http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/davidcorn/2008/01/are-clintonites-stepping-over.htmlAre Clintonites Stepping over the Line in Slamming Obama as Pro-Reagan? You Decide!
By David Corn | January 25, 2008 2:46 PM
During a conference call on Friday with Clinton aides--who were again blasting Barack Obama for having noted that the Republican Party developed a reputation as "the party of ideas" in the 1990s--I asked whether the Clinton camp was stepping over the line (you know, that line of respectability and accuracy) in its attacks on Hillary Clinton's chief rival. As one example, I cited a remark Representative Barney Frank, a Clinton backer, had made at the start of the call.
Referring to Obama's "party of ideas" comments, Frank said that Obama had been "wrong to say Ronald Reagan was right about government getting too big." But did Obama really endorse Reagan's signature gripe? I'll post and you can decide. Here's the relevant passage:
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.
Do these words add up to an endorsement of Reagan's antigovernment rhetoric?...Since you asked, they don't for me. I read the remark to be a stab at historical analysis, with Obama characterizing (rightly or wrongly) popular opinion during the 1980s. But in response to my question, Frank argued that Obama's reference implied approval.
I'm sure not looking to pick a fight with Frank, the sharpest wit on Capitol Hill. But let me point out that on January 27, 1996, then-President Bill Clinton gave a radio address and said:
These are the seven challenges I set forth Tuesday night -- to strengthen our families, to renew our schools and expand educational opportunity, to help every American who's willing to work for it achieve economic security, to take our streets back from crime, to protect our environment, to reinvent our government so that it serves better and costs less, and to keep America the leading force for peace and freedom throughout the world. We will meet these challenges, not through big government. The era of big government is over, but we can't go back to a time when our citizens were just left to fend for themselves.
The era of big government is over. How's that for a grand Reaganesque declaration? It's certainly a much clearer endorsement of Reagan's view of the world than anything Obama said. Will Frank now ask Hillary to disavow Bill?
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