Deficit King

Now the Ronald Reagan fetishists want him to replace President Ulysses S. Grant on the fifty dollar bill. I think they're aiming too low -- after all, Reagan gave us record deficits, financial deregulation that led to the disastrous derivatives markets, dropping the walls between banks and brokerages, and cross-leveraging assets into financial meltdown.

So either his face should be on the billion dollar bill...or perhaps the negative fifty dollar bill.

Zombie Option

The GOP has a new replacement for Chairman Michael Steele, according to The Onion:


Zombie Reagan Raised From Grave To Lead GOP

Heck, they all talk about him enough and claim to know what he'd agree with them on, it's about time he growled for himself.

Meanwhile, "still undead" Republican poster gal Sarah Palin is charging fans for taking pictures with her like she's at a comics convention.

Patience

Thanks to a valued reader for this link to Mark Schmitt's smart-smart (as usual) analysis of the two most vocal sides on how Obama should open his administration in order to take best advantage of political capital, and then presenting his own opinion, drawn from FDR and Reagan as well as how Obama conducted his campaign, "The Audacity of Patience":

Given that Obama's expanding coalition was sustainable through the long journey from Iowa to Election Day, what if we assume it could be sustained and even consolidated in the White House? Rooted in the center-left, but reaching Blue Dog Democrats, independent voters, and a few Republican legislators, it would not always be the same coalition, but like Reagan's, an evolving, overlapping, flexible majority. Reagan brought in very conservative Southern Democrats to pass the first budget cuts but found common ground with liberal and moderate Democrats on the tax reform of 1986 and with each step strengthened the conservative consensus. Obama could do the same for a new liberal consensus.

I highly recommend reading the whole piece, as I think it's so much closer to Obama's temperament than anything you're seeing, hearing, reading anywhere else. And it's not too long.

Speaking of not too long, we're six weeks away from Inauguration, and take a look how it's coming along.

Reagan Endorses Obama

Yep, Ron Reagan has come out officially and emphatically for Barack Obama over John McCain. He is, of course, the son of President Ronald Reagan.

However, his father's own Chief of Staff, Ken Duberstein, has officially endorsed Obama this week as well:

Duberstein said he was influenced by another prominent Reagan official - Colin Powell - in his decision.

"Well let's put it this way - I think Colin Powell's decision is in fact the good housekeeping seal of approval on Barack Obama."

One of George H.W. Bush's Secretaries of State, Lawrence Eagleburger, came out saying Palin is not qualified to be potential President earlier this week...but I guess he got sent into GOP re-education camp and is now acting like a frightened turtle in recanting...

Right Again

If Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is successful in his campaign for President, the most remarkable aspect may not be his race or youth, but that he's consistently saying things that pundits on the left and the right consider breaking the rules.

As someone of Obama's age group (within 15 months) and what I believe to be a similarly progressive viewpoint, I find it particularly refreshing when he pisses off certain doctrinaire leftists by telling truths that veer from their playbook. The latest is Obama's comments on deceased former President Ronald Reagan.

While various DailyKos diarists are up in arms and even Open Left's Matt Stoller misleadingly entitles his post "Obama's Admiration of Ronald Reagan," I'm surprised and pleased to see Obama making a case I've been expressing for a long time:

I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just 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.

Taking the first part of this statement, there's no way Al Gore would have lost in 2000 if Bill Clinton had been less selfish, had not had sexual relations with a 23-year old intern and been able to effectively campaign with Gore. Clinton left behind no enduring political legacy save his wife's subsequent political career. While Bill Clinton was President, the "Reagan Revolution" was completed when, in 1994, the House of Representatives turned over the Republican Party for the first time since 1931.

Next we have his statement on excesses. Again, correct. While Stoller reads this as, "Those excesses, of course, were feminism, the consumer rights movement, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and the antiwar movement," I beg to differ.

The fact was that when Jimmy Carter was elected President and the Democrats suddenly had control of both Houses of Congress and the Executive Branch, they didn't go progressive, they simply porked up. The more honest New Deal generation was gone and in the long years between 1932 and 1980 that old guard was replaced, as so often happens over the long haul in initially successful and popular organization, with hacks. Everyone felt safe, everyone got a piece, while the economy was going to hell. This on top of the, yes, excessive Vietnam War -- a war the Democratic Party escalated most heavily when Democratic President Lyndon Johnson was in office, with a Democratic House of Representatives.

