I’ve long experimented with a model of how past decades influence the present, through nostalgia, cultural forces, etc., which seems to indicate that the time between the end of a decade and its influence on future decades is getting shorter and shorter, to the point that the 90’s fed on itself before it was over, and the 2000’s are feeding upon themsleves and all previous times.
My latest thoughts about this focus on our president, George W. Bush. Inasmuch as he is his own person, he also seems to include within himself an amalgam of presidents past:
Like Clinton, he’s a boomer who never went to war.
Like his father, he started an unprovoked war with Iraq that never came to a satisfying conclusion.
Like Reagan, he attempts to replace leadership with pretty talk.
Like Carter, his term is marked by soaring gas prices.
Like Ford, he’s a monumental klutz (pretzels, anyone?)
Like Nixon, he has lied to the American people.
Like Johnson, he has escalated a foreign conflict past his ability to control it.
Like Kennedy, he has wavy hair.
Like Truman, Korea is figuring heavily in his term.
I’ll try to think of some more
Because a guy chokes on a bit of food, he’s a klutz? And actually, Gerald Ford was one of the most athletic men to ever hold that office.
I think your analysis needs some work. It’s filled with speculative and subjective observations. What you need to prove a theory are some incontrovertible and quantifiable measurements. Not things like, “Like Reagan, he attempts to replace leadership with pretty talk.”
And here are a couple pages with gasoline price history, in case you would care to revise your opinion about that with some actual facts.