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Not Getting Reagan

By Big Tent Democrat

Like Barack Obama, Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias seemingly have no understanding of how Ronald Reagan operated as a politician. Ezra writes:

What he's saying is that Reagan effectively understood the ideological currents in the country and used that mastery of public opinion to drive popular sentiment. In other words, he admires Reagan for shifting the center. . . . Obama is suggesting he has a fairly grandly ideological view of the president's role, and that it includes harnessing the ideological forces of the moment to push the country in a new direction.

This is simply balderdash. Ronald Reagan did not rise from thin air in 1980 and ride a wave of conservative sentiment. Ronald Reagan was the heir to Barry Goldwater's conservative revolution. He fought the Rockefeller "post-partisan" Republicans throughout his political career and finally won in 1980. He carried that message into a general election and won a mandate for his ideas. Obama is running a campaign that is the exact opposite of the Reagan trajectory. I know Ezra and Matt are young, but it is amazing how little they seem to know about Ronald Reagan. They could not possibly be more wrong than they are. Update [2008-1-17 15:41:34 by Big Tent Democrat]: Via e-mail, commenter Eugene corrects me:

It's worse than that - Reagan wasn't just "heir" to Goldwater, he was a key player in the creation of the Goldwater movement, his candidacy, and his ideology. Particularly here in California, where Reagan had earlier played the central role in leading conservative seizures of Republican institutions, which were then used as the launching pad for Goldwater's '64 candidacy.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on January 17, 2008 (boomark / email).