I’ve heard that if you stand in front of a mirror and say his name three times it will summon him from his unholy rest…
Obama gave a candid interview to the Reno Gazette-Journal in which he said something that turned out not to be demonizing enough about Ronald Reagan:
I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what’s different are the times. I do think that, for example, the 1980 election was different. 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.
The Lefty Blogosphere went nuts over this quote, completely missing the point. The 60’s saw an amazing upheaval of popular culture, politics, economy, etc.. We saw the end of segregation, the beginning of the feminist and gay rights movements, the emergence of rock and roll, the anti-war movement. We saw all of our most liberal leaders killed.
The 70’s brought Cambodia, Watergate, fuel shortages, a recession, the Iran Hostage Crisis, a rise in violent crime, homelessness, and drug use, to name just a few. People were looking for a father figure. People were looking for someone to tell them that it was morning in America, and that he could make things all better. It was transformative, and came in the guise of a B-movie actor who was really good at connecting with his audience. And it worked.
But oh no no. We can’t say that because, as we all know, Ronald Reagan was the devil and he invented AIDS. Goon Periodiko points out the obvious:
In the rush to accumulate evidence that Obama is actually a Republican manchurian candidate no one is bothering to note that he’s talking about a historical event in a neutral tone as a point of comparison for christ’s sake. No reasonable person would read that and assume he was making anything remotely resembling a policy judgment about Ronald Reagan. Any reasonable person would read this and realize that he is focusing on Ronald Reagan’s significance and weight as a politician and the positive perceptions that he rode to office. There is nothing in there that condones, opposes, or even deals with Ronald Reagan outside of this aspect. It’s such desperate, willful misinterpretation it’s getting embarrassing.
That’s not all Obama said about Reagan, though. He also said, in the same interview:
The Republican approach I think has played itself out. I think it’s fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10-15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.
Oh boy. This quote was picked up by Clinton, so here we go.
I have to say, you know, my leading opponent the other day said that he thought the Republicans had better ideas than Democrats the last ten to fifteen years. That’s not the way I remember the last ten to fifteen years.
I don’t think it’s a better idea to privatize Social Security. I don’t think it’s a better idea to try to eliminate the minimum wage. I don’t think it’s a better idea to undercut health benefits and to give drug companies the right to make billions of dollars by providing prescription drugs to Medicare recipients. I don’t think it’s a better idea to shut down the government, to drive us into debt.
He didn’t say better. He didn’t even say “good.” He said they had ideas. This, right here, is what we close observers call a lie. But since getting caught in a lie has never stopped anyone, let’s get Barney Frank to say it, and then let’s get Bill Clinton to say it and get everyone to say it some more!
Yes, how dare he give credit to Reagan. He even did it in his book!
Audacity of Hope page 31:
That Reagan’s message found such a receptive audience spoke not only to his kills as a communicator; it also spoke to the failures of liberal government, during a period of economic stagnation, to give middle-class voters any sense that it was fighting for them. For the fact was government at every level had become to cavalier about spending taxpayer money. Too often bureaucracies were oblivious to the cost of their mandates. A lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and entitlements over duties and responsibilities. Reagan may have exaggerated the sins of the welfare state, and certainly liberals were right to complain that his domestic policies tilted heavily toward elites, with corporate raiders making tidy profits throughout the eighties while unions were busted and the income for the average working stiff flatlined.
Nevertheless, by promising to side with those who worked hard, obeyed the law, cared for their families, loved their country, Reagan offered Americans a sense of common purpose that liberals seemed no longer able to muster.
My GOD, man. But, what if maybe others have said stuff about Reagan?
It was a remarkable moment: A young, free-thinking presidential hopeful named Bill Clinton sat down with reporters and editors at The Washington Post in October 1991 and started saying things most Democrats wouldn’t allow to pass their lips.
Ronald Reagan, Clinton said, deserved credit for winning the Cold War. He praised Reagan’s “rhetoric in defense of freedom” and his role in “advancing the idea that communism could be rolled back.”
“The idea that we were going to stand firm and reaffirm our containment strategy, and the fact that we forced them to spend even more when they were already producing a Cadillac defense system and a dinosaur economy, I think it hastened their undoing,” Clinton declared.
His apostasy was widely noticed. The Memphis Commercial Appeal praised Clinton two days later for daring to “set himself apart from the pack of contenders for the Democratic nomination by saying something nice about Ronald Reagan.” Clinton’s “readiness to defy his party’s prevailing Reaganphobia and admit it,” the paper wrote, “is one reason he’s a candidate to watch.”
Uh ho. Well, but Bill’s not running for the Presidency this time. This time it’s Hillary.
But no president can do it alone. She must break recent tradition, cast cronyism aside and fill her cabinet with the best people, not only the best Democrats, but the best Republicans as well.. We’re confident she will do that. Her list of favorite presidents - Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Truman, George H.W. Bush and Reagan - demonstrates how she thinks.
Well yeah OK but that’s just some endorsement from a newspaper but not her own words even if it is published on her own site. I mean, it’s not like there’s a book out on shelves now where she says:
[Reagan] was a child of the Depression, so he understood it (economic pressures on the working and middle class). When he had those big tax cuts and they went too far, he oversaw the largest tax increase. He could call the Soviet Union the Evil Empire and then negotiate arms-control agreements. He played the balance and the music beautifully.
Zombie Reagan ‘08!
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