Will It Be FDR Redux?

What a historic ride the election of 2008 turned out to be. Never again will we ask about an African-American seeking the highest post in the nation. Nor will we ever ask about a woman running for president or vice president or just going moose hunting. And for use Baby Boomers, a 72-year-old candidate will not be a big deal again, either.

But the election was about much more than that. This period has marked our worst crisis in confidence in political and governmental institutions since 1932—much worse than either the Watergate crisis or the last year of the Jimmy Carter presidency. Our public attitude toward government and politics reached an all-time polling low—President Bush with a 21 percent job approval rating and Congress achieving an almost unthinkable nine percent.

Barack Obama’s victory was neither a liberal victory nor a conservative defeat. Liberals are tempted to suggest that the era of big government has begun anew, while conservatives are equally likely to argue that Bush simply went astray. The truth is that the Obama victory had more to do with the right message at the right moment: stated simply, the promise of problem solving and consensus building.

Millions of Americans, especially the 12 million first-time voters, were tired of the hyper-partisanship that has brought Congress to dysfunction and policy making to a halt. Significantly, both Barack Obama and John McCain had strong credentials to win over moderates and independents. Both started out with equal appeal among centrist voters, and brought their own demeanor into the fray—Obama as the John Kennedy-like, confident and eloquent speaker and McCain as the cold warrior and maverick reformer.

In the final analysis, what derailed John McCain was not—as some have suggested—his choice of Gov. Sarah Palin as a running mate, but that his campaign message became derailed by the financial crisis. Remember, McCain was actually leading prior to the stock market plunging, but on the economy he misspoke (no one really wanted to hear that “the fundamentals of the U.S. economy are basically strong”), was confused (was he for a bailout or against a bailout?), and frantic (suggesting that he would cancel the first debate merely hours before it was scheduled to happen).

With a majority of voters owning some type of a stock market product that lost approximately 40 percent of its value, did centrist voters really care about Bill Ayres, Tony Rezko, Rev. Jeremiah Wright or how Obama’s campaign was financed? McCain was off track and off message and never quite got it back again. Meanwhile, Obama stayed cool and confident; similar qualities defined Franklin D. Roosevelt in the campaign of 1932 and then during his presidency.

Sure, some will say they don’t know what Obama will do with any certainty, but frankly, Roosevelt did not have a New Deal until after he was elected. Critics will argue that the New Deal did not get us out of the Great Depression. They too are correct, except that America needed coolness and confidence to extricate itself from the psychology of depression. And it clamored for action—any kind of action.

So, too, with today. The problems the Obama administration faces are numerous. Truly, they all require instant action. For those trying to get a handle on what he will do, just remember Roosevelt’s three R’s: relief, recovery and reform. In the case of relief, look for Obama to appropriate money for infrastructure renewal and jobs. Money will be given directly to the states, several of which are facing bankruptcy. There will likely be another stimulus check directly to consumers and that dreadful Wall Street bailout package will probably be restructured.

Assistance to ailing industries and incentives to invest in job-rich green industries will be followed by necessary reform to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. To be successful, President Obama will have to be non-ideological, finding a Third Way between traditional liberalism and traditional conservatism. Let’s call that new ideology, in the finest American tradition: Pragmatism.

John Zogby is president and CEO of Zogby International and the author of The Way We’ll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream (Random House).