{"id":5395,"date":"2012-10-23T13:35:42","date_gmt":"2012-10-23T19:35:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/?p=5395"},"modified":"2012-10-23T13:35:42","modified_gmt":"2012-10-23T19:35:42","slug":"the-heirs-of-reagans-optimism-fareed-zakaria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/election\/the-heirs-of-reagans-optimism-fareed-zakaria\/","title":{"rendered":"The Heirs of Reagan’s Optimism « Fareed Zakaria"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Heirs of Reagan\u2019s Optimism \u00ab Fareed Zakaria<\/a> <\/p>\n

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Role reversal: the Democrats are the ones celebrating America\u2019s promise<\/i><\/p>\n

By Fareed Zakaria<\/p>\n

One perennial prediction about American elections remains likely to hold this November. The winning party will be the one that is more optimistic about \u00adAmerica<\/font>\u2014even in the midst of a struggling economy. \u201cAmerican civilization, from its beginnings,\u201d writes historian Daniel Boorstin, \u201chad combined a dogmatic confidence in the future with a naive puzzlement over what the future might bring.\u201d<\/p>\n

This confidence has not been confined to one party. Both Republican Theodore Roosevelt and Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt had it, as did John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.<\/p>\n

Optimism in this sense is not a philosophy but more of a temperament, a comfort with the country\u2019s eternal potential and a faith in its virtues. \u2026<\/p>\n

Today it is the Republican Party that often seems angry with America.<\/font> Read the best-selling books by conservatives these days, watch Fox News or attend a Tea Party rally. They are filled with rage, often combined with a powerful nostalgia for an America that has gone away. \u2026<\/p>\n

Anger and nostalgia are at the heart of the Tea Party. \u2026 The Tea Partyers love America, but it\u2019s an America that is an abstraction or a memory. The nation of today\u2014with its many immigrants, liberated women, increasingly liberated gays, myriad government programs, open trade and a Spanish-\u00adlanguage option on every phone menu\u2014seems to scare them. \u2026 <\/p>\n

At some point, the changes became part of the fabric of the country. Can you love America and hate so much about it?<\/p>\n

The Republican Party has an important and powerful economic message for America today. But to sell it, it needs to convince voters that it understands and appreciates today\u2019s America.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Heirs of Reagan\u2019s Optimism \u00ab Fareed Zakaria<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Heirs of Reagan\u2019s Optimism \u00ab Fareed Zakaria Role reversal: the Democrats are the ones celebrating America\u2019s promise By Fareed Zakaria One perennial prediction about American elections remains likely to hold this November. The winning party will be the one that is more optimistic about \u00adAmerica\u2014even in the midst of a struggling economy. \u201cAmerican civilization, … Continue reading The Heirs of Reagan’s Optimism « Fareed Zakaria<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5396,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5395\/revisions\/5396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}