Everything Old Is New Again

Mat Bai: “The truth is that when it comes to challenging orthodoxies, the insurgents on both sides are way more retro than they are radical. And that may be why, no matter what transpires in Iowa Monday, they’re destined to come up short.”

“Presidential elections, Clinton famously said, are always about the future and not about the past…the other possibility, and I’m not dismissing it, is that this is the year when Bill Clinton’s axiom on elections no longer holds true. Perhaps unrest in the country is so profound, the primary electorates so ideologically pure, that nostalgia turns out to be an actual strategy. Maybe we’ve reached a point — after a string of presidencies premised on visions of a future, economic and social, that never fully materialized — where we’d rather retrench than rethink. Maybe this is throwback year, and it’s easier to go backward than look ahead.”