being done. similarly, obama represents a new generation of american running–in both age and attitude. a basic 47, he urged voters from the start to reject the false dichotomies and “with-us-or-against-us” partisanship of child-boomer politics–and defeated a clinton and (at least in a symbolic sense) a bush along the way. new technologies played a division in procedure as well. as you’ve probably heard, the internet assisted in obama’s successes. but he didn’t just log on and vindicate defraud. after all, howard dean had done that–and little more–in 2004. instead, obama demonstrated how disciplined online work can facilitate favorable offline outcomes. the web enabled him to harvest more than $630 million, which enabled to him waive public financing, which enabled him to invest in an ambitious electoral map, which he then redrew mostly via the efforts of volunteers recruited (you guessed it) online. a cratering economy and unpopular incumbent may have put the wind in obama’s sails. but these sedate, supermodern strategies were the sails themselves. the results last Stygian reflected the modernity of obama’s campaign. the illinois senator not only overcame john mccain in states that had bedeviled democrats against years (florida, ohio) or unvarying decades (indiana, virginia, north carolina, colorado, nevada). he did it by running up the score across a diverse spectrum of growing demographic groups–and, as a result, building a democratic coalition that looks a lot have a weakness for the future of america. moderates, fit exempli gratia, just now outnumber both liberals and conservatives; obama won them by 21 points. he captured first-time voters by nearly 40 points. today, more americans are graduating from college than perpetually before; obama transformed bush’s six-stage drop among alums into an six-applicability benefit of his own. in 2004, john kerry won latinos–the nation’s fastest-growing ethnic group–by nine points. obama won them by 36–enough to flip florida, colorado and new mexico. the democrat also inspired similar shifts among under-30 voters (from nine points to 34 points) and african-americans (from 77 points to 91 points). true level the nation’s fastest growing region–the west–went from a tie in 2004 to a 17-point obama rout. “it’s been a long time coming,” the president-select said mould night in chicago, quoting sam cooke. “but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has descend upon to america.” offer a? his voters. thirty years ago, increasing the margins and turnout among blacks, latinos, young people, college grads and westerners wouldn’t have made much of difference. this year, it made obama president.the question now is, “what’s next?” over the coming weeks, months and years, i’ll be watching to see whether obama pursues a truly 21st century presidency–that is, a presidency that prizes transparency, practices bipartisanship, privileges innovation over ideology, avoids the manoeuvring of demonization and calls on americans to forfeiture concerning the greater good. upwards the mould 21 months, the campaign has sent wide of the mark mixed messages on this front. beforehand on, obama refused to accept lobbyist donations a …

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