Dems, Republicans, and the ‘Party of Ideas’

January 19, 2008

Following up on the last post, Barack Obama made a comment the other day about the “party of ideas” that Hillary Clinton’s campaign has characterized in a variety of imaginative ways. In a silly season of misleading attacks, this one, too, is very disappointing.

Here’s what Obama said that sparked the latest campaign flap:

“The Republican approach I think has played itself out. I think it’s fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time over the last 10 or 15 years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom. Now, you’ve heard it all before. You look at the economic policies, when they’re being debated among the presidential candidates, it’s all tax cuts. Well, we’ve done that, we’ve tried it.”

In the interview, Obama denounced some of the “ideas” he’d referred to in the “party of ideas” remark, but the Clinton campaign pounced anyway.

First came a Clinton campaign conference call with reporters.

Senior Clinton officials held a conference call with reporters today with Mass. Rep. Barney Frank, Florida Rep. Corinne Brown and Nevada Rep. Shelley Berkley to criticize Obama’s comments.

“Yes, the Republican Party was the party of ideas, of bad ideas,” Rep. Brown said on the call.

Then Hillary Clinton personally entered the fray.

“I have to say, you know, my leading opponent the other day said that he thought the Republicans had better ideas than Democrats the last ten to fifteen years. That’s not the way I remember the last ten to fifteen years.”

And then Bill Clinton repeated the talking points.

“Her principal opponent said that since 1992, the Republicans have had all the good ideas,” Clinton said, adding, “I’m not making this up, folks.”

Actually, he was.

It’s hard to overstate how disappointing this is. Obama didn’t say Republicans had “better” ideas, and he didn’t say Republicans “had all the good ideas.” No fair reading of the quote could lead to this conclusion.

The point, of course, was that Republicans were, as Obama put it, “challenging conventional wisdom” of the time. In the 1980s and 1990s, Republicans sought to remake the government. They saw Dems establish a New Deal system, expanded in the 1960s and 1970s, and the GOP set out to undo what Dems had done. In this sense, Republicans were very much the “party of ideas” — Dems wanted to preserve and expand the government system they’d helped to create, and Republicans had all kinds of ideas about shaking up the system (which meant, of course, a dramatic shift to the right). That’s not an endorsement; it’s a recognition of recent political history.

Consider, for example, the rise of the right’s intellectual infrastructure over the last couple of decades. Conservatives created powerful think tanks to churn out research on their ideas to dramatically change the status quo. Where were the progressive think tanks? Up until fairly recently, they didn’t really exist, at least not at the right’s level.

I’d argue that the “party of ideas” label effectively shifted in 2005. Bush pushed to privatize Social Security, the country balked, and Republicans quickly realized that they’d run out of policy items on their wish list. They went through the motions — voting on constitutional amendments to ban flag burning and discriminate against gays — but these were the last gasps of a movement that had run aground. By the time of the 2006 midterms, Dems were offering a specific national policy agenda filled with new ideas that challenged the status quo, and Republicans were left to argue, “Dems bad. Taxes bad. Gays bad. Vote GOP.”

It was pathetic, and Republicans lost both chambers. The party isn’t even close to recovering — indeed, the leading Republican candidates aren’t offering new ideas about anything. They are where the Dems were in the 1980s and 1990s, defending the status quo and hoping to build on what they’ve created (i.e., more tax cuts). It’s precisely why Obama said, “The Republican approach I think has played itself out.”

The parties, in this sense, have switched places when it comes to visions and challenging the existing rules. Dems were the party of the status quo and Republicans were the party of ideas. Now, the opposite is true. I’m not even sure why anyone would find this controversial.

As Markos put it, “Yes, the GOP was the party of ideas. They were crappy ideas. But they were ‘ideas.’ That’s not controversial, so I’m not sure why the Clinton campaign is making such a big deal out of it.”

I’m not either, but I have to admit, I don’t care for it. To reiterate a point I raised the other day, politics ain’t beanbag. Clinton, Obama, and Edwards are going to take rhetorical shots at one another, and some of them are going to be cheaper than others. I get it.

But it’s still my hope that all of the Dems can at least go negative based on actual controversies, not manufactured ones that only work if one plays fast and loose with the truth.

