My take on Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton
Submitted by Stan4Clark on January 19, 2008 - 12:38am.
Barack Obama | Bill Clinton | Richard Nixon | Ronald Reagan | Democratic politics
Just for the record:
At the risk of defending Obama, I don't think that he was praising anything Reagan did. He simply pointed out that the Reagan era marked a turning point in American politics and that neither the Nixon nor Clinton era made a similar impact. That's inarguable, in my opinion. That is NOT to say that the new direction was good or bad, simply that it was important.
In a different way, you could argue that the Nixon era was also a turning point. Watergate was a turning point in how journalists treated public figures. After Watergate, every cub reporter and would-be Woodstein began to turn over every rock in the lives of politicians, whereas before there was some decorum and ground rules regarding what was in bounds and what was out of bounds. But this turning point was not the context Obama was using in citing Reagan as a pathfinder.
I would also argue that the partisanship that became so rampant in the 90s wasn't Clinton's doing. Never mind Monicagate. The bitter partisanship was already in full swing by then. Clinton entered office with a pack of angry wolves on his tail, and it never went away. And none of that was Clinton's doing.
Stan Davis
Lakewood, CO
Wes Clark -- Make America All It Can Be!
The Bush era may represent a double turning-point -- first, when he got elected, went to war, chucked the Constitution, and second, because his administration was such an ummitigated disaster, another turning point occurred when John Barack Clinton gets elected.
Stan Davis
Lakewood, CO
Wes Clark -- Make America All It Can Be!
...Obama did say that Reagan's message resonated because of the excesses of the 60s and 70s.....and he was not talking Viet Nam, he was talking social programs.
I agree with lambert...
NOTE * Do I really have to explain why using right wing talking points matters? A year from now, nobody except policy wonks is going to remember the white papers on any candidate’s site.
Rhetoric and talking points count, because they are what people will remember in a year. The talking points and the rhetoric are what the candidates are campaigning on, what people are hearing, and the kind of mandate the candidates are going to get.
So, if Obama campaigns on right wing talking points — that is, on poison pill after poison pill for progressive policies — he’s going to get a mandate for right wing talking points.
And I don’t believe the Phonebooth Theory, where Obama runs from the right, and then, once elected, jumps into a phone booth, loses the Clark Kent glasses and the suit, and emerges, garbed as Progressive Superman. That may have worked for Bush, but that’s because the Village was happy to have him go right. It won’t work for Obama, because the Village would not be happy to have him go left. And in any case, he was no mandate to go left, because he campaigned on right wing talking points. If indeed he does want to go left, which at this point I regard as at best unproven, vehement statements by the Oborg notwithstanding. The great thing about vacuous rhetoric is that you can project whatever you want into it.
"The Right always knows who its enemies are" Lance Mannion
in America. It was soooo much better before they got their grubby little hands on destroying how medicare was managed and then all the managed care HMOs came along. Profit became all that healthcare was about during the Reagan years. It was brutal. It's still brutal.
Among the things that Reagan brought to us was trickle down economics with massive deficts. He added around $3.7 trillion to the national debt during his tenure and his tax policiy added another $1.8 trillion during G.H.W Bush' single term. He ushered in regressive taxation that shifted the burden downhill.
He was a union buster. The saving and loan scandal occurred during his watch.
He was the figurehead of the same sort of clandestine shadow government that had it's hand in as many illegal activies as the current one. Activities that set the seeds for qagmire we find ourselves in today.
Iran-Contra. Pakistan going nulcear deserves it's own chapter. A war-torn Afghanistan with a power vaccum ripe for take over by the Taliban.
Though the guy was a great orator and synbolic leader for the country, his administration caused more harm to this country then any in recent decades.
How about the 2000 selection of *. That's the biggest turn in uS history, imo.
The thing about Obama and Reagan is that Obama is offering just that sort of Presidency. All feel-good rhetoric and let the "advisors" run the show. I didn't like it before, I don't want it now (or ever).