Even if he wins, the important presidencies are the ones that change the country and its politics, said David Blight of Yale. A President Obama's place in history "would depend so much on whether he truly can develop a new coalition" that creates a new politics. "It was a huge change in 1936, when Democrats first won a majority of the black vote and the old Republican Party was no more," Blight said, describing the year when Franklin D. Roosevelt solidified the New Deal coalition and won his second of four presidential elections. But that was only the second great realignment of American politics in the nation's history, Blight said — the Civil War created the first.Sometimes, he added, events that appear historic when they occur turn out to be something less to subsequent generations. John F. Kennedy's election in 1960 looked historic then as the first time a Catholic had won the presidency. Half a century later, when anti-Catholic prejudice has largely disappeared and a majority of Supreme Court justices are Catholics, only scholars and theologians are likely to remember that "historic" aspect of Kennedy's election — historic now for other reasons.
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