First, I want to make clear that I think that there has been some overreaction to Obama's statement. I don't believe he said he admired Reagan's politics or the outcome of his policies. I don't believe he said he wanted to emulated the lying, conniving, criminal activities of the Reagan Administration. Folks who took Obama's use of the name Reagan and conflated that into what it wasn't do not advance the discussion.

Second, I support John Edwards for the Democratic nomination and believe that he has both the best chance to win in the general election and will make a better president than the other two leading contenders. (Or else why would I support him!?) But my support doesn't mean I turned off my brain or my critical thinking facilities, and I don't automatically agree with everything said by everyone else who might show some semblence of support or agreement with Edwards.

But now, on with the show....

This seems to be the part of the meeting Obama had with the Reno Gazette-Journal editorial board on 1/14/08 that has engendered the strongest reaction:

I don't want to present myself as some sort of singular figure.  I think part of what's different are the times.  I do think that, for example, the 1980 election was different.  I think, I mean, Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know,  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 they felt like, that 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...  And 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.

The criticism from a number of sides on the blogosphere is that Reagan is not the example for a Democrat to cite.  Here are just a few names and places most of you will recognize weighing in:

Digby (one of, if not the, preeminent bloggers in the  progressive blogosphere):

I hate to say it because I'm going to get mercilessly roasted alive, but with all that jargon about government growing and growing without "accountability in terms of how it was operating" and "dynamism" and "entrepreneurship" it sounds an awful lot like DLC boiler plate. They capitulated to the "Reagan Revolution" hype exactly that way in the 1980's and developed an entire political strategy around it.

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I'm not saying that Obama is DLC. But the interpretation of that election as being a reaction against liberalism and big government certainly is and that acceptance of their myth has served conservatives very well. There's a reason their movement has developed this ridiculous St. Ronnie hagiography --- it's to inextricably associate their dark, divisive ideology with his carefully manufactured cheerful persona. It protects their movement from the harmful consequences of their wrecking ball policies. "We're not like those losers --- we're the party of Reagan, the sunny, optimistic, winner everybody loved! Look, here's our new Reagan! Vote for him!"

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I get that Obama is signaling that he sees this election as a game changing election like 1980. And he may very well be right about that. I hope so. But it's disconcerting to hear him casually recount these Republican arguments without a clear disclaimer, as if it's a matter of fact not opinion. People may have believed in 1980 that the "excesses" of the 1960's and the 1970's were the cause of all their problems and that government had "grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating" but that doesn't make it true. Republican propaganda conveniently offered up all kinds of scapegoats for the fact that the US was reeling from Vietnam, Watergate, a terrible oil shock --- and a lousy economy as a result of all those things. An awful lot of the "excesses" Reagan spoke of in carefully coded speech had to do with civil rights and more urgently at the time, integration, specifically busing, which was one of the hot buttons that drove the "Reagan Democrats" outside the south to the Republicans. And then there was the relentless, militant fear mongering about the Evil Empire ...

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Read Rick Perlstein's excellent discussion of the fallacy of extending Reagan's rancid myth:

... accepting the right's successful fantasy-frame about what Reagan was all about surrenders to one of their most successful strategies: affecting innocence about the terrible consequences of their own ideology in the here and now--helping conservatism, as an ideology, survive to fight another day...

They are not dead yet, far from it. It's not good to help them keep their myths alive while they recover from their bloodsucking overindulgence of the past couple of decades. If it's absolutely necessary to reach out to independents and Republicans in the primary, there are better ways to do it than evoking the name of the patron saint of the radical conservative movement.

Over at Hold Fast blog:

One of the biggest problems that I have with Obama's comments on Reagan is that he's putting himself in line with the modern Republican Party's historical canon, the media elite that bought pro-Reagan revisionism from the day he left office, and, ironically, the entire Republican presidential field.