The last part of this Obama statement is essentially his strategy for winning the Presidency and securing America's future. Jimmy Carter spoke of an American malaise which, even if true, came across as blaming the American people for it. Not a pro-active leader who made you expect a better day tomorrow. While you'll find few voters who despised the Reagan Administration more than I, or who yelled at the screen more when he gave a speech, I do acknowledge that America was hungry for a change, hungry to feel better about their nation and their prospects again, and the Dems were only delivering the "promise" of better, kinder management, a promise gainsaid by their performance at the time.

The fact is that the Democrats always lose when they run on "better management," which is why Hillary Clinton has, I believe, only illusory advantage in her competence/hands on differentiation claims this week. Sure, we don't want another George W. Bush working purely from his gut and taking little responsibility for the disasters of his team's making. But Obama is not only obviously smarter than Bush, he's clearly emerged from the progressive sphere, that of community organization.

What Obama does appear to have, then, is the proper positioning to win the Presidency. While Hillary and Bill were fast to co-opt his message of change after Iowa, suddenly plastering it over appearances, calling Hillary "Ready for Change", they've actually fallen victim to Obama's rope-a-dope.

Sure, Obama gave his Iowa victory speech surrounded by huge versions of the word, "Change," he's actually selling something more than that. His secret weapon is exactly the same as Ronald Reagan's. Obama is selling hope.

As he said in that speech, this isn't a passive form of hope. Like Reagan, it requires active participation and entrepreneurship. But he knows it's the kind of trajectory that can actually make Americans of different stripes feel better about themselves and their country. Just like it did in Ronald Reagan's electoral success.

Only this time, make no mistake about it, it's coming from the left.

Second

I've been thinking that part of the reason America may be ready to elect an African-American man as President is that they've been prepared. Barack Obama won't be the first black President. He may not even be the second, if you count Bill Clinton (as a black friend of mine affirmed on Friday).

The actual antecedent to Sen. Obama as Head of State is President David Palmer.

If Obama takes this across the finish line, he'll owe a debt of gratitude to Dennis Haysbert, who convincingly portrayed a black politician you actually believe had won, and who's smarts and steadfastness have stood in stark contrast to our current Republican President.

In fact, he'll really owe the debt to the men who created 24, and in particular to first-listed creator Joel Surnow, a self-described "right-wing nut job" who's buddies with Rush Limbaugh and a GOP supporter. Tick-tick-irony-tick-tick...

Will Surnow come out in support of Obama? There's already one old-style Conservative, Andrew Sullivan, who made up his mind for Obama early and quite correctly makes the connection between Obama's rhetorical style with not MLK, JFK or RFK so much as with Republican godhead Ronald Reagan. Writes Sullivan:

The analogy that worries Republicans the most is a more recent one. Could Obama be a potential liberal version of Ronald Reagan? Could he do for the Democrats what Reagan did for the Republicans a quarter century ago?

It’s increasingly possible. Reagan was the cutting edge of the last realignment in American politics. With a good-natured, civil appeal to Democrats who felt abandoned by their own party under Jimmy Carter, Reagan revolutionised the reach of his own party.

He didn’t aim for a mere plurality, as Bill Clinton did. Nor did he try for a polarising 51% strategy, as George W Bush has done. He ran as a national candidate, in search of a national mandate, a proud Republican who nonetheless wanted Democrats to vote for him.

He came out of a period in which Americans had become sickened by the incompetence of their own government. Reagan shocked America’s elites by pivoting that discontent into a victory in 1980. And by his second term, he won 49 out of 50 states.

From Reagan Democrats to Obama Republicans?

Law 'n' Order

Gotta love the law & order GOP. They can't even keep anyone from robbing a dead President. Witness the Ronald Reagan library:

Library officials told auditors that "the collection contained approximately 100,000 items, yet the library systems only had information to locate and account for approximately 20,000 items," Brachfield said.

"This does not automatically mean the approximately 80,000 remaining items are missing. The vast majority may very well be safely located within the library's storage facilities. ... Some of these items may be missing or stolen, or none of these items may be missing or stolen."

If it is indeed theft, then I can only think it celestial irony that this library was looted just like we (Rumsfeld et al) allowed all of Iraq's libraries, museums and government buildings to be looting in the first few days following our "Mission Accomplished".

On the other hand, if it's all just mismanagement, the cosmic "heckuva job" irony is simply even greater proof that:

(a) The GOP can't be trusted to run institution properly.

(b) The idea that private sector organizations are somehow better run than government ones is not inherently true.

Better to get the Republicans out of government and let them play their war games on a PC or console, where they can restart all they want.