Each new administration thinks it has found the secret of building a permanent majority for its party. Nixon thought he had secured endless GOP victories by bagging the white south. Reagan thought he had done it by winning working-class Democrats. Clinton thought his centrist New Democrats had forged a permanent marriage with the baby boomers and Karl Rove thought the suburbs and the demographic shift to the south and west would keep the Republicans in power for a generation. They were all wrong, yet Barack Obama's team harbours the same ambition.?
They are counting on two distinct demographic trends. The first is the rise of the millennial generation, the 93m Americans born between 1983 and 2002, who already outnumber baby boomers. When Obama runs for re-election in 2012, 61 per cent of them will be of voting age and by 2020 they will represent 36 per cent of the electorate. The millennials love Obama—the latest Gallup analysis shows his approval ratings at 75 per cent among those under 30, compared to 66 per cent nationally.
Gallup's survey of the millennials also finds that only 20 per cent describe themselves as Republicans, against 36 per cent as Democrats and 34 per cent as independents. Once forged, party loyalties tend to stick. So the millennials who grew up hating Bush could be in the Democratic camp for a long, long time.
The second trend, one that White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel cites regularly, is the Hispanic vote. Between 2000 and 2006, Hispanics accounted for half the growth in the US population—and 67 per cent of Hispanics voted for Obama. The rise in numbers is due to high birth rates but Emmanuel is still pushing for a new immigration bill that will include amnesty for illegals, as it's seen as the surest way to Hispanic hearts.
Cheney won't stop talking
Meanwhile the Republicans are not just in disarray, but they are letting Dick Cheney become their most prominent spokesman. His refrain is that Obama is undermining national security by closing Guantánamo, being soft on terrorists and wimpish on "robust interrogation techniques"—which Cheney insists got results. He says he could prove it if Obama would authorise the CIA to release details of plots foiled due to these interrogations.
It's an argument that plays well to a large part of the Republican base, and Cheney is getting some traction. He seems to have pushed Obama to reverse on his plan to release more photographs of torture and prison abuses. Cheney is also infuriated at the prospect of Bush staffers facing judicial action. Until the last moments of Bush's time in office, Cheney tried to get him to pardon his old aide Scooter Libby, convicted of leaking material on WMDs in Iraq. And now Cheney is widening his attack, claiming that Obama's attempts to save something of the Detroit car industry are a Euro-socialist attack on private property. Not all of the GOP are with him, but Cheney can command media time that the Republican remnants in House and Senate cannot.
Is Jon Huntsman the next David Cameron?
Obama's nomination of Republican Jon Huntsman as ambassador to China is shrewd as well as bipartisan, as it removes a potential rival for the presidency in 2012. Huntsman, the Mormon governor of Utah, speaks fluent Chinese after being a missionary in Taiwan and is a billionaire through the family firm, the Huntsman chemical group. Bush senior appointed him the youngest-ever ambassador (to Singapore). Supporting civil unions for gays and cap-and-trade to cut carbon emissions, Huntsman was carving out a promising space as a social moderate and fiscal conservative. This, he said, is the thinking of the growing numbers of registered independents who he calls "America's third party."
Huntsman is an admirer of David Cameron and has argued that the Republicans should learn from his rebranding of the Tories. "They were a very narrow party of angry people," he said recently. "And they started branching out through, maybe, taking a second look at the issues of the day, much like we're going to have to do for the Republican party, to reconnect with the youth, to reconnect with people of colour, to reconnect with different geographies that we have lost. You cannot succeed being a party of the south and a couple of western states." Obama's appointment may not prove so wise for the Dems in the long term; Huntsman is only 49 and may have a better shot at the presidency in 2016.
Obama's bipartisan diet
There's an acute political judgement to even Obama's choice of dining venues. So far he's been to Citronelle, one of the best Washington restaurants and to the famous black shrine of Ben's Chili Bowl. Recently he visited Ray's Hell Burger, a quality fast-food joint that has converted vegetarians. But there he stunned traditionalists by ordering his burger without ketchup but with spicy mustard. (That's the way they eat them in Texas, where they call the one with ketchup a Yankeeburger.) Former Bush speechwriter David Frum reminds Renegade of a survey by the National Hot Dog Council that found 73 per cent of Republicans in Congress preferred mustard to ketchup, against 47 per cent of Democrats. Even in his eating habits, Obama is bipartisan.?
