Obama and Reagan?
- 01.17.2008 - 10:48 AMBen Smith of The Politico writes
[Barack] Obama, in his interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal’s editorial board, made the case that his movement is as much about a national moment as about him as a “singular” individual, and he drew a rather odd analogy for a Democrat: Ronald Reagan. “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not, and a way that Bill Clinton did not,” he said, describing Reagan as appealing to a sentiment that, “We want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”
On this point Obama is quite right. President Reagan was a transformational figure in several ways. The first is that he injected a new economic theory into American life, supply side economics, and cut the top tax rates from 70 percent to 28 percent. This was a profound shift for the “green eye shade” party that once focused its full attention on the deficit; cutting taxes was a far more distant priority. Ronald Reagan attempted to limit the size of government–but his greatest legislative success was in cutting tax rates and changing how his party, and much of the country, viewed taxes.
Second, Reagan was a sharp critic of Nixon and Kissinger’s détente policy and utterly rejected the Spenglerian pessimism that believed that the key to American statecraft was to manage our decline. Reagan believed the U.S. could go beyond containment and prevail against the Soviet Union–a view that was met with utter condescension within the foreign policy establishment and those in the “realist” camp.
In addition, Reagan made morality a centerpiece of American foreign policy and used explicitly moral language when talking about it (for example, calling the Soviet Union the “evil empire”). He was a relentless advocate for spreading democracy throughout the world. And President Reagan established the GOP as a pro-life party in a way that it never had been before.
Those achievements were significant and lasting; Reagan’s influence on the GOP is hard to overstate. He is to Republicans what FDR has been to Democrats.
Bill Clinton also attempted to change his party–but met with mixed success. As President he made it pro-free trade. He fulfilled his commitment to “end welfare as we know it.” And he was in the tradition of liberal internationalists. During the 1992 campaign, for example, he was hawkish on China, criticizing President George H.W. Bush for kowtowing to the “Butchers of Beijing.” During his presidency the United States used military force in Iraq. And President Clinton, in concert with NATO, began a massive bombing campaign against the Serbian government to end its “ethnic cleansing” of
Albanians in the Kosovo region.
The Democratic Party post-Bill Clinton has retreated on free trade and is much more skeptical about the use of military force. And while Democrats are not calling for a return to the welfare policies of the past–how could they, after all, since it ranks among the most significant social achievements of the last half-century?–the theme of individual responsibility has largely vanished from their political lexicon. The real energy in the Democratic Party today comes from the kind of fringe groups that Bill Clinton attempted to marginalize during his presidential campaign.
The Democratic Party today is almost pre-Bill Clinton, at least intellectually; his presidency was sui generis and, as Obama said, he did very little to change the trajectory of America.
Senator Obama’s words are not only true, they are a reminder of what an intriguing political figure he is. In the midst of an intense Democratic primary battle, he had good words to say about President Reagan, a very popular figure with most Americans, while he succeeded in linking (and properly so) Nixon and Clinton in terms of their impact on our country.
But Obama’s words also reflect on him. So far his campaign is largely about capturing a mood rather than about advocating a set of ideas–and at the end of the day, changing the trajectory of America depends on ideas and policies, not sentiment. Reagan was an optimistic person–but that is not his lasting achievement. And if Reagan’s policies had failed rather than succeeded, his optimism would have looked badly misplaced and would now be used against him. Barack Obama, who so far has shown himself to be an utterly orthodox liberal (as has Hillary Clinton), now has to take the next step and show that he is bold and creative in the realm of ideas and policies, which was a hallmark of Reagan. So far Obama hasn’t–and that has been the glaring weakness in his otherwise impressive campaign.
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