Is Obama following Reagan?

Time magazine's cover this week features a Photoshopped picture of Ronald Reagan with his arm around President Obama. The cover story purports to answer the question of why Obama is channeling Reagan, a question no one was asking until Time brought it up. It's a standard newsmagazine technique to add a "why" to the thesis of a story. It makes it seem deeper, even while skipping over the hard part of whether it's true.

If Obama is attempting to emulate Reagan, there is no mystery about why. Reagan carried 49 states in 1984, the year he was reelected. But Time contends the 44th president is following the example of the 40th in some unusually profound way.

hope that's not true. Reagan was a nice enough man — but a terrible president. I know, I know, you're not supposed to say this. Even political opponents are supposed to recognize and applaud his sunny disposition, his death grip on various bromides, his mystical connection with the voters, the wisdom in his simple view of a complicated world and so on. I am unpersuaded.

This is Reagan's centennial year. Ten years ago, on his 90th birthday — when he was still alive — I attempted to summarize the case against his presidency in a pair of articles for Slate.com. You can read the result here (domestic policy) and here (foreign policy) and decide for yourself.

But the notion that Obama is following Reagan's example, though a characteristic newsmagazine conceit, is new. Where is the evidence? Time says it is "under the surface." Also "less substantive than stylistic and instinctive." That's for sure.

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amadeus said:

No, he is not.

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1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser. As governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state up till then.” Meanwhile, state spending nearly doubled. As president, Reagan “raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,” including four times in just two years. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan “a dear friend,” told NPR, “Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration — I was there.” “Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan’s memoir. Reagan the anti-tax zealot is “false mythology,” Brinkley said.

2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit. During the Reagan years, the debt increased to nearly $3 trillion, “roughly three times as much as the first 80 years of the century had done altogether.” Reagan enacted a major tax cut his first year in office and government revenue dropped off precipitously. Despite the conservative myth that tax cuts somehow increase revenue, the government went deeper into debt and Reagan had to raise taxes just a year after he enacted his tax cut. Despite ten more tax hikes on everything from gasoline to corporate income, Reagan was never able to get the deficit under control.

3. Unemployment soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. Unemployment jumped to 10.8 percent after Reagan enacted his much-touted tax cut, and it took years for the rate to get back down to its previous level. Meanwhile, income inequality exploded. Despite the myth that Reagan presided over an era of unmatched economic boom for all Americans, Reagan disproportionately taxed the poor and middle class, but the economic growth of the 1980′s did little help them. “Since 1980, median household income has risen only 30 percent, adjusted for inflation, while average incomes at the top have tripled or quadrupled,” the New York Times’ David Leonhardt noted.

4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously. Reagan promised “to move boldly, decisively, and quickly to control the runaway growth of federal spending,” but federal spending “ballooned” under Reagan. He bailed out Social Security in 1983 after attempting to privatize it, and set up a progressive taxation system to keep it funded into the future. He promised to cut government agencies like the Department of Energy and Education but ended up adding one of the largest — the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which today has a budget of nearly $90 billion and close to 300,000 employees. He also hiked defense spending by over $100 billion a year to a level not seen since the height of the Vietnam war.

5. Reagan did little to fight a woman’s right to chose. As governor of California in 1967, Reagan signed a bill to liberalize the state’s abortion laws that “resulted in more than a million abortions.” When Reagan ran for president, he advocated a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited all abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, but once in office, he “never seriously pursued” curbing choice.

6. Reagan was a “bellicose peacenik.” He wrote in his memoirs that “[m]y dream…became a world free of nuclear weapons.” “This vision stemmed from the president’s belief that the biblical account of Armageddon prophesied nuclear war — and that apocalypse could be averted if everyone, especially the Soviets, eliminated nuclear weapons,” the Washington Monthly noted. And Reagan’s military buildup was meant to crush the Soviet Union, but “also to put the United States in a stronger position from which to establish effective arms control” for the the entire world — a vision acted out by Regean’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, when he became president.

7. Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants. Reagan signed into law a bill that made any immigrant who had entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty. The bill was sold as a crackdown, but its tough sanctions on employers who hired undocumented immigrants were removed before final passage. The bill helped 3 million people and millions more family members gain American residency. It has since become a source of major embarrassment for conservatives.

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ilduce349 said:

I the republicans still like Reagan? I have lost all of (no that I had much) my respect to them.

I know numbers 1, 2 and 3 are correct, not sure about the rest.

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But Time contends the 44th president is following the example of the 40th

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The_Tyrant said:

Stop comparing Obama to Reagan. Reagan would roll in his grave if he saw such a comparison.

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CurtSibling said:

From a non-American who was alive in the 1980s, I would say he was a great President.

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Cutlass said:

Only to those people who wanted to see America ruined.

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CurtSibling said:

Or people who choose to ignore his achievements.

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Skwink Caesar said:

Again, where is that quote from? You've ignored the question twice.

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