Gipper 2.0 by E.J. Dionne, Jr.

[babylonsister]

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=c96fe917-0090-4dbe-8c1e-5ec93fa35c28

Gipper 2.0 by E.J. Dionne, Jr.
Obama in 2008 makes sense in the same way Reagan was right for 1980.
Post Date Thursday, February 28, 2008


snip//

Still, Democrats kept telling themselves, right to November, that voters wouldn't fall for any of this. Charisma, eloquence, idealism and hope were no match for experience, realism, prudence and predictability.

The Reagan metaphor explains why Hillary Clinton was in trouble from the moment she failed to knock Obama out of the race in Iowa. During the last two months, Democrats in large numbers have reached the same conclusion that so many Republicans did in 1980: Now is the time to go for broke, to challenge not only the ruling party but also the governing ideas of the previous political era and the political coalition that allowed them to dominate public life.

"This is our time," Obama says in a short sentence full of meaning. The conservative age is as dead now as the liberal age was in 1980. Jimmy Carter, in many ways not a liberal at all, became the whipping boy for the end of liberalism. George W. Bush, no pure conservative, has come to symbolize the collapse of conservatism. "It is time to turn the page and write a new chapter in American history," Obama says--exactly the sentiment of the Ronald Reagan who invoked Tom Paine.

The frustration of the Clinton campaign is understandable. Like George H.W. Bush, whom Reagan defeated for the presidential nomination in 1980, Hillary Clinton has worked very hard, knows government from the inside out, and would clearly provide the country with a safe set of hands. The Clintonites argue, fairly, that there is no way to know if Obama can live up to The Promise of Obama.

But the same was true of Ronald Reagan. In that 1980 speech, Reagan quoted a certain Democratic president who "told the generation of the Great Depression that it had a 'rendezvous with destiny.' I believe that this generation of Americans today has a rendezvous with destiny."

Obama is being propelled by the same sense of historical opportunity, and that is why it will be hard to derail him.

[Demeter]

1. Very Flashy, But Untrue

having tried everything else, Americans are going for real.

[babylonsister]

2. Why do you

say this is untrue? Your negatives are not what Dionne was trying to write here.

[Demeter]

3. You Want Me to Think on an Empty Stomach? Okay!

Ronald Reagan was senile--his Alzheimers may not have been officially diagnosed until he left office, but it was operational all the same. Everybody knew it, they talked about it, they joked about it, they gossiped about it, they wrote books about it. But it didn't matter.

The critics spoke nothing but the truth about Reagan--and the truth was dismissed in a whitewashing of Media Love (and funny money) that made one sick.

Speechifying is a useful skill, but it is only useful in certain specific situations. Speechifying gets you press attention. Organization gets the vote. Reagan's campaign was organized. So is Obama's.

And while the GOP solidarity is a formidable obstacle, it is shrinking daily in the face of reality checks and the turnover of the generations. Bush has killed the old Reagan coalition. It won't be there to protect any other CONservative.

Obama is making the reach-out effort. He may even be sincere, which Reagan wasn't.

But Obama's core supporters are educated voters. Reagan went for the hicks and the gullible. The hicks and the gullible were betrayed, and they know it. They aren't going to leap when McCain comes down to the polls. Look at the relative turnouts between GOP and Democrats--2:1! The betrayed are looking for something else. And they found it in Obama. They may even not be disappointed, this time.

Obama isn't perfect, and there are still a lot of unknowns. But he's the best we are offered at this point.