David Clark: Obama, the man who would be Roosevelt

The great American historian Arthur Schlesinger often described his country's political history as a movement of cycles in which periods of public purpose and private interest alternated with one another. The former were characterised by a belief in the ability of affirmative government to transform lives for the better, the latter by a faith in the power of individual initiative unfettered by the stifling hand of taxation and state regulation. As Americans prepare to vote on Tuesday, many are wondering whether Schlesinger's law will apply once more as the era of private interest ushered in by the Reagan Revolution 28 years ago gives way to a new era of public purpose under President Obama.

The Republican right certainly fears that it will. The closing speeches of John McCain's faltering campaign for the White House have been full of dire warnings about what will happen to America under "Barack the Redistributor", a nickname coined after the Democratic candidate's unscripted exchange with Joe the Plumber in which he spoke of his wish to "spread the wealth around". For The Wall Street Journal, this heralds nothing less than the "Europeanisation of America", a prospect so frightening that it requires no further explanation. Obama's policies are socialist and un-American.

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In any previous election of the past 40 years this would probably have been enough to sink Obama's campaign, but the depth of the financial crisis has shocked American voters to the core and changed the electoral script in the process. At a time when the state has become the last line of defence against the threat of full-scale economic collapse, it is no longer credible to argue, as Ronald Reagan did, that "government is the problem". For Americans contemplating the prospect of home repossession and unemployment – including the loss of coveted health insurance – the idea of affirmative government holds new attractions.

America has been here before. In the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, the explosion of wealth and inequality that accompanied industrialisation was justified by the doctrine of social Darwinism and the belief that unregulated markets were necessary to allow the fittest and most talented to rise to the top. Proposals to modify market outcomes using policies of redistribution and public intervention were dismissed as a misguided attempts to rearrange the natural order of life.

Horror at the hardship caused by laissez-faire led to demands for public regulation and the introduction of a progressive income tax. But it was the Great Depression of the 1930s that transformed the political landscape. With a quarter of Americans out of work, it became less plausible to equate economic hardship with personal failure. The experience of poverty was too widespread and the need for government support too urgent. The response was President Roosevelt's New Deal of state welfare and economic intervention.

Would the election of Barack Obama pave the way for a realignment of American politics as profound as the rise of New Deal liberalism? The very fact of his election suggests that it might. There is more than a little truth to the Republican jibe that Obama doesn't see America in the same way that they do. For obvious reasons, African-Americans have always been more resistant to the idea that economic status is a consequence of natural selection, recognising that success in the marketplace is often determined by factors of privilege and prejudice.

In the aftermath of the civil rights era, race also skewed the debate about welfare in ways that allowed conservative Republicans to make inroads into traditional Democratic constituencies among the white working class. Reagan's moral panic about black "welfare queens" led to a revival of social Darwinism and a context in which plumbers and plutocrats could stand shoulder to shoulder in defence of the American creed of self-reliance. Obama's election would suggest that this strategy has run its course. Among the young voters expected to turn out for him in force on Tuesday, opinion surveys report both a more progressive outlook and a virtual end to the racial divide on socio-economic issues. With possibly the biggest electoral mandate of any Democratic president since the Sixties and a solid majority in both houses of Congress, Obama would be very well placed to define a new and enduring era of public purpose in American politics.

What would this consist of? A top priority would be to finally fix healthcare reform with a system of universal coverage. A second plank would be what's called the Green New Deal. Whereas Roosevelt fought the Depression with agricultural support and a vast programme of public works, Obama plans to turn the economy around with a $150bn (£93bn) programme to develop the technology to achieve energy independence and to open the way to a post-carbon future. If he were to succeed, he would prove a transformational figure both for America and for all of us.

David Clark was special adviser to Robin Cook from 1997 to 2001