As I’ve watched the ascendancy of the Obama candidacy the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to figure out how he did it. I stumbled upon an article written by Michael Barone which I think may just explain how Obama has done the impossible- unseating a Clinton as the frontrunner in the Democratic Party. According to Barone, voters are suffering from the 16 year itch. Pointing to 1976, 1992, and the early signs of 2008, Barone highlights a pattern which tends to happen every 16 years with presidential elections- the country gets sick of the people they’ve put in office and develop “an unusual preference for outside-the-system candidates with less top level experience than voters usually want in a president.” Essentially, Obama is riding the same wave that put Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, both governors of small southern states with relatively little experience, into the highest office in the land. It’s slightly poetic that the same force that swept Bill into office is keeping Hillary away from it.

According to Barone’s theory, the key to Obama’s success is that he has relatively little experience making him a political outsider. If the theory is true, then each time Hillary attacks Barack’s lack of experience she’s actually doing him a favor by reminding the voters he is not part of the political establishment. Each time Bill goes out of the stump for Hillary, he’s reminding voters she is part of the establishment which just hurts her chances of winning the nomination. This theory may also help to explain Obamamania (and Obama girl) and why people are so passionately attracted to such an inexperienced candidate.

So why every 16 years? I’ll leave that to Mr. Barone:

"My thought is that, over a period of 16 years, there is enough turnover in the electorate to stimulate an itch that produces a willingness to take a chance on something new. Over time, the median-age voter in American elections has been about 45 years old. This means that the median-age voter in 1976 was born around 1931--old enough to have experienced post-World War II prosperity and foreign policy success, and then to have been disgusted by Vietnam and Watergate.

The median-age voter in 1992 was born around 1947 (the same year as Dan Quayle and Hillary Clinton, one year after Messrs. Clinton and Bush, one year before Mr. Gore). These voters came of age in the culture wars of the 1960s. They experienced stagflation and gas lines of the 1970s, and the prosperity and foreign policy successes of the 1980s. Mr. Clinton persuaded these voters to take a chance on change by promising not to radically alter policy. They rebuked him when he tried to break that promise, then for 14 years remained closely divided along culture lines as if the '60s never ended.

The median-age voter in 2008 was born around 1963, so he or she missed out on the culture wars of the '60s, and on the economic disasters and foreign policy reverses of the 1970s. These voters have experienced low-inflation economic growth something like 95% of their adult lives--something true of no other generation in history. They are weary of the cultural polarization of our politics, relatively unconcerned about the downside risks of big government programs, and largely unaware of America's historic foreign policy successes. They are ready, it seems, to take a chance on an outside-the-system candidate."

I don’t know about you but his theory makes pretty good sense to me. Ultimately, time will tell if his theory holds out to be true this year. If Obama wins his party’s nomination and beats McCain in the general election, it might just be a 16 year itch being scratched.