Saturn will enter Virgo on September 3, 2007, and will spend more than two years there. Saturn can cast a darkening shadow over the affairs of a zodiac sign, but—just as in a landscape painting—shadows can highlight and add contrast. They help us to see and define what’s there.

To illustrate: In the U.S. political landscape, Saturn’s passage through Cancer in the 2004 election also carried it over the U.S. Sun. A darker national mood prevailed and fear was demogogically used to drive a Republican election victory.

The U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War concluded while Saturn was in Cancer from 1973-1975, and the 2004 Saturn in Cancer election brought up a lot of the Vietnam War once again, often in highly manipulative ways.

It’s interesting that just as Saturn is about to go into Virgo, the Minneapolis bridge collapse happened and suddenly people are connecting the dots: broken levees in New Orleans…a ruptured steam pipe in Manhattan…a bridge collapse. Our infrastructure needs repair. Saturn rules our own infrastructure—the skeleton—as well as the nation’s infrastructure. Whether or not leaders act on this awareness is another matter, but it’s being discussed. Virgo is very much a fix-it sign. Get out the toolbox, slide under the sink, find that leaking pipe.

The resurgent popularity of a late 60's/early 70's TV show about fixing society's "problems," the seminal law-and-order show Hawaii Five-O, has even caught the attention of the NY Times. Hawaii 5-O's second season DVD is currently #61 on Amazon, quite an accomplishment for a TV show that went off the air almost 30 years ago. When it debuted a little more than a month before the 1968 presidential election, Hawaii 5-O was a perfect TV show for the election of a Saturn-ruled Capricorn president, Richard Nixon. It's popular once again, just as Saturn is about to enter Virgo. According to the Times, we want a McGarrett now, someone who'll fix the world--although that can have dangerous implications. (I personally enjoy watching this show because it was shot in Hawaii around the time I was living there and it brings back memories of how Hawaii used to be).

As for Saturn, it was last in Virgo during the final two years of President Jimmy Carter’s presidential term. After Watergate and the Vietnam War, the nation wanted someone who would unpretentiously go about fixing things. Jimmy Carter was a very service-oriented president—and still is--as well as being modest and compassionate. Unfortunately, Carter was not able to fix rampant inflation, the Iranian hostage crisis, or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Reagan was elected in 1980, just as Saturn moved out of Virgo and into Libra.

Before that, Saturn entered Virgo in 1948, just in time for Truman’s underdog election victory. Today, Truman is known as the leader who put in place the Truman Doctrine (beginning in 1947), a structure of containment to fight—and eventually win—the Cold War with the Soviet Union. A number of commentators have contrasted Truman’s reactive response to the Soviet Union with President Bush’s “hot war” response to terrorismm. I think that Truman was another president who got elected out of a national mood to get things fixed right in a time of world change. Voters did not elect the favored Thomas Dewey, in part because Dewey ran a very cautious, vague, un-Virgo-like campaign.

Saturn will be in Virgo during the U.S. 2008 election cycle, where it will be hitting the U.S. Moon in the Scorpionic America chart (at 2° Virgo), the Scorpionic America Uranus (at 14° Virgo), as well as squaring the U.S. Sibly chart’s Mars (at 8° Gemini) and hitting the Sibly Neptune (at 22° Virgo). The earlier degrees of Saturn in Virgo will coincide with the early 2008 primary elections, and the later degrees will coincide with the national election in November, 2008—when Uranus will also be opposing Saturn.

In forecasting a winner in the 2008 election, this does not mean that Virgo Sun John McCain will get elected--an increasingly remote possibility. Perhaps we might look for a candidate who is in the Truman-Carter vein—unpretentious, very “everyday regular,” detail-oriented, a fix-it type of politician, service-oriented, and maybe even an underdog. I say this with no particular candidate in mind, although several seem like they might meet at least parts of this definition.

A strong third-party candidate could have a major influence on the election outcome. The nation is in need of a lot of fixing, will crave someone down-to-earth after eight years of a Bush imperial presidency, and will look to a candidate who seems like they can repair the damage.