It's not merely the new party presidents, the period from Washington to Jackson didn't fit the model at all, nor did the period from Lincoln to McKinley. I like it as a model, because most really do fit the 8+ year, 1 term successor, moderate from the outside, then president(s) from the original party doubling down on the original formula, having it blow up, then someone coming in with a new dispensation after 1+ presidential terms of drift. But those period didn't happen like that at all.
Trump's term is definitely looking Carter-esque to me at this point. I find the continuance of not just the tax cuts, but the trade war with China, and the reshoring thing under Biden to be suggestive. Honestly, I think we might get reshoring of industry, the erosion of asset values held by the rich, and some of the other things we have been talking about not as a consequence of a planned programme by a realigning figure, but as a result of the mind-numbingly stupid decisions we are making now.
Once again, would love to have access to the datasets these charts are based on. In addition, I would like to take exception to this:
""Right now we continue to operate under a dispensation begun by President Reagan, which will continue until he is replaced by a Democratic Reconstructive President.""
That isn't what the model says. It says that we continue under the Reagan dispensation until SOMEONE convincingly resets it, with the afore-mentioned 3 consecutive terms. That someone can be Democratic, Republican, or some party we haven't seen yet.
There were also two periods where the standard model didn't really hold, at the beginning and end of the 19th century.
Also, there is a small but highly relevant typo here:
""The neocons policy prescription was hawkish foreign policy, which Republicans delivered until the debacle of the IraN war. "" <emphasis mine>
The neocons might still get their chance with that one. Israel might really need that external threat to pull things together
I dunno, I am biased, but I don't see Biden or Harris (or Trump, for that matter) pulling it off, and I think we haven't fully seen the domestic political fallout from the collapse of the dispensation, or the hegemonic transition, for that matter.
I was aware of the typo for Iraq war, but didn't think I could edit (I thought I had read that trying to change a post results in a completely new post being produced. But there is an edit button and I fixed it and its seems fine. So thanks :)
I agree with you that it makes sense for Reconstructive presidents to come from any party, making McKinley one, which it how I treated him in my greatness rating analysis. And yes, a new party can come along and implement one, e.g. Lincoln, Jackson and Jefferson. I find it useful to combine Reconstructive with the concept of a critical election (Key 1955).
Skowronek's model has a new Reconstructive president coming from the opposition. Even though McKinley-Roosevelt functioned much like a Reconstructive, even formulating a dispensation different from that of Lincoln, Skowronek doesn't classify either of them as Reconstructive, but as a sort of enlarged Adaptive.
I interpret this to mean that a late Adaptive, facing the increasingly poor fit of his party's dispensation with what the times demand, attempts to modify it to fit better. If successful, they become one of these enlarged Adaptives like McKinley or (especially) TR. If they fail, this leads to a rejection of their party's dispensation by the election of a Reconstructive president, making then Disjunctive.
Trump has many of the earmarks of being a Disjunctive. Say Democrats win in 24, beating Trump, but lose in 2028, Biden will then not be a Reconstructive, nor will two-time loser Trump be any sort of enhanced Adaptive. So the Reagan dispensation will rumble on like a zombie. I would point out that Trump did pass a tax cut (the core expression of the Reagan dispensation) while Democrats did not repeal that, which is a Preemptive move, not a Reconstructive one.
It is true that Biden is trying to implement an industrial policy, but he is trying to do it under SP culture, so it's already doomed to failure, IMO. That makes it a Preemptive strategy, not a Reconstructive one. Now of course I can easily be wrong (as you know I was wrong with my modified M&T and threw in the towel on generational cycles in 2014) so perhaps we get reshoring, real wage growth, and a return to something like the postwar era despite low tax rates. But betting against zombie Reaganism has been a losing bet my entire adult lifetime. :(
It's not merely the new party presidents, the period from Washington to Jackson didn't fit the model at all, nor did the period from Lincoln to McKinley. I like it as a model, because most really do fit the 8+ year, 1 term successor, moderate from the outside, then president(s) from the original party doubling down on the original formula, having it blow up, then someone coming in with a new dispensation after 1+ presidential terms of drift. But those period didn't happen like that at all.
Trump's term is definitely looking Carter-esque to me at this point. I find the continuance of not just the tax cuts, but the trade war with China, and the reshoring thing under Biden to be suggestive. Honestly, I think we might get reshoring of industry, the erosion of asset values held by the rich, and some of the other things we have been talking about not as a consequence of a planned programme by a realigning figure, but as a result of the mind-numbingly stupid decisions we are making now.
Once again, would love to have access to the datasets these charts are based on. In addition, I would like to take exception to this:
""Right now we continue to operate under a dispensation begun by President Reagan, which will continue until he is replaced by a Democratic Reconstructive President.""
That isn't what the model says. It says that we continue under the Reagan dispensation until SOMEONE convincingly resets it, with the afore-mentioned 3 consecutive terms. That someone can be Democratic, Republican, or some party we haven't seen yet.
There were also two periods where the standard model didn't really hold, at the beginning and end of the 19th century.
Also, there is a small but highly relevant typo here:
""The neocons policy prescription was hawkish foreign policy, which Republicans delivered until the debacle of the IraN war. "" <emphasis mine>
The neocons might still get their chance with that one. Israel might really need that external threat to pull things together
I dunno, I am biased, but I don't see Biden or Harris (or Trump, for that matter) pulling it off, and I think we haven't fully seen the domestic political fallout from the collapse of the dispensation, or the hegemonic transition, for that matter.
I was aware of the typo for Iraq war, but didn't think I could edit (I thought I had read that trying to change a post results in a completely new post being produced. But there is an edit button and I fixed it and its seems fine. So thanks :)
I agree with you that it makes sense for Reconstructive presidents to come from any party, making McKinley one, which it how I treated him in my greatness rating analysis. And yes, a new party can come along and implement one, e.g. Lincoln, Jackson and Jefferson. I find it useful to combine Reconstructive with the concept of a critical election (Key 1955).
Skowronek's model has a new Reconstructive president coming from the opposition. Even though McKinley-Roosevelt functioned much like a Reconstructive, even formulating a dispensation different from that of Lincoln, Skowronek doesn't classify either of them as Reconstructive, but as a sort of enlarged Adaptive.
I interpret this to mean that a late Adaptive, facing the increasingly poor fit of his party's dispensation with what the times demand, attempts to modify it to fit better. If successful, they become one of these enlarged Adaptives like McKinley or (especially) TR. If they fail, this leads to a rejection of their party's dispensation by the election of a Reconstructive president, making then Disjunctive.
Trump has many of the earmarks of being a Disjunctive. Say Democrats win in 24, beating Trump, but lose in 2028, Biden will then not be a Reconstructive, nor will two-time loser Trump be any sort of enhanced Adaptive. So the Reagan dispensation will rumble on like a zombie. I would point out that Trump did pass a tax cut (the core expression of the Reagan dispensation) while Democrats did not repeal that, which is a Preemptive move, not a Reconstructive one.
It is true that Biden is trying to implement an industrial policy, but he is trying to do it under SP culture, so it's already doomed to failure, IMO. That makes it a Preemptive strategy, not a Reconstructive one. Now of course I can easily be wrong (as you know I was wrong with my modified M&T and threw in the towel on generational cycles in 2014) so perhaps we get reshoring, real wage growth, and a return to something like the postwar era despite low tax rates. But betting against zombie Reaganism has been a losing bet my entire adult lifetime. :(
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/how-economic-culture-evolves