Obama complimenting Reagan: Not the first time

Much silliness is going on about Barack Obama's praise of Ronald Reagan, who was the best president in my lifetime, and since Obama and I were born four months apart, that of course makes him the best president in his.

From AP:

Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think it's fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10 to 15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.

I couldn't agree more, except for the "conventional wisdom" bit. It seemed pretty clear to me at the time what needed to be done, and Reagan did it. And millions of Americans agreed with me--the only president born in Illinois won 44 states in 1980, and 49 in 1984.

Hillary Clinton has a diffent opinion on Reagan.

That's not the way I remember the last ten to fifteen years.

Does Senator Clinton remember malaise, misery index, or 444 days? That's the mess Reagan inherited from the worst president of the last century, Jimmy Carter.

John Edwards responded in a similar fashion:

Ronald Reagan, the man who busted unions, the man who did everything in his power to destroy the organized labor movement, the man who created a tax structure that favored the richest Americans against middle class and working families, ... we know that Ronald Reagan is not an example of change for a presidential candidate running in the Democratic Party.

Gateway Pundit has the video.

In the best part of Obama's The Audacity of Hope, Obama, with some reservations, pours even more praise on our 40th president.

That Reagan's message found such a receptive audience spoke not only to his skills as a communicator; it also spoke to the failures of liberal government, during a period of economic stagnation, to give middle-class voters any sense that it was fighting for them. For the fact was that government at every level had become too cavalier about spending taxpayer money. Too often, bureacracies were oblivious to the cost of their mandates. A lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and values over duties and responsibilities.

(Obama then veers off this brilliant thought pattern and digs a bit into Reagan's legacy.)

Audacity of Hope peaks early. The above passage appears on page 31.

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