Sean Wilentz, the celebrated Princeton historian and prize-winning author, recently noted in an interview with Scoop44 that President Obama’s policy docket marks a steep decline, even a potential demise, of the conservative ideology that has defined a generation of American politics.

“The President’s address to Congress, with its defense of federal government action, exorcised the spirit of Ronald Reagan,” Wilentz said.

In its headline alone, Wilentz’s 2008 book (published well before Election Day), foretold the coming reversal of the last three decades of conservative rule: The Age of Reagan: A History 1974-2008, implying the proverbial pendulum was due to swing back–and perhaps more furiously than ever before.

“Like any Democratic administration coming in after George W. Bush, Obama’s has brought a change in tone, rhetoric, and approach,” he added.

As indicators of the changing course, Wilentz mentioned a slew of presidential actions.

“His stimulus plan is…a start in the right direction on economic matters. He has announced that Guantanamo will be closed and altered, with executive orders, what had become standard operating procedure in the Bush White House. There have been all sorts of changes through executive orders — including restoration of the Presidential Records Act of 1978 — which are noteworthy and which I also applaud.”

Yet, Wilentz points out that there have been clear halts in pursuit of this change of direction.

“On some of Bush’s more extraordinary expansion of executive power under the cloak of war, the administration has said it would not exercise those powers but stopped well short of renouncing them.”

He specifically cites the rendition case in California that demonstrates the administration’s appetite for change may be limited if and when it’s considered “less desirable.”

One particular area where Obama has yet to act, let alone reverse course from the Reagan-Bush-Bush II era of deregulation, Wilentz notes, is a policy-altering plan to save the banking system.

“[It] is the most crucial economic problem facing the country right now — and the longer the delay, the worse the damage will be.”

Also, the millennial generation that believed in a new dawn of American bipartisanship, Wilentz observes, is increasingly freeing itself of such illusions.

“I think that for some of the president’s millenarian supporters, who thought that partisanship would end, the accumulated problems would melt away, and a new era would dawn as soon as he took over the Oval Office, the first six weeks have come as a return to reality — one they might find uncomfortable.”

Wilentz warns deliberately, “I think it’s far, far too early to measure the extent to which the administration has fulfilled its campaign promise of ‘change.’ Six weeks is a very short span to consider with such a large question in mind.”

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