"The inclination with any new president is to define him by those who came before. So we graft Barack Obama's head atop the black-and-white, cigarette-puffing image of Franklin Roosevelt (as Time did), or we dress him up as George Washington (as the New Yorker did), or we expound on how similar he is to that other tall, skinny, relatively inexperienced Illinois politician, Abraham Lincoln. Some even have compared the coming pitter-patter of Sasha and Malia with our sepia-toned memories of John-John and Caroline.
But much less has been said about another president Obama praised forcefully during the campaign. "Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not, and a way that Bill Clinton did not," Obama told Nevada's Reno Gazette-Journal last January. Reagan, he explained, "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." "
o o o
"During his eight years in office, the Great Communicator often used his remarkable powers of persuasion to advance a policy agenda that was not helpful to the generation that came after him. America's massive debt to China and other nations, rampant consumerism, an unregulated Wall Street and willful ignorance about issues from climate change to energy alternatives all have roots that were planted during Reagan's 1980s." (link to article)
Gives one furiously to think.
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