Obama Seeks to Channel Reagan as Democrats Prepare for Election
President Barack Obama’s politics may be drawing inspiration from an unlikely source: Ronald Reagan.
The late Republican president may become Democrat Obama’s most relevant role model as the U.S. economic and political climate mirrors Reagan’s first term, which began in 1981.
While Republicans suffered losses in the congressional elections of 1982, the economy began to improve by 1983. That allowed Reagan to argue that things were moving in the right direction. By 1984, he won re-election on a “It’s Morning Again in America” theme.
With the unemployment rate now at 10 percent and prospects dimming that the number will markedly improve by November, Obama and Democratic lawmakers are highlighting what they say are positive trends and warning against a return to the policies of President George W. Bush.
“Ronald Reagan made these points,” said 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, 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.
Echoing Reagan
Obama recently has echoed Reagan’s themes in his Jan. 27 State of the Union speech, during a visit to Florida, and in a trip to a House Republican conference.
“This turnaround is the biggest in nearly three decades, and it didn’t happen by accident,” he told the Republicans on Jan. 29 in Baltimore. It happened “because of some of the steps that we took.”
Earlier that day, the government reported the economy grew 5.7 percent in the last three months of 2009, giving Democrats an opening, like Reagan, to ask voters to focus on the trend.
Republicans charge that Democratic policies have been ineffective, said Franklin. “With significant robust growth in the fourth quarter, that story starts to fall apart.”
“It’s a wonderful parallel” to Reagan’s first term, said Franklin, cautioning that the Democrats will still need more positive news.
To be sure, the economy took off well into Reagan’s first term, growing by 5.1 percent in the first quarter of 1983. Growth reached 9.3 percent in the second quarter of that year and averaged 7.9 percent in the following 12 months.
By contrast, the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News is for the U.S. economy to expand 2.7 percent this year and 2.9 percent next year.
Still, the public may be responding. Obama’s approval ratings jumped more than the historical average in the days after his State of the Union speech, Gallup data shows. “He was more in tune with public opinion than not,” said Frank Newport, Gallup editor-in-chief.
Facing Losses
Franklin said Democrats may lose more than 20 House seats this year. In November 1982, with unemployment at 10.8 percent, Republicans lost 26 House seats. In November 1984, with the jobless rate down to 7.2 percent, Reagan’s party netted 14 House seats and retained control of the Senate.
Representative Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican leading his party’s 2010 recruitment, doubts Democrats can co- opt Reagan’s strategy.
“Maybe their message will change, but will their actions change?” he said. “We have not seen the jobs created” through spending programs.
In November, the Congressional Budget Office said last year’s stimulus package created 600,000 to 1.6 million jobs. At the same time, nonfarm payrolls have dropped every month since January 2008 except for an increase of 4,000 in November.
Approval Rating
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.
He offered to take his opponents “on a little stroll down memory lane,” citing the worst inflation since World War I, declining industrial output and high taxes under predecessor Jimmy Carter.
On Jan. 28, Obama said at the University of Tampa that he took office “in the middle of this raging storm,” an argument he repeated the next day in Baltimore.
Key Differences
There are important differences, said Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
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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