The Crystal Ball

"The 1992 election vindicates a hypothesis about the cyclic nature of American politics ... Each phase recurs at roughly 30-year intervals. Thus the 1920s, 1950s and 1980s were conservative periods; and thus Theodore Roosevelt brought in the Progressive Era in 1901, Franklin Roosevelt the New Deal in 1933 and John Kennedy the New Frontier in 1961 ... No one, therefore, should be surprised by the arrival of a new liberal phase in 1992."

-- Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Wall Street Journal, Nov. 12, 1992