The New Thematics

Professional State of the Union watcher Peggy Noonan picked up something a lot of other people missed - Pres. Obama has called for a "New Foundation" I'll be sure to get right on that: The Obama Contradictions

They've chosen a phrase for the president's program. They call it the "New Foundation." They sneaked it in rather tentatively, probably not sure it would take off. It won't. Such labels work when they clearly capture something that is already clear. "The New Deal" captured FDR's historic shift to an increased governmental presence in individual American lives. It was a new deal. "The New Frontier"—we are a young and vibrant nation still, and adventures await us in space and elsewhere. It was a mood, not a program, but a mood well captured.

"The New Foundation" is solid and workmanlike, but it attempts to put form and order to a governing philosophy that is still too herky-jerky to be summed up.

Didn't Bill Clinton call for a "New Covenant" at some point? He did! Although, it didn't stick. It was just a campaign slogan combining the historic resonance of the New Deal/New Frontier with the vaguely religious tone of a "Covenant" (between God/Clinton and America? Yuck), plus the progressive's love of anything "New." As it turned out, it was just campaign BS. Clinton moved on to triangulating, Rubinomics, and the "Bridge To The 21st Century" pretty quick.

The "New Foundation" sounds even more half-hearted; an attempt at putting on a show of "making history," rather than going out and making history. Obama's constraint is that he utterly lacks FDR's skills at coalition building. The New Deal wasn't just a list of proposals that would "make things better." It was a coalition of farmers, manufacturing unions, urban progressives and, uh, southern segregationists who were able to fuse disparate voting blocks in a program for national governance that lasted for decades and whose basic principles can still be made out in the speeches of Tom Harkin, among others. Not saying whether this was good or bad, but it sure was effective - and historic. That's why the New Deal has such resonance, not because some presidential speechwriter came up with a cute name. If we ever hear about the New Foundation again, I'll be amazed.