Obama Channels Reagan

Excerpts from Bloomberg

Bloomberg says Obama is mirroring Reagan's first term.

Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who’s running Democratic candidate-recruitment efforts. “What was good for the Gipper can be good for Obama.”

Psychology was paramount in Reagan’s success, said Charles Franklin, a voting-behavior expert at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. “It was the rise in optimism that allowed Reagan to run a campaign based on these wonderful commercials,” he said.

Obama and Reagan: similarities

Like Obama, Reagan entered office with an approval rating of about 68 percent and on a message of change.

While the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose about 20 percent in Obama’s first year in office, it fell 10 percent during Reagan’s inaugural year.

In his address to the 1984 Republican National Convention, Reagan stressed his problems were inherited.

Obama and Reagan: Differences


Reagan had a simple message of small government and low taxes, while Obama’s agenda is soaring and “cloudy,” said Hess. “As a politician, you should be able to put it on a bumper sticker,” he said.

Obama doesn’t exude the “happy optimism” that Reagan did, said Hess.
He may also have deeper economic concerns: Obama’s 2011 budget proposal projects unemployment will average 8.2 percent in 2012, higher than when he took office.


Still, vulnerable Democrats are using Obama’s arguments. Ohio Representative Steve Driehaus, who holds one of the Rothenberg Political Report’s “dangerous dozen” House seats, said voters need to understand how the country got here.

“There was a critical juncture at the end of the Clinton administration when the budget was in the black,” before Republicans began running up deficits, he said. “We’re still picking up the pieces.”

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