WWRRD?

Create Handy Villains

Reagan was good at framing his opponents as villains, even if he smiled while he said it. His opponent Walter Mondale, for example, was “Vice President Malaise.” Reagan said: “We were being led by a team with good intentions and bad ideas—people with all the common sense of Huey, Dewey, and Louie.” Democrats accused him of lacking compassion. He replied, “There’s no compassion in snake-oil cures.”

Here and now, to the public, Republican House Speaker John Boehner is still a cipher. If Reagan was in Obama’s shoes, he’d already have painted him as the out-of-touch guy making time for the tanning bed during a recession, skipping state dinners in a time of war. But the president hasn’t laid a finger on him. He’s allergic to calling Republicans anything worse than “bad driver.” To do any worse, he thinks, it to break faith with an electorate that reasonably craves national unity.