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I tend to agree with Digby about why siddling up to Reagan is not a good thing for any Democrat, let alone the ostensibly more progressive of our two front-running presidential candidates, to do:

Reagan ran explicitly against the left (and in the process normalized the kind of indecent talk that made Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter millionaires.) Because he won big in 1984, leaders in both parties accepted this omnipotent Reagan myth and have run against liberalism ever since -- and have ended up, through both commission and omission, advancing the destructive conservative policies that brought us to a place where we are debating things like torture. It would be helpful if ending the era of Democrats running against the liberal base could be part of this new progressive "trajectory."

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In an email on the takeaways from the Obama/Reagan kerfuffle, HTML Mencken of Sadly, No! writes:

I reject any candidate or platform which does not explicitly rebel against current position of the Overton Window. A decent national politics rejects Reagan and Reaganism tout court; just because the Sensible Liberals in the 80s or their heirs in the DLC in the 90s didn't do the right thing doesn't mean that a candidate in 08 ought to be allowed to continue their tradition. The zeitgeist demands a Leftwing ascendence; the only way to do it correctly -- to not waste an historical opportunity -- is to proceed with a `bipartisanship is date-rape' mentality; the only way to pop bubbles like Reagan's is to stop shielding them at the same time with triangulations. Obama's `postpartisan' schtick has always struck me as rarified triangulation.

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When Barack Obama praises Reagan's political skills, he misses the presence of the movement of people that will support him taking a progressive tack on governance. The country is ready and in sore need of proud Democratic leadership. It would be a crying shame if Obama failed to recognize this fact.

Melissa McEwan at Shakesville (aka Shakespeare's Sister):

Here be 10 problems, in no particular order, with positively invoking Patron Saint of Conservative Fuck-Knuckles Ronald Reagan for any reason:

1. He is the patron saint of conservative fuck-knuckles. In a hotly contested Democratic primary for the presidency, following eight long years of a Republican presidency which has left progressive activists exhausted to their very bones with outrage fatigue and fed up to the bloody teeth with conservatives, trying to distinguish yourself by claiming to be Reagan's heir--even if it has absolutely nothing to do with Reagan's actual policies--is stupid. And infuriating. And bound to be misunderstood.

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3. "Ronald Reagan didn't appeal to people's optimism, he appealed to their petty, small minded bigotry and selfishness. ... There's enough hagiography of Reagan on the right, I don't think Democrats really need to go there." Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake

4. "[Reagan] ran a partisan, ideological divisive campaign that excoriated Democratic values and trumpeted GOP values. He also race baited." BTD, Talk Left

5. "Lauding [the Gipper] for tapping into the country's concern with the growth and 'excesses' of the federal government, and its desire to 'return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship' [is] hardly a welcomed interpretation within progressive circles." Sam Stein, HuffPo

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8. "To long time liberals who lived through this period as an adult, it's like waving a red flag in our faces." Digby, Hullabaloo

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I associate the name Ronald Reagan with deadly indifference and fear.

Yes, Mr. Obama--he changed the trajectory of America. You are correct. And yes--he buried his transformative agenda beneath a veneer of optimism. You are correct. And I don't care. I know you aren't praising his policies. I know you aren't putting him on a pedestal. I know what you were saying, and it still stinks.

There are other voices out there, I leave it to you to do the research and round them up.  The point is that there are some people in the blogosphere who, in different words perhaps and in varying tones, agree with John Edwards when he makes the point that Ronald Reagan is NOT the name for a Democratic contender in the race to be the standard bearer of the Democratic Party to be dropping.

Reagan may have been a smiling, optimistic person on the campaign trail (at times) and when propped up behind a podium, but it is impossible to separate the policies, practices, and outright criminal behavior of the Reagan Administration, the resulting rise of the conservative movement, and the countless lives that have been damaged and destroyed by that legacy from that happy countenance.

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Obama and many of his supporters go to great lengths about "generational differences." "Boomers" is taking on the same perjorative quality as "liberals" did under Reagan.

I would caution those who want to take this approach. It's as simple as the old adage paraphrased: those who do not learn from the ones who lived through history are doomed to repeat it.

Denigrate or ignore those who lived through the real excesses of the Reagan years at your own peril.

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rant deleted in the interest of "unity"