Next Agenda

The Obama Moment and America's Next Agenda

With Obama's election, it looks like we’re now entering a rare period of explosive political innovation on a par with just a handful of similar moments in American history. We’re gearing up to move big ideas and more transformative agendas into politics and take on the many challenges facing this country and the world. I make the case for “The Obama Moment” in a short written essay and in this very intense, entertaining talk done in the style of the TED conference, with highly visual multimedia. The talk was done in Copenhagen this October and gives a meta-analysis of the paradigm shift in politics and the one soon to come in governing. The formal talk lasts 30 minutes, with the rest showing some great discussion with the European audience. Check out both the video and the essay, and check out the rest of the website where you can learn more about Peter Leyden, The Obama Moment, and the emerging Next Agenda project. And just below the video you can find occasional blog posts too, including one on how people are actually underestimating the historic nature of Obama's election. It ultimately will be seen as an even bigger deal than most people now think.

Historic Election? It's Even a Bigger Deal than Most Think

The Obama election is historic for all the reasons that everyone has been talking about (first black president, etc.), but most people are not thinking big enough. Ultimately, in the long run of American history, this election will be seen as the beginning of building the great global 21st century civilization. It will go down as the moment when the American people flipped the switch from one path, one philosophy, one vision of America, and shifted to a very different one. That new path is not clear yet, but the general direction is toward finally confronting the challenges of the 21st century and creating system change on a level that we have seen only a handful of times in American history.

The ultimate solution for confronting 21st century challenges like global climate change, global financial collapse and global terrorism, (to name but a few), is to build a new kind of global system that would work for the long haul, meaning decades if not the entire century. A core component of that new system has to be the monumental shift from dirty oil and carbon-based energy to clean renewable ones, and a fundamental redesign of how people in both the developed and developing worlds live in a much more sustainable way. In effect, all that change adds up to the creation of a global 21st century civilization. We either figure that out in the next 25 years or so, or the planet and civilization as we know it won’t survive. That’s not hyperbole, but the growing consensus of all kinds of scientists and knowledgeable people who are seriously looking ahead.

Few people voting for Obama pulled the lever as a vote for creating a global 21st century civilization. Obama himself never articulated the choice that way and probably doesn’t think about it that way either. But if we are talking history, and looking at this moment in America from an historical perspective, then people in 50 years, 100 years, even 500 years from now will look back on the election of 2008 as the start of one of the greatest transformations in American history, the beginning of America leading the world into a new era of global cooperation and sustainable living that allowed those future generations of Americans to look back on their history with pride.

The Obama Moment and the Coming Transformation of America to Solve the 21st Century Challenges of the World

There have been a handful of times in American history when forces align to create an explosion of political innovation, a transformational period that can last a decade or two. They often arise because of deep structural changes to the American economy and society, or to take on huge and unprecedented challenges. In these periods the old politics quickly breaks down and a new politics quickly emerges as Americans of that era step up and rise to the occasion.

All signs point to the probability that we’re in the beginning of one of those moments now. We now are well overdue to transition into the new era, the 21st century, the global age, our high-tech, hyper-connected world - whatever you want to call it. We face immense challenges ranging from climate change to decentralized terror to a globalizing economy that is beyond any nation’s control. Our old polarized politics have been paralyzed, stuck in old patterns and ideologies, at best inadequate to the task at hand. Until now.

We are witnessing an extraordinary moment in political history as a relative newcomer has risen out of nowhere, a true movement candidate, one who has the potential to be a transformational figure. Obama could be catalyzing a moment in American history, perhaps with world historical repercussions, as this country once more steps up and leads the way. For want of a better label, let’s just call it the Obama Moment.

At the very least Obama has catalyzed the triumph of a new politics, one that is based on the new technologies of the internet, on the new media of the web, that draws in new constituencies like the young Millennial Generation. Many of us, myself included, have been working since the disastrous 2004 election to get the Democrats and progressives to adopt this new model and use it to take back power. But it took Obama to champion this new paradigm of politics, and successfully use it to beat the best campaign of any to use that old political approach. He beat Clinton soundly, but he is going to overwhelm McCain in the fall. You can never predict anything with certainty in politics, but the new way to winning has been figured out. It will triumph in the fall, and after that, all candidates will follow.

What has not been figured out is what Obama, the swelled majorities of the Democrats, and America will do come January. The most underdeveloped part of our politics right now is the next agenda. To be sure, Obama is offering some big swings in certain critical areas like revamping health care, making big investments in clean energy, and militarily disengaging from the Middle East. But no one person or one campaign can have all the answers to the myriad problems our nation faces. To take but one example, no one in politics knows what to do about a super-connected global economy where someone in Ohio can pick up the phone and be whisked to a call center in India, and then bend over and give their pet dog-food from a village in China.

The Obama Moment offers an incredible opportunity to reorient our governing agenda and re-envision how America fits in this new world. We have an opportunity to infuse government with a wave of new ideas. There’s no shortage of new ideas about how to take on the full range of challenges facing the world. Solutions are emerging from all quarters of America. Our politics has not yet tapped the widespread creativity and genius of the American people – yet we can. We can leverage the same technologies that have transformed our politics and begin to create a new kind of intellectual infrastructure that can draw off distributed problem-solving and move big ideas from early stages of insight to higher levels of development and refinement. Yes we can.

Americans of this era are every bit as capable of solving the challenges of their era as Americans of previous eras were. In fact, we are more highly educated, more well endowed, with far more capital and resources than any previous era of Americans. Imagine if FDR and his cohorts facing the Great Depression and the rise of fascism in 1932 had a box on their desk where they could ask any question and get back all the related information in the world. They would have called it magic. We call it Google, and every 5-year-old in the country can use it.

