Wait, Jonathan Bernstein has a point

In my last post, I suggested that Jonathan Bernstein was warning Obama against an unlikely pitfall in suggesting that Obama not waste his energy chasing a "liberal Reagan" myth -- that is, imagining he "can win arguments for a generation by choosing exactly the right words at the right time."

Obama, I suggested, in seeking to implement his alleged realization that "you can only change [Washington] from the outside," is focused on marshaling public opinion that already supports his policy proposals, not on attempting to change public opinion from the bully pulpit.  My evidence was twofold. First, he's tried the former (tapping opinion that's already on his side) repeatedly over the last eighteen months, asking supporters to lobby their Congressional reps on behalf of "balanced" deficit reduction,  the payroll tax cut, and low interest rates for student loans, and more recently tapping public disgust with debt ceiling brinksmanship to pressure the GOP into a clean raise. Second, as I noted yesterday, in making the case in 2008 that Reagan "changed the trajectory," Obama emphasized that Reagan "tapped into what people were already feeling," not that he educated them or changed their minds by force of argument.

The distinction between seeking to channel public opinion, or perhaps even focus it when it's latent, and trying to change it, is crucial, and my impression has been that Obama recognizes this. But an interview with The New Republic's Chris Hughes and Franklin Foer sends up some warning signals.

What exactly is the danger for Obama in chasing the "liberal Reagan" mantle?

Yesterday, I offered a partial dissent from Jonathan Bernstein's contention that it's a myth that Ronald Reagan "defined an era" or, to borrow Obama's 2008 phrase, "changed the trajectory of America."  Reagan, I argued, did set the ideological mold that subsequently hardened into GOP dogma, not least by at least appearing to demonstrate that tax cuts can unleash economic growth.

I'd like now to probe a little deeper into exactly what Jon was warning Obama against. I'm not certain, but I suspect that the warning may pertain to a perceived flaw in Obama's current political strategy fingered by Ezra Klein and others. Eliding out the meat of Bernstein's debunking of the "transformative Reagan" myth, here's his advice for Obama:

Here’s the problem. Ronald Reagan wasn’t really the Reagan of everyone’s imagination. So aspiring to be a “liberal Reagan” is chasing a fantasy. Worse than that—it’s a fantasy that can easily distract a president from the real things that he should be doing....

Yes, Reagan did change the trajectory

Jonathan Bernstein would have us believe that the notion that Ronald Reagan, in Obama's words, "changed the trajectory of American politics" is a mirage -- and Obama would do well to stop chasing it.

It's one more salvo in the continuing campaign of political scientists who engage with the broader public to convince us (with pesky evidence) that almost nothing that we think matters in politics really matters, or matters much, or matters in the way we think it does. Here's the core of Bernstein's 'untransformational Reagan' argument:

Take a look at the Reagan myth. Did Reagan “ideologically shift the nation in his direction?” If we’re talking about voters, the answer is pretty clearly no. As Northeastern political scientist Bill Mayer showed in The Changing American Mind, if anything, public opinion on many issues became more liberal, not more conservative, during Reagan’s presidency (see also a nice post from George Washington University political scientist John Sides).

Liberal Reagan redux

E.J. Dionne compares Obama's structural approach to the SOTU to Reagan's while contrasting the two presidents' political philosophies:

Reagan laid out what became the major themes of his campaign, including not only the nation’s recovery from economic turmoil but also his central philosophical purpose: a continuing battle against “the tendency of government to grow.”

Obama’s speech was Reagan’s turned on its head. Like Reagan, Obama previewed his election arguments in a philosophically aggressive way. But Obama’s claim was the opposite of Reagan’s. Obama spoke of government’s essential role in ensuring shared prosperity and in creating an America “built to last” — a slogan drawn, perhaps not accidentally, from truck commercials for General Motors, the company whose rescue Obama engineered.

Dionne seems mildly surprised by the reverse-Reaganism:

It was to be expected that, in the course of his State of the Union address, President Obama would mention the killing of Osama bin Laden, whose death represented the culmination of the battle against terrorism that began on Sept. 11, 2001.

Far less expected was Obama’s use of the bin Laden episode to present a community-minded worldview that contrasts so sharply with the highly individualistic and anti-government message that has been heard over and over from the Republicans seeking to replace him.

The surprise is somewhat warranted by the infuriating year in which Obama directed his indignation at "Congress" and "Washington" as he tried to cut a deal with adversaries openly devoted to destroying him. But that was a detour (that ended last Labor Day). Obama's whole career -- on the national stage, at least -- has been an extended attempt to turn Reaganism on its head.

The liberal Reagan was...

by the standards of today's GOP, Ronald.

It's often pointed out that in the wake of his signature tax cuts, Reagan raised taxes six or seven times, notably in the social security bargain that raised payroll taxes on everybody. I've been looking at Reagan's State of the Union address of 1983, which led off with a victory lap in celebration of that grand bipartisan bargain:

Just 10 days ago, after months of debate and deadlock, the bipartisan Commission on Social Security accomplished the seemingly impossible. Social security, as some of us had warned for so long, faced disaster...

