Obama was both correct and incorrect in his analysis of this cycle and of Reagan (Long)

[ruggerson]

Putting aside the controversial part of what Obama said, his claim that Reagan was an entirely different type of President than Nixon or Clinton has validity. His error was in identifying which type of leader he himself would be.

There are essentially two types of Presidents in our history:

The first we can call the Movement, ideologically based leader, Presidents who are extremely partisan in nature, divide the country, inspire great love and fanatical devotion from their own party and great hatred from the opposing party. They come into office riding a wave of discontent and desire for change, often after a perceived great failure from the predecessor. Think of Jackson, FDR and Reagan. Jackson was our first real populist, he was elected as the first real Democrat, the first "man of the people" - a viceral response to the failed leadership of what Jackson framed as the corrupt Eastern elite, personified by John Quincy Adams.

FDR also took the country by storm, advocating a broad agenda of change in response to the broken policies of Herbert Hoover. The emergency of the Great Depression endowed Roosevelt with extraordinary leeway to implement a massive change in how the federal government worked. FDR was an extremely partisan leader, who was loathed by the opposition party. Many people today can remember the bitterness that their Republican parents or grandparents felt towards FDR.

Reagan was a reverse Roosevelt, ideologically. But similar in that he too was wildly partisan and set out to implement an agenda undoing the work of his predecessors. Obama is very wrong in his analysis of Reagan as a unifying force: he was enormously divisive. He preached about the ills of "big government" and viciously stripped away many of the safety nets the poor and the sick had relied on for decades. Reagan's agenda was overwhelmingly partisan, and he, like Roosevelt, inspired fanatical devotion from his party and enormous hatred from his opponents on the left.

The second type of leader is the Co-opting President. Interestingly enough, Co-opting Presidents are not usually fanatically popular with their own party. The opposition party loathes them and they usually get reelected in landslides. Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton fall under this label. Richard Nixon ran as a center right, law and order Republican, a throwback to the Eisenhower era. But he actually governed as a moderate, using liberal ideas when needed and adapting in a fairly non rigid way, ideologically, to his role as President. He instituted wage and price controls, he launched Food Stamps, he opened the door to China. Red meat rightwing Republicans loathed him. Bill Clinton, as we all know, also coopted some of the agenda of his political foes. He took welfare reform and made it his own. He attempted to cut spending and he balanced the budget. He was adamantly in favor of free trade. True to the tradition of co-opting Presidents, the opposition party hated him with such fervor that they at times embarrassed themselves with their own venom.

The interesting thing about Barack Obama's political anaylsis is that he compared his leadership style, and the mood of the country, to the 1980 election which swept Ronald Reagan into power. But he has been campaigning not as a Reagan/FDR partisan, but as the epitome of the "Coopting" model of the presidency, promising to reduce partisanship, work diligently with Republicans and attempting to ease the divide he thinks this nation faces.

(It is really John Edwards, not Barack Obama, who fits the mold of being a very ideologically based, movement, partisan leader in this cycle - a Roosevelt type of politician.)

History shows us that if indeed this is a massive change election, where the country wants to reject the past and move forward, a movement based leader, not a co-opting one, should take the White House in '08.

If this turns out to be not one of those times, then Barack Obama fits the bill, because if you examine who he is and what he advocates, he will be a President in the style of Nixon and Clinton, a Co-opting leader, who tries to walk right down the middle of the partisan divide.

[OneGrassRoot]

1. K&R n/t

[Bonobo]

2. Damn! If you were able to make as good an analysis as this, I have a question...

Don't you think the Theme Du Jour of Obama being a Reaganite was over the top and kind of, well, nuts?

I will recommend this post because it is a thoughtful, intelligent analysis.

I won't judge its veracity right away. It is too good to make a snap judgment. I will give it some real thought. But I think you may be quite right.

Very nice work.

On Edit: I think you make an insightful comment about the "types" of presidents there are and what types of campaigns there are, but I am less convinced that it has some bearing, as a predicter, for what any individual will do.

In the end, one must bring one's personal experience about people to bear in forming an opinion. And ultimately, we are all trying to judge people's character from about 1,000 miles away.

So basically, all bets are off the table.

[ruggerson]

9. Yes

I think criticism of Obama as a "Reaganite" republican lite is over the top. I think he is correct in that Reagan differed greatly from Nixon and Clinton, as I outlined above. Where I think he erred is characterizing Reagan as someone who brought the country together. He didn't.

On a purely partisan note, I don't think Reagan embodied hope or dynamism, but really despair and regression. However that is not the subject of the OP. Clearly Reagan was an ideologue and rightwing Republicans adored him with great fanaticism.

[Bonobo]

10. Agree or disagree, you are a person I would listen to, Ruggerson.

Thank you again for raising the bar here.

[ruggerson]

12. I admit to being

not very dispassionate when it comes to Ronald Reagan. I'm right there with the opposition that loathed him. Rightly or wrongly, he is an archetype for me of pure, unadulterated evil.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. And then there's the chimp, who ran as a co-opter

and rules as an ideologue (ignoring the question of whether it's actually him who's ruling). So Obama is also running as a "uniter." Does that really predict what he would do in power?

[DJ13]

4. Nice analysis, but I wonder why you exclude Hillary?

Great theme, decent summary, but in saying Obama would be more like Nixon or (Bill)Clinton, you seemed to fail to apply this to Bill's own wife.

She wont be different than Bill (probably like a third Bill term) in governance, and by that metric Obama cant be as close to Clinton as Hillary herself.

