Negative Campaigning and the Morning After

Abstract

Barack Obama ran for president on, among other things, a promise to move the country beyond the partisan rancor of the Bush and Clinton years. Already observers are watching his every move to see if he will deliver on this promise. Obama has a difficult needle to thread because he not only has promised a less hyper-partisan approach than we have seen in recent years, but has also run on a progressive platform with regards to a range of issues including foreign policy, economic policy and the environment. Obama's challenge is to deliver on progressive policies while not creating a nasty political environment. In some respects this is the mirror image of the Clinton years where we had a nasty, partisan political environment, to which both parties contributed, but no genuinely progressive leadership from the White House.