Post Script: I also wanted to make one slightly unrelated point. None of this criticism should ever be interpreted as an endorsement or a denunciation of any one candidate or campaign. I’ve defended Clinton and criticized her. I’ve done the same for all of the candidates. My goal is to just call ’em like I see ’em, and hope that the Dems run smart, aggressive, reality-based campaigns. When they fall short, I’ll say so, but that’s not indicative of playing favorites.

And again, to follow up on my critique on the last thread, calling the R’s the “party of ideas” gives them far too much credit. They may have had marketing, but not ideas. The present Conservative Movement really found its footing in the Gingrich revolution – the signature of which was the “Contract With America.” But look at that thing – where are the “ideas” there? It was all fluff, much of it rehashed fluff. There was nothing intellectual enough to be labelled an “idea.” Tax cuts and term limits (the latter which they never had the first intent of abiding by)? They need think tanks for this?

Again, even if Obama points out that the ideas were bad, calling them the “Party of Ideas” validates their victories over the Democrats for the past 15 years. It makes people less urgent about the need to crush the movement, it makes people more sympathetic to their legacy — and in the end, that makes it harder for Dems to sell wholesale change.

Obama has becom better atbuffing up the Republicans tattered image than the Republicans themselves, all in the name of outreach.

People have painted the majority of the Democratic primary voters as “anti-Clinton,” by pairing the support for Obama and Edwards as the “change” movement. I would suggest a more accurate view may be that the Clinton and Edwards voters are the “outrage” movement – the only ones who seem to appreciate just how bad the Republicans are and how harshly they have to be dealt with. I increasingly fear Obama would take a WaPo-like “start from a clean slate” approach rather than doing the unearthing, airing, and cleaning up of the 8 years of BushCo; that he would compromise on judges in the name of making the system function again without first insisting we even up the liberal-conservative numbers on the bench. I trust Edwards and Clinton to have the righteous indignation about BushCo that I find necessary right now.

  • Arggh. I pull up the previous post and there are no comments. By the time I get mine phrased more or less how I want it and post it, there are already ten up there. Fine, but I go to check the main page a second later and now there’s a new post on the same topic! Help! Can’t keep up!

    But seriously interesting stuff. Taking off from what I said in the previous thread, I think Obama may actually be playing a pretty shrewd game with this ambiguously Right/Moderate/Independent-friendly stuff and there’s some evidence of its potential to work for him in the Iowa results. It’s about to get tested some more. Clearly the HRC camp wants to put some barricades in place against it. I don’t think it’s going to work. He’s actually kind of playing the Conventional Wisdom game against itself in what may be a more sophisticated way than it looks. Rather than opposing some of the narratives we who hang out on sites like this hate, he’s availing himself of them but using them to his own purposes.

    In any case I DO think this is a moment much like the one the GOP had in Ronnie’s day, and I WOULD like a leader who can take that energy and pivot the country in the positive direction it so desperately needs to move in. Whereas HRC’s “experience” essentially means “more of the same, but tweaked a bit around the edges.” How it’s shaping up for me at the moment anyway.

  • Re zeitgeist:

    Yeah, well, that’s the HRC line and I’m not unsympathetic. But it really isn’t “buffing the gop’s image” when you look at what he said.

    I think it’s fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time over the last 10 or 15 years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom. Now, you’ve heard it all before. You look at the economic policies, when they’re being debated among the presidential candidates, it’s all tax cuts. Well, we’ve done that, we’ve tried it.”

    He’s not advocating their ideas; he’s describing how they took advantage of their political-historical moment. And saying he thinks we can do the same thing, only in OUR direction not theirs. I have no objections to this whatsoever. I do question whether he’s the guy who can pull it off. But I don’t question that someone has to, and he’s putting it in context in a way I haven’t heard anyone else do.

  • Once again, I agree with CB whole-heartedly. But after these Reagan and “party of ideas” controversies (manufactured as they are), Obama needs to realize that he’s feeding the machine with comments that are easily misrepresented by dishonest opponents. Hopefully Obama will learn to stop (at least during these primaries) giving anybody on the right any credit for anything — even if its just being in the right place at the right time or being effective marketers of greed and stupidity.

  • Clintons: LYING HYPOCRITES!

