While I know that everyone these reporters know probably views Obama with optimism, the guy scares the bejeebies out of me and makes me think more of post-holocaust science fiction from the Cold War than Star Trek’s optimism, which actually has more in common with the “science is good” optimism of the 1950s than the hippies of the 1960s. Remember, when Star Trek did hippies in the 1960s, while it admired their optimism, their leader wound up dead from utopian foolishness after engaging in ends justify means fanaticism and in every episode where children wound up in charge (e.g., Charlie X, Miri, And the Children Shall Lead), the results were horrific and the children needed adults to control and lead them. Gene Roddenberry may have been a liberal in his day but he served in WW2 and the liberalism of the mid-1960s was far to the right of the Baby Boomer liberalism today.
Liberalism (Progressivism) in the mid 1960’s still had national pride and patriotism within it. The Leftist movement that hijacked progressivism during the Vietnam war destroyed these ideals.
The show was also very anti-Utopian in vision... This Side of Paradise, the Hippies episode...
let us not forget City of the Edge of Forever, where in an alternate timeline, the pacifist movement took hold in America and allowed Hitler to conquer the world.
It was only in the later spinoff shows that it became politically correct drivel.
Rod Serling also fell squarely into this category.