I understand what Barack Obama was saying. What I don't understand is why he didn't underscore the obvious within, which is always advisable in the cheap-shot atmosphere of rancid party politics.
The "what" of what he said to the Reno Gazette-Journal was so bloody straightforward and indisputable:
"I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not."
On its face, absolutely true. Warren G. Harding also changed the trajectory of America in a way that Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt did not. And the latter two changed it in ways that William McKinley did not. Neither observation does injury to partisan sensibilities -- not sober ones, anyway. They're just historical facts.
"He put us on a fundamentally different path," Obama continued, "because the country was ready for it."
Here, the only modifier to "different path" was "fundamentally," and only the most fiery-eyed of over-imbibing French deconstructionists would seriously contend that somehow buried in Obama's modifier was the deeper, subtextual meaning of a "righteously" different path. As for the "country being ready for it," some slight but factual evidence does exist, after all -- say, in the whopping 489 to 49 electoral vote of 1980?
Is such a recognition an endorsement? If I were to write that Hitler took Germany on a fundamentally different path in 1933 because the country -- omit value judgment here -- was ready for it, would that make me a Nazi propagandist? Or if I observed that Lenin did the same with Russia in 1917, am I therefore a closet Bolshevik? Get a life, as they say.
Obama went further still, with his head precariously in hand: "I think they 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."
Again, point out one singular syllable in that innocuous survey that intellectually insults the actual political circumstances of 1980. America had undergone an emotionally charged cultural revolution and the shame of a savage, protracted, imperialistic war. The economy was on the brink and we were helplessly tied down by a third-rate power. Consequently Americans were suffering from what one presidential pollster and advisor -- Pat Caddell -- identified as "malaise." There was resistance to it, a yearning to shake it off, Q.E.D.
Now, what I just said is all that Obama said. Nothing more, just marginally reworded. And I'm no more of a Ronald Reagan apologist than the Illinois senator. I'll go to my grave believing devoutly that the Gipper was a tawdry, narrow-minded, God-exploiting flag-waver whose executed vision of America set us back decades. He offered "clarity," all right, along with "optimism" and "dynamism" -- of the Gilded Age.
I have no doubt, nor does his voting record indicate to any degree, that Obama concurs. But he didn't add the commentary. He just stated the historical record as it was, circa 1980. And woe to the pol who droppeth nuggets of objectivity.
John Edwards pounced, as one would expect, and Obama should have. "I can promise you this," bellowed Edwards, "this president will never use Ronald Reagan as an example for change." Which of course Obama didn't, certainly not along the lines Edwards was suggesting. But it was a rousing crowd pleaser, however shamefully opportunistic.
But John, let me ask you this, since we're celebrating distortion. As I recall, last year you attended the Jefferson-Jackson Day event in Iowa. How could you, John? For let us take a historical peek at just old Andy Jackson alone.
Here was a man who fraudulently dispossessed the rightful owners of Native-American lands, defended the "peculiar institution" with every fiber of his thoroughly racist body, openly defied the Supreme Court and the rule of law, foolishly retarded America's economic development and, from time to time, acted as a virtual military dictator.
Yet you attended an event in his honor? You endorse those acts -- that history?
Of course not. You understand that he was a man of his times, who, objectively speaking, merely capitalized on the contemporary yearning for national optimism and dynamism. And in doing so he wisely broadened the powers of the presidency and thereby made possible our Roosevelts and Lincolns.
Facts are facts. Let's leave the tawdry distorting of them to Republicans. OK?