    But no president can do it alone. She must break recent tradition, cast cronyism aside and fill her cabinet with the best people, not only the best Democrats, but the best Republicans as well.. We’re confident she will do that. Her list of favorite presidents – Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Truman, George H.W. Bush and Reagan – demonstrates how she thinks.

    http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=4674

    “Hillary and I will always remember President Ronald Reagan for the way he personified the indomitable optimism of the American people, and for keeping America at the forefront of the fight for freedom for people everywhere…

    “We will always remember his tremendous capacity to inspire and comfort us in times of tragedy, …and we can rest assured that, as joyous a place as Heaven is, his wit and sunny disposition are making it an even brighter place to be.” President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Clinton.

    http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132×4092735

    And, not like Obama haters will accept this, even though it’s true and no many time it’s repeated, OBAMA NEVER SAID HE LIKED REAGAN OR HIS IDEAS. He merely stated the obvious, that Reagan seized an opportunity for change, like we have right now, and ran with it, like he intends to do as well. The idea that Obama likes Reagan’s policies is beyond ridiculous, and if you believe that, I want whatever it is you’re smoking. Seriously people. Take a deep breath and a step back. Slowly.

  • The Clinton campaign’s morphing Obama’s statement into:

    “Her principal opponent said that since 1992, the Republicans have had all the good ideas,” Clinton said, adding, “I’m not making this up, folks,”

    is not only ridiculous, it’s worse than the Obama supporters’ attempt to make something racist out of Hillary’s MLK/LBJ statement. Worse, because Obama’s supporters over interpreted Hillary’s comment while the Clintons are flat out lying about what Obama said.

    Zeitgeist:
    I trust Edwards and Clinton to have the righteous indignation about BushCo that I find necessary right now.

    Too bad that her righteous indignation didn’t extend to denying the Repubs her vote on Kyl-Lieberman. The only thing that Hillary is indignant about is that she has actual competition instead of a coronation.

  • The Republican party may not be the party of ideas, at least not good ones. But what i see in all of this is the same old Clinton politiking.

    Perhaps Sen. Obama should pointedly ask Sen. Clinton exactly how many good ideas have come from the Democratic party since she and her husband gained relative control over it. More importantly, how many of those ideas have been implemented. (Of course, she will respond with, “The partisanship of the Republican party squashed all of our good ideas.” And to some extent that is true, but it neglects to admit the fact that in Clinton’s first term he had as many problems with liberal Democrats as he did with Republicans. It also does not take into account that the first defense the Clintons have always employed is to call partisanship.

    If i remember correctly, we were sold an idea by the Clintons: building a bridge to the 21st Century, i think they called it. It looks like that bridge resembles the one that collapsed in Minnesota due to structural design flaws.

    I’ve never been a believer in the idea that the 90’s were some kind of halcyon era, nor that Bill Clinton should get the credit for it; however, i recently red “The Corruption of American Politics” by Elizabeth Drew, which has given me a whole different point of view on our current situation.

  • The Clintons are liars through and through. Period.

    They’re highly skilled liars. So skilled they probably even fool themselves most of the time. Except, of course, for his one slip up in front the Grand Jury.

    If it comes to that I’ll vote for them again, but it’s like voting for the Borgias.

  • Chris said:
    Obama needs to realize that he’s feeding the machine with comments that are easily misrepresented by dishonest opponents.
    —–
    I occurs to me that Obama may be giving the electorate credit for being much more intelligent than candidates generally do. He’s depending on us to be able to differentiate between Reagan as an agent of change and Reagan as the bringer of all that is good and right. If that’s what he’s doing, and if he’s right, he’s got Clinton and Edwards and the MSM talking about him all the time, and we’re all spitting coffee on our monitors when Bill says stupid things like, “…since 1992, the Republicans have had all the good ideas…”.

  • Obama should pointedly ask Sen. Clinton exactly how many good ideas have come from the Democratic party since she and her husband gained relative control over it. More importantly, how many of those ideas have been implemented.

    I’m not sure which party you support, but most Democrats find S-CHIP, expanded EITC, the Brady Bill, the Family and Medical Leave Act, sharply increased real wages, broader Medicare coverage, streamling and expending financial aid for college opportunity, decreasing violent crime rates and the like to be “good ideas.”

