What are we to make of Obama’s recent spate of comments essentially comparing himself to Ronald Reagan? Surely given the strong feelings among many Democrats that Ronald Reagan was an unmitigated disaster for the United States, despite his rosy personality, Obama had to have seriously calculated the political impact of his remarks before invoking Reagan as his model of an agent of change, if not more, and in describing himself and his view of the presidency as not an operating officer and not someone charged with running a bureaucracy but rather someone to provide a vision and to find people smarter than he to identify what the issues are and how to resolve them.
As to his comments about Reagan, Obama remarked:
I don't want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what's different are the times...I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.
Political commentators are already arguing over the meaning of Obama’s comments about Reagan. Was Obama praising Reagan and applauding his approach in returning America to a “sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship?” Was Obama overtly or subtly embracing the views he attributes to the American people concerning “the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s” and that “government had grown and grown leaving no sense of accountability?” Or was Obama merely acknowledging the talents of the Great Communicator to inspire Americans, or at least his ardent followers, and to provide a vision, even if not one Obama embraces, rather than to become immersed in the drudgery of day-to-day government operations, suggested by Carter’s presidency, or to merely advocate a bundle of practical policies without any grand vision, a criticism some have made of the Clinton years?
If Clinton wants to be Franklin (and Eleanor) Roosevelt in this campaign, and John Edwards is channeling William Jennings Bryan, Obama is, for all his early opposition to Iraq, the most conservative visionary in the group. Big change is hardly ever accomplished without political warfare. When the red and blue states join together and all Americans of good will march hand-in-hand to a mutually agreed upon destiny, the place they’re going to end up would probably look pretty much like now with more health insurance.
Obama, the Democratic conservative visionary. How not surprising that he would find Ronald Reagan, the Republican conservative whose followers considered him a visionary, so very appealing. Obama seems to share with Reagan a concept of the presidency as a leader who doesn’t roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty or get involved in the intricacies of public policy but, rather, stays above the fray and attracts smart people to work out the details of governing by offering a transcendent vision of unity, harmony and progress through uplifting and inspirational speeches.