All signs are that Americans are now ready to rise to the occasion. All signs are that America is going to reinvent itself, and its politics, and its government, and its set of governing ideas, and reorient towards the great new interconnected, technologically-enhanced, globalized world that is facing the challenges of global warming, a shift to clean energies, and the rise of China, to name but a few. We are about to embark on what could be a 20-year transformational period where we transition this country and the world towards a new sustainable global society that works for as many people as possible for the long, long-term.

I want to be part of that transformation by helping figure out the next agenda, or the next agendas, in the coming year and the years ahead. I feel strongly enough about this to leave my position as director of the New Politics Institute. Three years ago I left the private sector to help start that organization and take on the most pressing challenge of that time: to reverse the overwhelming success of the conservative movement and get progressives winning through use of powerful new tools, new media and new constituencies. I think the most difficult parts of that problem have been solved and just need to be more thoroughly applied. It is time to transition NPI to new leadership that can carry that phase out.

I now want to turn to the next set of challenges on how we can consistently move big ideas and transformative agendas into politics. I have some initial ideas about how new technologies, new media, and some new distributed processes could be brought together to create an intellectual infrastructure that could help open up and enhance a new Obama Washington. I think there are ways to meld the best elements of the old think tank world with the new capabilities of the tech world to help transform the ideas business in DC. I am engaged with others who are applying themselves in this space. Something is bound to come of it. Stay connected and we’ll all figure it out. Bring on the Obama Moment.

       

   

All signs point to the probability that we’re in the beginning of one of those moments now. We now are well overdue to transition into the new era, the 21st century, the global age, our high-tech, hyper-connected world - whatever you want to call it. We face immense challenges ranging from climate change to decentralized terror to a globalizing economy that is beyond any nation’s control. Our old polarized politics have been paralyzed, stuck in old patterns and ideologies, at best inadequate to the task at hand. Until now.

We are witnessing an extraordinary moment in political history as a relative newcomer has risen out of nowhere, a true movement candidate, one who has the potential to be a transformational figure. Obama could be catalyzing a moment in American history, perhaps with world historical repercussions, as this country once more steps up and leads the way. For want of a better label, let’s just call it the Obama Moment.

At the very least Obama has catalyzed the triumph of a new politics, one that is based on the new technologies of the internet, on the new media of the web, that draws in new constituencies like the young Millennial Generation. Many of us, myself included, have been working since the disastrous 2004 election to get the Democrats and progressives to adopt this new model and use it to take back power. But it took Obama to champion this new paradigm of politics, and successfully use it to beat the best campaign of any to use that old political approach. He beat Clinton soundly, but he is going to overwhelm McCain in the fall. You can never predict anything with certainty in politics, but the new way to winning has been figured out. It will triumph in the fall, and after that, all candidates will follow.

What has not been figured out is what Obama, the swelled majorities of the Democrats, and America will do come January. The most underdeveloped part of our politics right now is the next agenda. To be sure, Obama is offering some big swings in certain critical areas like revamping health care, making big investments in clean energy, and militarily disengaging from the Middle East. But no one person or one campaign can have all the answers to the myriad problems our nation faces. To take but one example, no one in politics knows what to do about a super-connected global economy where someone in Ohio can pick up the phone and be whisked to a call center in India, and then bend over and give their pet dog-food from a village in China.

The Obama Moment offers an incredible opportunity to reorient our governing agenda and re-envision how America fits in this new world. We have an opportunity to infuse government with a wave of new ideas. There’s no shortage of new ideas about how to take on the full range of challenges facing the world. Solutions are emerging from all quarters of America. Our politics has not yet tapped the widespread creativity and genius of the American people – yet we can. We can leverage the same technologies that have transformed our politics and begin to create a new kind of intellectual infrastructure that can draw off distributed problem-solving and move big ideas from early stages of insight to higher levels of development and refinement. Yes we can.

Americans of this era are every bit as capable of solving the challenges of their era as Americans of previous eras were. In fact, we are more highly educated, more well endowed, with far more capital and resources than any previous era of Americans. Imagine if FDR and his cohorts facing the Great Depression and the rise of fascism in 1932 had a box on their desk where they could ask any question and get back all the related information in the world. They would have called it magic. We call it Google, and every 5-year-old in the country can use it.

All signs are that Americans are now ready to rise to the occasion. All signs are that America is going to reinvent itself, and its politics, and its government, and its set of governing ideas, and reorient towards the great new interconnected, technologically-enhanced, globalized world that is facing the challenges of global warming, a shift to clean energies, and the rise of China, to name but a few. We are about to embark on what could be a 20-year transformational period where we transition this country and the world towards a new sustainable global society that works for as many people as possible for the long, long-term.

I want to be part of that transformation by helping figure out the next agenda, or the next agendas, in the coming year and the years ahead. I feel strongly enough about this to leave my position as director of the New Politics Institute. Three years ago I left the private sector to help start that organization and take on the most pressing challenge of that time: to reverse the overwhelming success of the conservative movement and get progressives winning through use of powerful new tools, new media and new constituencies. I think the most difficult parts of that problem have been solved and just need to be more thoroughly applied. It is time to transition NPI to new leadership that can carry that phase out.

I now want to turn to the next set of challenges on how we can consistently move big ideas and transformative agendas into politics. I have some initial ideas about how new technologies, new media, and some new distributed processes could be brought together to create an intellectual infrastructure that could help open up and enhance a new Obama Washington. I think there are ways to meld the best elements of the old think tank world with the new capabilities of the tech world to help transform the ideas business in DC. I am engaged with others who are applying themselves in this space. Something is bound to come of it. Stay connected and we’ll all figure it out. Bring on the Obama Moment.