Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Obama might be the Liberal Reagan … of 1968
Bob Beckel makes the now familiar claim that Obama is the liberal Reagan:
Barack Obama's current political circumstance is eerily similar to that of Ronald Reagan in his 1980 campaign for president. Both Obama and Reagan, from the beginning of their insurgent campaigns, were viewed as transformative political figures. Both enjoyed passionate grassroots support.
Both men had defeated centrist establishment candidates for their party's nomination. Reagan defeated George H.W. Bush, who was viewed by the growing conservative base of the Republican Party as too moderate. Obama beat Hilary Clinton whose husband had been elected twice by moving away from his party's traditional progressive roots and running as a centrist, a path Clinton herself followed (at least at the beginning of her campaign).
To which, Blake Dvorak counters:
the reason the example gives Obama too much credit is because Reagan, even in 1980, was a known commodity. He was 68 years old, a two-term governor of California and, before that, a Hollywood celebrity very much involved in politics. For all the so-called "risk" Americans were taking with Reagan, it wasn't really a blind risk. Moreover, Reagan was very clear on the kind of change he was offering. Obama? He still disputes being called a liberal.
Dvorak, I think, has the better of the argument: Obama is not the liberal Reagan of 1980. Reagan had a lot more significant experience than Obama has, so he wasn’t as much of a roll of the dice; he had been governor of the nation’s biggest state for eight years, while Obama has been a U.S. Senator for only three years and a state senator for six years.
Yet both Dvorak and Beckel overlook the possibility that Obama is the Reagan not of 1980 but of 1968. Besides the fact that both men were skilled orators and led an ideological movement, both lacked experience when they first ran for president. Reagan had been governor for only a year and a half when he ran for president. And he nearly won the party’s nomination. (Clymer got this right, while Powerline did not. See the best book on the 1968 campaign). If Nixon had not made a deal over Supreme Court nominees and enforcing desegregation with Strom Thurmond, he likely would have lost to Reagan. (“I love that man,” Thurmond said of Reagan. “He’s the best hope we’ve got.”)
To wax counterfactual, imagine Reagan had won the GOP’s nomination in 1968. Would he have beaten poor old Humphrey? Well, he had about as good of a chance as Obama.
(Photo by user Barack Obama used under a Creative Commons license.)
Why the Democrats are Blue
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Reader Comments (5)
It's not 1980 but one or two other years.
What year is to be repeated? I like a theory I've seen advanced that we need to go back even further, that this will be a "repudiation" election, a la 1952 and 1920. Those were also elections with a very unpopular president (Truman, Wilson) not seeking re-election, whose party's candidate was not tied to the incumbent.
It happens that both those candidates were quality individuals (Adlai Stevenson, and James M. Cox, whose running mate was a young FDR.) It didn't matter.
In both cases, the "out" party scored unprecedented victories. Cox lost New York City, his vote share sank well below 30 percent in many western and midwestern states, and scores of Democratic candidates were dragged down.
Stevenson carried no states outside the south, and even there Eisenhower did better than any Republican since reconstruction.
If you want a more recent analogy, consider the British Tories' drubbing by Tony Blair in 1997, one it took them a decade to recover from.
Obama will win, and it won't be close.
Bill makes an intriguing point: 2008 will be for the Republicans what 1952 and 1920 were to the Democrats. Who can deny that the GOP is a sorry mess?
That said, I don't buy the 1952 analogy. Eisenhower was an enormously popular war hero. So popular was he that Democrats, including John Bailey and Jacob Arvey, sought to recruit him to run as the Democrats' nominee in 1948. Obama does have his admirers on the right, but not enough that GOP leaders would attempt to recruit him.
It's possible 2008 will be like 1920. Alas, I know little about that election. Bill, please tell me more.
Here's 1920 in a nutshell. Woodrow Wilson was bedridden after a stroke, his wife was basically running the country. The Republicans had captured Congress in 1918, and the Senate had rejected the Versailles treaty. Adding to postwar disillusionment with Wilson, there had been a wave of strikes in 1919, the "red scare" and Attorney General Palmer's raids against suspected radicals (these made J. Edgar Hoover's name, and made the civil liberties violations of Nixon and George W. look like kid stuff.) To top it off, prohibition had been enacted.
Wilson's Vice President, Thomas Marshall, was a total non-entity, remembered only for his crack that "what this country needs is a good 5 cent cigar."
Theodore Roosevelt had planned a comeback in 1920, and his death left a vacuum in the GOP. Stronger candidates deadlocked at the convention, leaving the opening for Harding, a first-term Ohio senator.
Ohio Gov. James M. Cox, the Democrat, had the unenviable task of distancing himself from the hugely unpopular Wilson without alienating the bitter-end Wilson loyalists.
As the joke goes, HOW bad a blowout was it?
Cox lost by margins of more than 4-1 in Wisconsin, more than 3-1 in Michigan, Minnesota and the Dakotas, and more than 2-1 in California, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington.
Harding ran respectably for a Republican in many southern states, and the GOP captured a few mountain congressional seats. I believe the Republicans took more than 300 House seats- at a time when they were shut out in most southern states. This was probably their peak.
Why? Bitterness among ethnic groups that opposed the war (Germans), were unhappy with the Versailles treaty (Italians), or were disproportionately targeted by the Palmer raids (Jews). Mountain areas were also a center of opposition to the war.
Two footnotes: Cox was the last Democrat candidate to fail to carry a majority of Jews. A plurality of Jewish votes went to Eugene Debs, the Socialist candidate Woodrow Wilson had jailed for his opposition to the war. Also, Al Smith was unseated as governor of New York, due to the Harding landslide.
Since McCain is now warning that Obama would be another Jimmy Carter, perhaps he should reach 50 years farther back and warn that Harding showed the dangers of electing an inexperienced Midwestern senator.
As for 1952, there was no question about Ike's popularity. But he was nominated after a bitter struggle with Robert Taft, and Richard Nixon's Checkers scandal could not have helped. I think a candidate of Stevenson's eloquence and integrity would not have been shut out beyond the south except for Truman's extreme unpopularity.
Mark - Thanks for visiting my blog from time to time! I've tagged you for the six-word memoir meme - check out www.despitelupus.blogspot.com when you've got the chance. You're the only published one among us, so you've got to come up with something good. :)
Thanks!