[ruggerson]

6. Frankly I excluded her

because I haven't reached a conclusion as to which of the models she would fit. There are times when she is very ideological and very partisan, even moreso than her husband, but she is also a political realist. I think that her instincts are to champion the middle class and the poor and traditional progressive ideals with far greater fervor than her husband ever did, but also given her very pragmatic nature, I think the direction a Hillary Clinton presidency would take, at this point, is anyone's guess.

[Tom Rinaldo]

7. That's my hazy read on her too. n/t

[papau]

11. I agree as to the analysis - but think it is fairly certain that she'd be more Edwards than Bill or

Obama.

But then I am hoping I am wrong about Obama - holding my fingers crossed and hoping because his voting record is a bit more "liberal" than Clinton (albeit on votes that did not matter that much).

[ruggerson]

13. Yep

I think you're exactly right. She is far more of a partisan than Bill, whose instincts are always to try to find middle ground - he has almost a pathological need to be liked. She's also tougher than he is. I see her as closer to Edwards than to either Bill or Obama.

[tishaLA]

5. Ideologues are never uniters

and Sen Obama, who saw the outrages of the Reagan presidency while working in Chicago's housing projects, never says that Reagan wasn't divisive. He says that Reagan tapped into a national mood about change and seized the moment. He said that people wanted clarity and optimism...not that they wanted to undermine unions and pack the courts with conservative judges.

[ZinZen]

8. Thank you for a thoughtful analysis

I don't know if I agree with most of your points but at least you are engaging in a rational discussion.

[Berry Cool]

14. I think you're missing one small truth here.

As much as Reagan was loathed by people on the left who could see through the aw-shucks charm, he was seductive to many who could not, or who were a bit more centrist in their views. Somehow or other, he was able to get a whole lot of people who otherwise considered themselves Democrats to buy into his vision and vote for him...even if they were disillusioned later. And some of them were never disillusioned at all. To this day, they still buy into the rosy, hazy revisionist history of Reagan as the man who brought morning back to America, got the Iranian hostages freed, and merely by saying with a mighty roar "TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!" ended the Cold War.

To miss that is to miss something important.

Yes, those who never bought Reagan's shtick for a second, and those who bought it but eventually experienced buyer's remorse, detested him and still detest him with the white-hot hatred of a thousand suns, and in that sense he was a divider. But he was also tremendously successful at selling image over substance, sizzle over steak, to a broad swath of people who thought being genial and sunny and having "the common touch" and being able to tell good stories (whether or not they were at all true) was just as important as knowing how to govern--and he continues to be from beyond the grave. False Reagan-nostalgia that forgets what he was really like as president lives, and not just among Republicans.

I think that's what Obama was trying to say, but he made a big error...he didn't say it and then immediately divorce himself from Reagan in terms of the kind of president he wants to be. Whether that's a president who believes in trickle-down economics and welfare queens, fires striking workers, ignores an epidemic and deals in shady arms trading, or a president who is all appearance and no substance, or a president who's losing brain matter for the latter chunk of his presidency and is fully dependent on others to mind the store.

And that's a little unsettling. To me, anyway.

[ruggerson]

16. Movement presidents

can become so predominant in the culture and in a political sense, that some of the less overtly partisan opposition gets drawn into the craze. The people who loathed Roosevelt, hated him viscerally, were usually very rightwing, very partisan Republicans. Moderate Repubs and independents got swept along in the Roosevelt tide along with everyone else.

[gkhouston]

17. And to me. We got one of those "style over substance" presidents back in

2000 and the country's gone straight into the crapper. IMO, we need someone who's going to be be substance, not style, to get us out of the sewer we're in. Yes, selling hope appeals to the electorate and it's necessary to present a positive message, but you've gotta have some basis for hope. Happy horseshit about ol' Ronnie doesn't get it done for me.

[BootinUp]

15. exactly. Obama is a young jedi to Bill C. Call it the 4th way. nt

[robbedvoter]

18. The shock and intense reaction to the Reagan talk have two explanations:

1. Those of us who lived those times know that there wasn't a fundamental difference from Bush - except for the fact that GOP not having the Congress there existed a semblance of checks and balances then

2.Those of us who do know the truth have been assaulted with "Saint' Ronnie worshipful memes non-stop - for the past 28 years. Now it's airports and the dime - why not the flag?
It's one of the long standing injustices that eat at us for years - just as you, the younger ones might want to see Bushco brought to justice (we do too, but are less hopeful, as we know Reagan)

So, to have now one of OUR candidates - whom some of us deemed fairly progressive - embrace those memes ("welfare state" "personal responsibilities" "failed liberals" - which Bush uses too, BTW) - feels like a knife in the back. I feel betrayed and saddened that there are DU-ers that don't get it.

Obama supporters assume that the reaction comes from partisan feelings for other candidates - but it's not true for me. I celebrated Obama's win in Iowa. I was happy that he brought new voters. I was considering him more progressive than Hillary - because of his stand on IWR (to me it still counts).

But buying into the media created teflon for St Ronnie - cancels it all. I don't care if it's a purely strategic move. It still misses the point that strategy cannot be divorced from ideology. It wasn't optimism Ronnie brought - but legitimizing hatred and nationalism. MSM called it optimism - but it was "it's OK to hate the poor, the black, the foreigners - Ronnie gives you permission"

This is what animated my many posts yesterday (and I might go on today). Not need to serve Hillary's or Edwards campaign - I am still undecided, probably voting Gravel in the primaries. But need to vent after being so deeply hurt.