A Great Historical Primer On What Might Be Expected in an Obama Adminstration

      There's a great new book of history out, "The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960's,"  by two professors at Colby College in Maine -- G. Calvin MacKenzie and Robert Weisbrot. The book was obviously written before the current campaign but its relevance is obvious. MacKenzie's and Weisbrot's compelling thesis is that what really drove the zeitgeist of the 60's wasn't the counterculture but Washington -- namely all the legislative change produced in a flurry by John Kennedy and mostly by Lyndon Johnson.

     If they're right -- and it's worth reading the book because they make a compelling case -- then the Obama administration has a chance to create a new era in the nation, not only in politics but in the far more expansive domain of culture. Politics, these professors argue, is our society's most effective agent of change as the culture changes from the top down. Phoenix readers should check it out. As should, by the way, Barack himself.