Stuck in the 70's

Michael Barone reminds us of the ugly decade of the 70's, and how many Dem politicians seem permanently stuck there:

Do you ever get the feeling, while listening to the political debate, that we're stuck in the '70s? The 1970s, that is, that slum of a decade which gave us the worst popular music, the ugliest hairstyles and clothes, and the most disastrous public policies of the 20th century.

The decade in which a Republican president imposed wage and price controls, the decade when we managed to have inflation and recession -- stagflation -- at the same time. The decade when crime and welfare dependency zoomed upward. A decade when Americans saw our diplomats seized -- an act of war -- and no effective force used to free them. A decade when a president was forced to resign in disgrace and when America lost its first war.

He's got a point about the 70's. Anybody who remembers Watergate, the end of the Vietnam war followed just a couple of years later by the fall of Vietnam to the North Vietnamese, Nixon's resignation, Jimmy Carter's "malaise", the Iranian hostage crisis, Ford Pintos, and disco, understands all too well just how crummy a decade the 70's was. However, many Dems seem to look at it as some kind of high water mark for them and are almost longing for a return. Barone sums it up this way:

Stuck in the '70s, and to no good political purpose. For the press and partisan attacks on NSA surveillance of suspected terrorists' calls to the United States has not convinced most Americans that their rights are in peril. To the contrary, they have raised a political issue that helps George W. Bush and the Republicans. And the fiery attacks on Alito have a tired, going-through-the-motions sound and have failed to convince something like three-quarters of voters that he should be rejected.

We can learn from history, and each decade has something to teach us. But we can't repeat history, because so many things change. Not many Americans, if they could vote for a decade to go back to, would vote for the 1970s. But for many in the mainstream press and for many Democratic politicians, it's always sometime between 1970 and 1980, and they're forever young.

The public isn't buying it. Enough with the bellbottom pants and the disco music, most Americans seem to be saying.

Maybe Ted Kennedy is just longing for the return of his lost brain cells.