Peter Leyden just finished a period as the Director of the New Politics Institute, a networked think tank helping people in politics understand and adapt to the massive changes in technology and new media. He is now focusing on the next challenge of how to use new technologies and new processes to move big ideas and more transformative agendas into politics. Leyden previously worked as the managing editor at the original Wired magazine that helped drive the digital revolution and create the early online new media.
There have been a handful of times in American history when forces align to create an explosion of political innovation, a transformational period that can last a decade or two. They often arise because of deep structural changes to the American economy and society, or to take on huge and unprecedented challenges. In these periods the old politics quickly breaks down and a new politics quickly emerges as Americans of that era step up and rise to the occasion.
All signs point to the probability that we're in the beginning of one of those moments now. We now are well overdue to transition into the new era, the 21st century, the global age, our high-tech, hyper-connected world - whatever you want to call it. We face immense challenges ranging from climate change to decentralized terror to a globalizing economy that is beyond any nation's control. Our old polarized politics have been paralyzed, stuck in old patterns and ideologies, at best inadequate to the task at hand. Until now.
We are witnessing an extraordinary moment in political history as a relative newcomer has risen out of nowhere, a true movement candidate, one who has the potential to be a transformational figure. Obama could be catalyzing a moment in American history, perhaps with world historical repercussions, as this country once more steps up and leads the way. For want of a better label, let's just call it the Obama Moment.
At the very least Obama has catalyzed the triumph of a new politics, one that is based on the new technologies of the internet, on the new media of the web, that draws in new constituencies like the young Millennial Generation. Many of us, myself included, have been working since the disastrous 2004 election to get the Democrats and progressives to adopt this new model and use it to take back power. But it took Obama to champion this new paradigm of politics, and successfully use it to beat the best campaign of any to use that old political approach. He beat Clinton soundly, but he is going to overwhelm McCain in the fall. You can never predict anything with certainty in politics, but the new way to winning has been figured out. It will triumph in the fall, and after that, all candidates will follow.
What has not been figured out is what Obama, the swelled majorities of the Democrats, and America will do come January. The most underdeveloped part of our politics right now is the next agenda. To be sure, Obama is offering some big swings in certain critical areas like revamping health care, making big investments in clean energy, and militarily disengaging from the Middle East. But no one person or one campaign can have all the answers to the myriad problems our nation faces. To take but one example, no one in politics knows what to do about a super-connected global economy where someone in Ohio can pick up the phone and be whisked to a call center in India, and then bend over and give their pet dog-food from a village in China.
The Obama Moment offers an incredible opportunity to reorient our governing agenda and re-envision how America fits in this new world. We have an opportunity to infuse government with a wave of new ideas. There's no shortage of new ideas about how to take on the full range of challenges facing the world. Solutions are emerging from all quarters of America. Our politics has not yet tapped the widespread creativity and genius of the American people - yet we can. We can leverage the same technologies that have transformed our politics and begin to create a new kind of intellectual infrastructure that can draw off distributed problem-solving and move big ideas from early stages of insight to higher levels of development and refinement. Yes we can.
Americans of this era are every bit as capable of solving the challenges of their era as Americans of previous eras were. In fact, we are more highly educated, more well endowed, with far more capital and resources than any previous era of Americans. Imagine if FDR and his cohorts facing the Great Depression and the rise of fascism in 1932 had a box on their desk where they could ask any question and get back all the related information in the world. They would have called it magic. We call it Google, and every 5-year-old in the country can use it.
All signs are that Americans are now ready to rise to the occasion. All signs are that America is going to reinvent itself, and its politics, and its government, and its set of governing ideas, and reorient towards the great new interconnected, technologically-enhanced, globalized world that is facing the challenges of global warming, a shift to clean energies, and the rise of China, to name but a few. We are about to embark on what could be a 20-year transformational period where we transition this country and the world towards a new sustainable global society that works for as many people as possible for the long, long-term.
I want to be part of that transformation by helping figure out the next agenda, or the next agendas, in the coming year and the years ahead. I feel strongly enough about this to leave my position as director of the New Politics Institute. Three years ago I left the private sector to help start that organization and take on the most pressing challenge of that time: to reverse the overwhelming success of the conservative movement and get progressives winning through use of powerful new tools, new media and new constituencies. I think the most difficult parts of that problem have been solved and just need to be more thoroughly applied. It is time to transition NPI to new leadership that can carry that phase out.
I now want to turn to the next set of challenges on how we can consistently move big ideas and transformative agendas into politics. I have some initial ideas about how new technologies, new media, and some new distributed processes could be brought together to create an intellectual infrastructure that could help open up and enhance a new Obama Washington. I think there are ways to meld the best elements of the old think tank world with the new capabilities of the tech world to help transform the ideas business in DC. I am engaged with others who are applying themselves in this space. Something is bound to come of it. Stay connected and we'll all figure it out. Bring on the Obama Moment.
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