Liberal Ronald Reagan?

Obama emerges as a liberal Reagan who can reunite America

by Andrew Sullivan

The historical analogies for the phenomenon that is Barack Obama have already stretched credibility. For a while pundits likened him to the effete loser Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic party’s 1950s version of Labour’s Hugh Gaitskell, the greatest prime minister we never had. But Obama doesn’t seem like such an airhead after his gritty, crushing defeat of Hillary Clinton in Iowa. I long thought he’d win – but I never thought it would be by eight points, or that he’d push Clinton into third place. So now the favourite analogy is JFK: the young, hopeful rhetorician urging a New Frontier after two terms of conservatism. But that doesn’t work either: JFK won by out-hawking Nixon in 1960, and Obama is a clear antiIraq war candidate. Bobby Kennedy is more apposite: a mix of inner steel and an evolving moral candidacy. Just as a vote for RFK in 1968 was seen by many as a form of collective self-absolution for Vietnam, so Obama resonates among many Americans who do not recognise what their country has become these past few years. The analogy that worries Republicans the most is a more recent one. Could Obama be a potential liberal version of Ronald Reagan? Could he do for the Democrats what Reagan did for the Republicans a quarter century ago? (read the entire article)

Adobe Acrobat copy of Obama emerges as a liberal Reagan who can reunite America

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