What Foot Will They Put Forward?

I am generally loathe to mark time according to the beginnings and endings of US presidential terms as the forces of history naturally ebb and flow across such artificical boundaries. Nonetheless sometimes such oversimplification can be clarifying. In that spirit, one could arguably sum up the presidency of William Jefferson Clinton thusly: He came fresh out of the gates with gays in the military and HillaryCare, his wife's vision of socialized medicine, and promptly lost his party's majority in the House of Representatives. Thereafter he passed centrist, even rightist (again to oversimplify, this time with crude political labels), policies such as welfare reform and NAFTA before settling into a long period of benign ineffectiveness as he dealt with the fallout of scandals stemming from past real estate deals and current oral sex.

Of course the history has yet to unfold, but the new Democratic majority seems to be making noises about what they will lead with out of the starting gates. The short list includes the military draft, HillaryCare and global warming. I'm not saying that we've seen this movie before, just that the trailer would indicate a probability greater than zero of huing to recent historical events and a level of predictability in the outcome.