Reagan wasn’t so slick
Filed Under Barack Obama, Big Ideas, Domestic Politics, Economy, Politics, Porchy
Good piece by Jonathan Bernstein on how the press and political pundits were assessing Reagan’s performance throughout 1982 (when Reagan was in a very similar to that which Obama is in today).
The gist of the piece is that, while today we can look back at Reagan and compare Obama to him in a negative light (he hasn’t done what Reagan did, he hasn’t used his charm to insulate himself from criticism, etc) but the fact is that Reagan didn’t seem to be doing what Reagan later seemed to have done.
Essentially the first-time transformative President Reagan seemed to be showing off his novice status in a pretty egregious manner including suffering some pretty scathing remarks from Will Safire.
Check out the whole thing. I can’t think of a better way to start February than to read some criticism of Reagan.
Comments
2 Responses to “Reagan wasn’t so slick”
Good article…Problem is that the problems in the economy run a lot deeper now than they did when Reagan was President.
The specific contexts are different but obviously similar, including similar unemployment rates (Reaga’s would get worse from 82 before it would get better again). The article however was more about how difficult it is to analyze the effect of something as subjective as rhetorical prowess from a spot within the moment. I could have also linked to a Brendan Nyhan article where he succinctly states that general perception seems to favor that the president is well understood when he is doing well, and is poorly understood when he isn’t. It isn’s the skill of the speaker but the context in which he speaks.