CNN showed its Fox News side in unfavorably comparing Obama to a
Reagan who never existed, claiming Reagan is a transformational
pretender…
It is amazing the hold Ronald Reagan has over some Americans. John Blake, writing at CNN,
claims that “This may be President Obama’s time, but it’s still Ronald Reagan’s era.”
Yes, Ronald Reagan, the idiot Republicans most like to lie about,
when they’re not lying about Obama. Who could ever forget, as Scott
Walker has reminded us, how Reagan ended the Cold War by busting not the
Bolsheviks, but unions? Or Sarah Palin sodomizing his legacy on his 100th birthday?
Blake ignores uncongenial facts and instead argues that,
Obama has helped
negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, normalized relations with Cuba, and
watched his approval ratings recently hit a two-year high after the U.S.
Supreme Court upheld Obamacare. But has he become a “transformational”
pretender like Ronald Reagan?
Then, to illustrate his complete lack of bias, Blake cites Tom Nichols, a political blogger and author of a column “Fantasyland: Obama Is No Ronald Reagan“: “He’s simply plowing the ground Reagan cleared 30 years ago.”
In a sense, you have to admit Nichols has a point:
We are still trying to dig ourselves out of the mess Reagan made of the
country. As far as being no Ronald Reagan, we can be thankful for that.
This is a man about whom
actor James Garner said,
"I was a vice president
of the Screen Actors Guild when he was its president. My duties
consisted of attending meetings and voting. The only thing I remember is
that Ronnie never had an original thought and that we had to tell him
what to say. That’s no way to run a union, let along a state or a
country."
As for Barack Obama, Garner said, Adlai Stevenson
was “the most intelligent presidential candidate we’ve ever had. I think
Obama runs a close second.”
So perhaps the question should be less one of “Can
Obama hold Reagan’s jock-strap” to one of “Can a political meatpuppet be
a transformational pretender”?
That depends on how you define “transformational.”
Blake is using it as a positive, but isn’t destruction also
transformational? In that sense, the shrub, another political
meatpuppet, is transformational. He destroyed Iraq, and very nearly his
own country at the same time, bringing the world’s economy crashing down
for good measure.
Blake claims that four things define
transformational presidents (technically, riding a velociraptor while
slaughtering America’s enemies is not one of them):
They change the conversation: “The country is a
different place after they leave the office.” To make his point, Blake
invents a few “facts” about St. Ronnie:
“Reagan helped tilt the nation away from FDR’s New
Deal in a way that no pretender had done before, historians say. When
Reagan declared in his inaugural speech that government wasn’t the
solution but the problem — and backed it up with small-government,
anti-tax policies — he took on FDR.”
How is this possible when Reagan
raised taxes 11 times from 1981 to 1989 and actually grew the size of government? Fact: Obama in 2011 had 273,000 fewer federal employees
than Reagan. Far from cutting the size of government, he added a new
department – Veterans’ Affairs – and increased defense spending. Reagan,
compared to Obama, was a “tax and spend liberal” out of Republican nightmares.
Yet Blake cites Charles Gallagher, a sociologist at
La Salle University in Pennsylvania: “He single-handedly defined
government as something that was bad.” Yes, it was so bad that we needed
more of it.
Transformational presidents deliver great lines:
Because President Obama hasn’t said something as catchy as “Mr.
Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Never mind that somebody as
intellectually vapid as the Reagan Garner depicts could never have come
up with that himself. Reagan, Blake says, was dubbed “‘The Great
Communicator.’ But what about Obama? Any memorable words?” Blake can’t
think of any. But then, Obama has original “big syllable” thoughts of
his own and isn’t an actor playing a part (take that, Jeb).
Transformational presidents poach followers from the enemy camp:
“Reagan was a master at persuading people who didn’t normally vote
Republican to vote for him in such great numbers that a new term was
invented: Reagan Democrats.”
Blake cites Jennifer Walsh, a political science
professor at Azusa Pacific University in California as saying “There is
no such thing as an Obama Republican.” Well, a very good reason for this
is that Obama is black, and the Republican Party is driven by high
levels of racism and guided by Fox News, factors that would preclude
Republicans becoming supporters of the “anti-colonialist Kenyan Muslims
terrorist sympathizer” that is Obama. This is not a fair comparison at
all.
Remember, when Obama outperformed Reagan on the economy? Fox News immediately cried, “Benghazi!” They didn’t mention the economy.
Transformational presidents become beloved figures:
Reagan, Blake says, “became one of the nation’s most beloved presidents
because people simply liked him. Even his enemies responded to Reagan’s
geniality.” Well, meatpuppet. Yet even Reagan blogger Nichols admits
that Obama could cure cancer and people wouldn’t like him.
Blake argues that “Reagan made wingnuttery cool. He strengthened the Republican cabal.” I don’t know about that. Bill Maher compared JFK
to James Bond, while Reagan is Matlock. We might be defining “cool”
differently, or perhaps Republicans just don’t know what “cool” is.
Obama “however, doesn’t fire up the Democratic base
like Reagan did his party, some historians say.” Right. He didn’t fire
it up enough to win two elections. Blake says Sanders and Warren are
better at firing up the Democratic base. Only problem here is that
neither of them have become president yet, so they’re not really part of
the conversation, however much you may like them. And, after all, Trump
fires up the Republican base. So let’s leave non-presidents out of it.
What is interesting is that as Blake makes this claim about how well loved Reagan was compared to Obama, Obama has become more popular than the shrub and equal to Reagan,
and he has a far-better sense of humor. Sorta takes the wind out of
your sails, doesn’t it, Mr. Blake? And let’s not forget that Reagan’s
memory is so blessed in California that they set his statue on fire. It’s all the rage today in expressing love.
Blake lists his four transformational qualities, but I wonder if giving America a persecution complex and victim mentality is also a transformational quality? Or how about Reagan welcoming religio-wingnuts into government
by telling them he was one of them, pushing creationism not only as
governor of California but as president? That’s pretty transformational
too.
I wrote
of the Republican war on science. It was Reagan who made this “cool”
too: “They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They
are wrong. I say there are simple answers to our problems and they are
found within the covers of the bible.”
Simple answers for a simple man.
That is the Reagan legacy. If Reagan is going to be
called transformational, we are going to have to take the bad with the
good, and there is a lot of bad, even by Republican standards, if they
would only admit to the historical Reagan, and forget the Reagan of
their dreams.
