By As I wrote in my most recent book, “The Storm Before the Calm,” we tend to use presidencies as benchmarks to help us locate where we are in time, but it would be a mistake to think that presidents and policies are the true agents of change. In truth, time is the ultimate arbiter of change, and what defines any era are the forces that impose themselves on presidents.
Presidents are elected by aligning with the pressures that already exist, and they govern in response to these pressures. Since the United States is a democracy, that should not be surprising. But even in democracies, there is a belief that presidents are free actors and, as such, design history. But that is not the case. The normal pattern in U.S. political history is that “ineffective” presidents are elected at the end of a 50-year cycle, and that their presidencies exist in social and economic chaos. These presidents usually, through no fault of their own, lose the ability to govern. And in the following election, a president who can change where we are and set the country in a new direction is elected.
Andrew Jackson – the second such president after George Washington – framed his presidency around the vast settler movement (and the associated finances) that was already taking shape. Franklin Roosevelt shaped his presidency around the Great Depression, redefining how the economy worked and preparing the country for war. Ronald Reagan dealt with catastrophic economic circumstances of insufficient capital and demand and military failures that spanned the Middle East. Before a cyclical transition, there must be a president who presides over a country in crisis. His successor presides over the reconstruction of the country.