When the Speaker of the House, the Senate majority leader, and I performed the bipartisan-- or formed the bipartisan Commission on Social Security, pundits and experts predicted that party divisions and conflicting interests would prevent the Commission from agreeing on a plan to save social security. Well, sometimes, even here in Washington, the cynics are wrong. Through compromise and cooperation, the members of the Commission overcame their differences and achieved a fair, workable plan. They proved that, when it comes to the national welfare, Americans can still pull together for the common good.
Tonight, I'm especially pleased to join with the Speaker and the Senate majority leader in urging the Congress to enact this plan by Easter.

There are elements in it, of course, that none of us prefers, but taken together it performs a package that all of us can support. It asks for some sacrifice by all-- the self-employed, beneficiaries, workers, government employees, and the better-off among the retired-- but it imposes an undue burden on none. And, in supporting it, we keep an important pledge to the American people: The integrity of the social security system will be preserved, and no one's payments will be reduced.

The Commission's plan will do the job; indeed, it must do the job. We owe it to today's older Americans and today's younger workers. So, before we go any further, I ask you to join with me in saluting the members of the Commission who are here tonight and Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker and Speaker Tip O'Neill for a job well done. I hope and pray the bipartisan spirit that guided you in this endeavor will inspire all of us as we face the challenges of the year ahead.

That major tax hike and deal with the Dem devil was not Reagan's only departure in the 1983 SOTU from current GOP orthodoxy. He did, it's true, propose to hold Federal spending growth to the inflation rate,  freeze pay for Federal workers, find some defense "savings" in the wake of his previous buildup, and slow the growth of  so-called "automatic spending programs," for which his poster item was that easy path to ill-gotten riches, food stamps. But then, apparently not yet aware that he had proven that "deficits don't matter," he worked the other side of the equation:

And fourth, because we must ensure reduction and eventual elimination of deficits over the next several years, I will propose a standby tax, limited to no more than 1 percent of the gross national product, to start in fiscal 1986. It would last no more than 3 years, and it would start only if the Congress has first approved our spending freeze and budget control program. And there are several other conditions also that must be met, all of them in order for this program to be triggered.

Now, you could say that this is an insurance policy for the future, a remedy that will be at hand if needed but only resorted to if absolutely necessary.

Standby tax?  When did you ever read about that one?  It seems to have dropped out of the national consciousness as soon as uttered.  But the patron saint of supply-side economics uttered it.

Further, fond though he was of demonizing "welfare queens" and alleged food stamp cheats, with unemployment topping 10% Reagan had not quite reached the unemployed-are-like-stray-animals level of social Darwinism attained by his acolytes of today:

Liberal Reagan -- not

Garry Wills was right. Obama's default mode is "endless placation." When it doesn't work, he keeps doing it.  He did it nonstop on 60 Minutes tonight.

A few days ago, I linked to a Times story relating some statements by Ronald Reagan in January 1983, when his approval rating hit its nadir of 35%.  The words sounded superficially like Obama's, since the situation was so similar -- an unemployment rate stuck in the 10% range, a large loss in the recent Congressional elections.  But the differences were more telling than the similarities.

Reagan was unequivocal: his policies were working and would continue to work.  To the extent that they hadn't worked fast enough, it was because of compromises forced by the Democrats.

In the 60 Minutes interview tonight as in his Nov. 3 press conference, Obama validated Republican lies about his policies and the legislation passed by the 111th Congress. The healthcare reform process somehow tainted the result.  The bank and auto bailouts and stimulus gave the appearance that he was a proponent of big government.  He took too harsh a tone or somehow damaged the interest of the business community.  He failed to change the tone in Washington.

He never called out Republican mendacity or asserted that the reason he wasn't able to work with Republicans was because they made a bad-faith decision early on to stonewall his entire agenda and malign policies that in any sane era would have been bipartisan -- stimulus, bank and auto bailout, a health insurance program that leaves the private insurance industry intact and flourishing.

Worse, he never defended his own record with any vigor.  It's easy to ventriloquize a "liberal Reagan" defending the accomplishments of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress. We created or saved 3 million jobs and added 3 points to GDP.  We saved the U.S auto industry from destruction. We saved the U.S. banking industry from destruction. We've got the states literally racing to enact meaningful, measurable education reform.  We've made unprecedented investments in alternative energy.  We ensured that banks could not entice and defraud consumers as was their practice last decade. We ensured that there will be no more megabank bailouts.  We've ensured that every citizen will be able to afford health insurance within five years and at the same time instituted healthcare cost controls that the CBC conservatively estimated will save $1.34 trillion over twenty years.  We closed the donut hole while eliminating Republican giveaways to insurance companies that balloon Medicare costs. We ended the corporate welfare system of student loans and ensured cheaper, fairer loans for all college students. We enacted the most stringent emissions controls on cars and trucks ever. We wrung $20 billion in restitution from BP. We did and we did and we did -- we accomplished more on behalf of working Americans in 2 years than our predecessors have done in the last 50.