Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

I offered some observations last week about the book  An Aristocracy of Critics, which is a study of the 1940s-era Hutchins Commission, and its report about a "free and responsible press."  What strikes me reading it is the extent of my sympathies for Robert McCormick, who wore the black hat in the imagination of the authors of the book that issued from the Commission's work. McCormick, often called Colonel McCormick in acknowledgement of his First World War service, when he was on the staff of General Pershing, ran the Chicago Tribune from the early 1920s until the mid 1950s. The Trib's infamous "Dewey Wins" fiasco occurred on his watch.  Well before that headline, though, McCormick was often regarded as an unscrupulous and arrogant presence.  In the 1930s, everyone associated with the New Deal despised him. Everyone interested in assisting the western allies against the Axis powers ... likewise. He used his position as the owner of the Tribune to campaign...

For a long time, I thought of US politics in terms of a 30 year cycle.  I thought of this as the "short cycle" of two, for I also had and still have a long cycle theory.  But the short cycle was specifically keyed to Presidential election, so it manifested itself in 32 or 28 year intervals (since 30 is not divisible by four).  Pursuant to the short cycle theory I compared President Obama's election in 2008 to the election of other relatively obscure figures who carried on the impetus of a reform movement past its prime. A haberdasher in 1948 was elected as the last hurrah for the New Deal. Four years later he bowed out, letting Adlai Stevenson take the fall for Eisenhower's victory. Twenty eight years after 1948 brings us to 1976, when a peanut farmer became President as a final upsurge of New Frontier/Great Society liberalism. Four years later he was mugged by an Ayatollah on the way to defeat by Ronald Reagan.  Thirty-two years from 1976 brings us t...