December 30, 2008

The year 2008 began with the anticipation that history would be made, and on that count the year certainly did not disappoint.  Nevertheless, the year unfolded with more surprises than usual.  The intellectual task of reviewing a year is always fascinating, usually difficult, and often humbling.  That is certainly the case with the year 2008.

As a matter of fact, a good deal more time must pass until the meaning of 2008 and its events come into clearer view.  In the meantime, here is a personal list of the events that shaped the year.  Some may not make a list created by the historians of the future, but each is noteworthy in its own right.  The list is not ranked in a specific order of relative significance, though the list is generally weighted toward the top.

1.  The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States.  Sen. Barack Obama's historic election victory reset the political map of the United States.  The first-term senator from Illinois galvanized the youth vote, maximized use of the Internet, and reached across traditional Democratic Party divisions to become the party's nominee and then to win a clear victory in the general election.  In so doing, he toppled the favorite for the nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton, and turned much of the conventional political wisdom on its head.  His defeat of Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, seemed to symbolize a generational shift, but Obama drew from a wide spectrum of the electorate.  His record is predictably liberal for a Democratic nominee -- even more liberal than Sen. Clinton -- yet he won the confidence of voters on an agenda of "change."  His liberal positions on social issues cost him significant support among evangelical Christian voters, though he attracted noteworthy support from some younger evangelicals.  As the year came to a close, the Obama transition team had assembled a core of cabinet nominees that was, in the main, drawn from traditional Democratic power circles -- a version of John F. Kennedy's "the best and the brightest" based in intellectual achievement.  Americans, concerned about challenges at home and abroad, looked to the President-elect -- the nation's first African-American President -- with great expectations.

2.  America becomes Ground Zero of a global economic crisis.  The American economy experienced a financial crisis that, by the fall, turned into a full-blown economic crisis.  A collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market, driven by a fall in housing prices, led to a credit collapse that spread across the globe.  The crisis led to the downfall of historic and iconic firms on Wall Street and put the entire economy into a spasm of uncertainty.  Stocks fell sharply, with more than $7 trillion disappearing from the markets.  A recession was deepened by the crisis as credit largely disappeared and as consumer spending fell.  The federal government pushed through over $700 billion of stimulus plans and the nation's taxpayers became part-owners of Fortune 500 firms.  Before the year ended, the CEOs of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler had gone before Congress to ask for relief.  The upheavals continue as the year does not.