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Friday, January 18, 2008
Attacks on Obama for Comments About Reagan
There have been some serious mischaracterizations and downright lies flying around today from "other campaigns" about Obama's recent candid interview where he talked frankly about a variety of issues, which included:
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.
This is the candidate that I know and LOVE! "Another candidate" would never have talked about Reagan with anything approaching this level of sobriety, thoughtfulness and civility.
Here is an excellent post from Fonsia that deftly and intelligently rebuts the mischaracterizations that have been flying around:
Far from agreeing with Reagan, Obama instead is attempting to reverse Reagan's legacy. He is doing so by following Reagan's successful battle plan for winning a complete generational realignment of politics in this nation. He cites Reagan not for his policies, but for the man's undeniable political prowess. Reagan achieved a generational shift toward conservatism, still the dominant philosophy in the nation. Simply put: Reagan won, and we lost (as did America). ...
When Obama trumpets "Change we can believe in," he's talking about a complete shift in politics, a shift to progressivism that will last for decades. Because of his broad appeal, his ability to inspire as no one has since the Kennedys (he is older than both JFK and RFK when they died, incidentally), his basic civility, and his talent for bringing people together, he just might be able to win the kind of majority that will annihilate Reagan's achievement. Should he win the kind of mandate that Reagan won, by appealing to as large a swathe of the nation as Reagan did, he could gain the political power that is essential to implement major legislation. He could win the clout necessary actually to achieve universal healthcare, strong action on climate change, equal rights and much of the rest of the progressive agenda.
Read More: Obama comes to bury Reagan, not to praise him via One Million Strong
See Also: Obama and Reagan:
But what Obama is doing is what Norquist most wants to avoid: He's homogenizing Reagan's political legacy. He's reconstructing it as accountability in government rather than smallness of government, clarity of purpose rather than conservatism of purpose, dynamism and entrepreneurship rather than backlash and upward redistribution. So what's going on here is twofold. First, Obama is suggesting he has a fairly grandly ideological view of the president's role, and that it includes harnessing the ideological forces of the moment to push the country in a new direction. Second, he's sanitizing and subtly reworking Reagan's legacy, and more than Reagan's legacy, the lessons of the 80s, so they fit with a liberal worldview, rather than undermine it.
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