This can be a touchy comparison. I remember when Firedoglake was eviscerating the President for reading Reagan or saying that he learns a lot from Reagan-he even mentioned Reagan when he was debating with the GOP during the debt ceiling debacle.
After all, didn't this prove the President is really a conservative? Of course it doesn't necessarily mean anything of the sort. Reagan on his way up and Gingrich in 1994 spoke a lot about FDR. Gingrich took him as a kind of inspiration for achieving what Newt hoped to achieve in 1994-a long term governing majority.
This mission of Newt's of course would be aborted. In the same vein, it makes sense that the President should look to Reagan for clues. What's significant is that he sees Reagan as a "transformational President."
Reagan, as he sees it, was able to achieve a fundamental shifting of the country to the Right. Those of us who hope to reverse this move, need a new transformational moment. The President therefore strives to be a transformational President.
This has earned him the ire of conservatives who reproach him for wanting to be "transformational." They've taken a lot of odd things and run with them which they claim shows he doesn't value this country and its history as he should.
For instance there was the supposed "apology tour" he took early in his first term. They felt that speeches he made in the Middle East were too apologetic and that he was guilty of the supreme crime for the conservative perspective of "hubris."
What they seem to have in mind with hubris is that the President wants to change America. Now this would seem to be a good thing, but for them this proves he didn't like the way it was for 220 years.
So they sniff "It was good enough for Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Truman, and Reagan but not Obama." He sees our past history as shameful and wants to elevate himself above it.
So even Michelle Obama's expression of pride for the country the night Obama was elected became a show of her disdain for America and her history. Strange position this puts us in! To even suggest change means you are an American hating elitist who think your smarter than the combined wisdom of our founders and past leaders!
Andrew Sullivan has a great piece in Newsweek that discusses the idea that the President is indeed that transformation leader our country needs. He thinks a second Obama term will be transformational and I totally agree with him:
"As the fall has turned crisper, a second term for Barack Obama has gotten likelier. This may, of course, change: the debates, the Middle East, the unemployment numbers could still blow up the race. At this point in 2004, one recalls, George W. Bush was about to see a near eight-point lead shrivel to a one-state nail-biter by Election Day. But one thing that has so far, in my view, been underestimated is the potential impact of a solid Obama win, and perhaps a Democratic retention of the Senate and some progress in the House. This is now a perfectly plausible outcome. It would also be a transformational moment in modern American politics."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/09/23/andrew-sullivan-on-the-promise-of-obama-s-second-term.html
I totally see it the same way-a second term and Senate retention would be huge-and the GOP admitted this recently. Not to quibble but there are some serious analysts that believe the Dems taking back the House is not just possible but likely.
http://election.princeton.edu/2012/09/21/monkeying-around-with-fundamentals-based-models/
"If Obama wins, to put it bluntly, he will become the Democrats’ Reagan. The narrative writes itself. He will emerge as an iconic figure who struggled through a recession and a terrorized world, reshaping the economy within it, passing universal health care, strafing the ranks of al -Qaeda, presiding over a civil-rights revolution, and then enjoying the fruits of the recovery. To be sure, the Obama recovery isn’t likely to have the same oomph as the one associated with Reagan—who benefited from a once-in-a-century cut of top income tax rates (from 70 percent to, at first, 50 percent, and then to 28 percent) as well as a huge jump in defense spending at a time when the national debt was much, much less of a burden. But Obama’s potential for Reagan status (maybe minus the airport-naming) is real. Yes, Bill Clinton won two terms and is a brilliant pol bar none, as he showed in Charlotte in the best speech of both conventions. But the crisis Obama faced on his first day—like the one Reagan faced—was far deeper than anything Clinton confronted, and the future upside therefore is much greater. And unlike Clinton’s constant triangulating improvisation, Obama has been playing a long, strategic game from the very start—a long game that will only truly pay off if he gets eight full years to see it through. That game is not only changing America. It may also bring his opposition, the GOP, back to the center, just as Reagan indelibly moved the Democrats away from the far left."
The idea that Obama could be a transformation President in the way that Clinton wasn't rankled Clinton early perhaps-Obama was not shy about this belief.
In reality though, if Obama succeeds, Clinton set the table by enabling the Dems to become strong again nationally. It's hard to remember now, but back in 1988-as a Democrat who lived through the third straight Republican landslide-it seemed the Dems might never make it back to the White House. Clinton truly altered the electoral map. Even though Bush won two nail biters to start this century, comparing his pencil thin path to victory with the Reagan era blowouts shows Clinton altered the map permanently.
For me the transformation potential of Obama is that the movement towards ever and ever smaller and more meager government would be stopped. It will be interesting to see how the Republicans deal with that. Because a win for the Democrats this time means that the country has chosen a role for government that is more activist than the GOP thinks is proper.
In this sense it's true that Clinton's success didn't change the tilt towards less government. Indeed, his "end of welfare as we know it" might actually have been the watershed for conservatism. They haven't been able to move the ball forward even one down since.
Bush tried and failed to do individual accounts for Social Security. While he beat Gore, in retrospect, Gore's message won the day: no risky privatization schemes.
Now Romney is trying again with Ryan's Medicare block grant scheme. If they fail, which seems likely now, it will be clear that there is now a consensus for more government than in this past 30 years.
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