The Crystal Ball

“The 1992 election vindicates a hypothesis about the cyclic nature of American politics … Each phase recurs at roughly 30-year intervals. Thus the 1920s, 1950s and 1980s were conservative periods; and thus Theodore Roosevelt brought in the Progressive Era in 1901, Franklin Roosevelt the New Deal in 1933 and John Kennedy the New Frontier in 1961 … No one, therefore, should be surprised by the arrival of a new liberal phase in 1992.”

— Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Wall Street Journal, Nov. 12, 1992