Toon; Listening to Ronnie

[n2doc]

[Tansy_Gold]

1. How fucking sad is that. n/t

[mdmc]

2. sad

[Lasher]

3. Yep.

[xchrom]

4. recommend

[Robb]

5. It might be lost on many here not of a certain age...

...but the Economist backed Reagan. Obama as well.

[Axrendale]

6. I should damn well hope Obama is listening!

And I am not kidding.

Reagan succeeded in breaking up a political coalition that had dominated the country's political scene for decades, changing the trajectory of the political mood in the country, and forcing through a (watered down) agenda that corresponded to political values that had until that point been solidly in the wilderness.

And he did it, what's more, largely through compromise that had the hard-liners of his party screaming (kind of like what you see on DU about Obama).

If Obama can accomplish something similar but from the opposite end of the political spectrum, then I have no objections at all about who he has to listen to, whose example he has to follow to do so.

He should study whatever political methods were most effective, not the ones that were most palatable.

Of all the Presidents since the end of the Long Sixties era, I think there can be little doubt that Reagan had the most effective political methods, however noxious his agenda might have been.

This sort of reaction makes one understand just why leading progressive figures look on a great part of the left as the "Professional Left".

It calls to mind something that was once said by Franklin Roosevelt:

"I am not bitter, and nor am I a cynic. But I do wish that some people would show a little more maturity in their political thinking."

Or Lyndon Johnson:

"These goddamn f*cking crazies would rather see everything that they're fighting for go up in flames than compromise their ideological purity."

[MannyGoldstein]

7. Reagan ran on fiscal responsibility

But ballooned government spending through borrowing.

He basically was the opposite of most of what he ran on. Obama, on the other hand... uh, never mind.

[Axrendale]

8. Actually, in case you missed it, Obama never ran as anything other than a moderate

If one actually bothers to closely peruse his stated political positions, both before and after his election to the Presidency (his book The Audacity of Hope is excellent for this purpose, but a great alternative is James Kloppenberg's Reading Obama) the honest critic (admittedly a rare commodity these days) is forced to concede that President Obama has hewed closer to his professed political principles than any President in quite a while. Certainly in compiling a progressive record unmatched since the days of Lyndon Johnson he has had to accept results in the pursuit of his agenda that are far less than what he would have liked, but that is a phenomenon as old as politics itself.

In any case, Reagan did not merely run on fiscal responsibility; he ran on a series of proposed policies that he declared would promote such a course. That they failed in this was due to the fact that they were bad policies - something that Obama himself has expressed (again, see The Audacity of Hope). But Policies are not the point here, Politics is. Regardless of whether a policy agenda is good (Obama) or bad (Reagan), what really matters is how effective the politicking behind it is, for that is what will determine whether and to what extent the effects of said policies will be felt at all.

[MannyGoldstein]

9. Public option, no public manadate

no cuts to Social Security, fighting for the Middle Class, ending warrantless wiretapping, transparent administration, repeal the Bush tax cuts, ending the lobbyist revolving door, etc.