Obama later explained that he wasn't endorsing the direction that Reagan took the country, but was simply acknowledging a historical reality.
However, his comments went beyond simply noting a fact. Obama portrayed Reagan as a leader who carried out a necessary mid-course correction for the United States and helped restore a spirit of dynamism. Obama said:
"I think they [Americans] felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing."
In this attempt to position himself as some post-partisan leader able to praise the accomplishments of Ronald Reagan, there was a troubling mix of naivete and opportunism. In truth, real accountability was never part of Reaganism.
On the domestic side, Reagan oversaw the dismantling of regulatory structures that restrained the excesses of Wall Street investment banks, the energy industry and other key economic sectors. Many of today's problems " from the mortgage meltdown to the nation's wasteful energy policies " can be traced to Reagan's contempt for genuine accountability.
There was even less accountability in Reagan's foreign policy, one of the most brutal and corrupt in U.S. history, violating both domestic and international law as well as the Constitution.
Reagan's clandestine dealings with Iran and Iraq " often in defiance of Congress " remain shrouded in secrecy and deception to this day. Also suppressed has been the full story of how Reagan tolerated drug traffickers who operated under the cover of his favorite covert operations (Nicaragua and Afghanistan).
Even more troubling, Reagan aided and abetted mass slaughters in Central America, including acts of genocide in Guatemala, but neither he nor any of his senior advisers faced any meaningful accountability for their actions. [For details, see Robert Parry's Lost History and Secrecy & Privilege.]
What Dynamism?
Similarly, the dynamism that Reagan supposedly restored was another dubious assessment by Obama. The truth is that the Reagan era represented less the mythic "morning in America" than a cold dusk for the American dream.
Behind Reagan's anti-government, free-market nostrums, U.S. industry moved factories off-shore; industrial cities were ravaged; unions were busted; education standards declined; and the middle class stagnated or worse.
Obama could have raised these points in the newspaper interview, but he apparently felt that would carry political risks. So, he praised Reagan, presumably trying to appeal to some Republican cross-over voters.
In 2009, President Obama also joined with Nancy Reagan in announcing plans for the centennial celebration of Reagan's birth next February. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com's "Obama's Dubious Praise for Reagan and "Ronald Reagan: Worst President Ever?"]
One has to begin to wonder if and when President Obama plans to start challenging the fallacies of Reaganism. Instead, Obama not only compromises with Republicans as they push Reagan's discredited economic theories but Obama even joins in justifying those ideas, as Krugman " one of Obama's guests at the private Dec. 7 meeting " has noted.
"President Obama," wrote Krugman in a New York Times column, "has consistently tried to reach across the aisle by lending cover to right-wing myths. He has praised Reagan for restoring American dynamism (when was the last time you heard a Republican praising F.D.R.?), adopted G.O.P. rhetoric about the need for the government to tighten its belt even in the face of recession, offered symbolic freezes on spending and federal wages.
"None of this stopped the right from denouncing him as a socialist. But it helped empower bad ideas, in ways that can do quite immediate harm. Right now Mr. Obama is hailing the tax-cut deal as a boost to the economy -- but Republicans are already talking about spending cuts that would offset any positive effects from the deal. And how effectively can he oppose these demands, when he himself has embraced the rhetoric of belt-tightening?"
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