Word: reagan
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...attempts to dismiss Obama remind me of the Carter-Reagan matchup of 1980, another supposed referendum election. Ronald Reagan was ... a celebrity, a movie star, a right-wing lightweight. It seemed impossible--to most Democrats, at least--that he could win, although he did hold a slight lead going into the conventions. The fall campaign was very close--until, finally, the two candidates debated a week before the election, and the celebrity cleaned the President's clock. "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Reagan asked in his closing statement. He seemed every bit as substantial...
Fast-forward to now: this is a year that looks as good for Democrats as 1980 did for Republicans. They have a candidate who, like Reagan, is a fabulous performer and represents a major break with the past--and has a smaller lead than he'd like going into the conventions. And in the end, debates will almost certainly decide this election. The sheer, slimy audacity of the McCain ads has given him a nice midsummer run. The polling numbers haven't changed all that much, but Obama has been on the defensive since he returned from his overseas trip...
Trying to establish those who opposed Dwight Eisenhower's, John F. Kennedy's, Richard Nixon's and Ronald Reagan's negotiations with the enemy as the same people - the anti-engagers - is ludicrous. Everything a President does is opposed by someone for some reason. The larger point is that we must negotiate through strength, a fact Obama seems not to understand. Neither did Jimmy Carter. Obama's willingness to withdraw from Iraq while on the brink of victory and to talk without condition to the perpetrators of much of the violence is foolhardy and dangerous. Mark Shreeve, DANDRIDGE, TENN...
...Reagan's nostrum has been the guiding philosophy of the past 30 years, a period of disdain for governance - even Bill Clinton said, "The era of Big Government is over" - that reached its nadir in the sloppiness of the current Bush Administration. It is an era that has been marked by a growing disconnect between the very rich and the middle class (median family income has dropped by an estimated $1,000 during the Bush years). And it is an era when even the most rudimentary responsibilities of government have been neglected - like keeping up the country's infrastructure...
...politics, it has become a euphemism for pork-barrel spending. In the pre-Newt era of Democratic congressional dominance, it smacked of payoffs to big city machines and construction unions. That is one of the reasons Democratic candidates for President have soft-pedaled this basic governmental responsibility in the Reagan pendulum cycle. In the 2000 campaign, Al Gore proposed a new sort of infrastructure spending: a massive alternative-energy program - $15 billion a year for 10 years - to replace the country's dependence on fossil fuels like oil and coal. You may not remember this plan, because Gore's political...