Bob Beckel: Obama is the Democrats' Reagan

Every electoral parallel you could ever want and more! It’s been circulating as a subtext of Obamania since January, when the Chosen One himself famously broached the subject and got mostly grief for it from liberals too blinkered by knee-jerk Reagan-hate to recognize a killer meme when they hear one. Beckel’s is the first sustained treatment I’ve seen, although it pops up from time to time in conservative tributes to Obama’s rhetorical skills. Sunny, eloquent, yet very much the ideologue: Strong medicine in a sugar coating. No wonder Peggy Noonan has a soft spot for him. In fact, it’s the unspoken Reagan parallel which I think lies at the root of the messianism that surrounds Obama. It’s not that he’s a “Lightworker,” it’s that he’s the uniquely charismatic pol perfectly positioned to capitalize on public antipathy to the ruling order and nudge the country onto a different ideological track. He’s come from the sky to finish off the conservative movement, just like Reagan finished off the Great Society. (Which helps explain why McCain’s jab about Obama running for Carter’s second term is so effective. It undercuts the parallel. Barry can’t be Reagan if he’s the guy Reagan beat.) Needless to say, this is also why Krauthammer and I were pulling for Hillary in the primary. Obama’s right that the policy differences between him and her are “infinitesimal,” the gap between them in terms of Reagan potential is enormous. Hillary could have done a lot of damage in office but she was never going to paint the map blue. This guy might, for a bit. Why Obamicans like Doug Kmiec who retain most of their conservative leanings but want a change from Bush-style Republican governance would therefore prefer him to her escapes me.

He probably won’t be winning any Reagan-type landslides (to George Will’s and Pat Buchanan’s chagrin?), if that’s any comfort, but then he doesn’t have to worry as Reagan did about battling a Congress led by the other party. Exit question: How significant will Obama’s handling of Iran be to whether he can turn a victory in November into a sustainable movement? All of the heroes of 20th century liberalism — FDR, JFK, LBJ — were muscular on foreign policy; how are centrists going to climb on board for Great Society II if Iran somehow ends up with the bomb on Obama’s watch? “Blame Bush” ain’t going to cut it.