    All were implemented by President Clinton.

    My god progressives have short memories.

  • zeitgeist,

    S-CHIP was Kennedy and a repub Senator’s (who I can’t remember) baby. The Clintons had nothing to do with it till the last minute. Only reason I know was that on another website, we had a brawl over this.

  • There is a rather precise parallel for this moment, of course. They’re perfectly aware of what he did (and didn’t) say. But their intent is to turn it into Obama’s “Gore said he invented teh Internet!” moment.

    On the other hand, I see the flap about Clinton disparaging MLK vis a vis LBJ in pretty much the same light.

  • TCR –

    Thanks for posting this. I didn’t like Obama holding up the Republicans as an example of change but he was right. Reagan was a force for change. Anyone who says that Reagan wasn’t needs to go back to the history books. As Obama said, Reagan got the country to move in a new direction. Everything that he said was historically correct.

  • All were implemented by President Clinton.

    I’m inclined to let the discussion go where it goes, but I wanted to weigh in briefly, because zeitgeist is touching on a key point here, some of which I agree with, and some of which I don’t.

    When I look back at Bill Clinton’s presidency, I see an extraordinary success story. Clinton was an extremely effective and capable president, and I think any suggestion to the contrary is foolish. The country was far better off after eight years of his leadership than when he started. When I talk to Bill Clinton critics, I’m generally inclined to ask, “What is it about peace and prosperity you don’t like?”

    But in the context of this discussion, I also think it’s reasonable to question whether the Big Dog was a transformational figure. Some of the successes zeitgeist pointed to were building on government programs that already existed. Clinton didn’t fundamentally move the needle in the Dems’ direction with a new, progressive policy agenda. (In some instances, he delivered on programs Dems wanted in the ’80s, but couldn’t get.)

    In many respects, that’s not his fault. He tried national healthcare, and came up short. When Republicans took Congress, his choices were limited, and he had to accept incremental gains where he could. In some instances — on welfare, for example, or declaring the end of the “era of big government” — Clinton succeeded by borrowing from the GOP playbook.

    None of this is intended as criticism. I’ve always had enormous respect and admiration for Bill Clinton, and look at his presidency as an overwhelming positive. But for Obama (or anyone else) to argue that Clinton did not fundamentally transform the political landscape seems, at a minimum, fair.

  • The context of the quote:

    “What I’m saying is I think the average baby-boomers have moved beyond the arguments of the 60’s but our politicians haven’t. We’re still having the same argument… It’s all around culture wars and it’s all … even when you discuss war the frame of reference is all Vietnam. Well that’s not my frame of reference. My frame of reference is “what works.” Even when I first opposed the war in Iraq, my first line was I don’t oppose all wars, specifically to make clear that this is not an anti-military, you know, 70’s love-in kind of approach.”

    “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. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. 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.”

  • “It’s hard to overstate how disappointing this is” says CB.

    It is EXTREMELY disappointing to see how the Clintons and even Edwards now (who I have planned on voting for) are taking this interview and totally changing the meaning so they can attack. What is even more disappointing is reading the “progressive blogs” and seeing what the so called progressives are saying. I really thought “we” were more intelligent than that – not to mention wanting the “TRUTH” to come out after the last seven years (28 years actually).

    I have been downright depressed the last two days over the state of the “progressive party”.

  • In the time it took Bill to “recreate” Obama’s comment, I would have hoped that he could have come up with an intellectual argument. But evidently that’s not Bill (or Hillary) and after 8 years of Shrub and I really can’t think of anything worse right now than another 4 of Billary. They are the most ambitious couple out there, they want back in the WH, and they will do and say anything they can to achieve that goal.

    It walks like a duck, etc etc……

  • I have to ask, zeitgest, for someone as smart and obviously well-versed in politics as you, why do you think Democrats can lay the foundation for a progressive movement on righteous indignation for an-already shamed GOP leader?

    This is what frustrates me about some people. They’re still thinking like the Dems are a minority/opposition party. We need to be making a positive argument for why we should be in control, not a negative argument for why the other guy sucks. And I mean that “positive” and “negative” in the logical sense, rather than the happy/sad sense. And we need to be developing a strategy for governance based on the premise of being a majority party.

    “BushCo is evil!!” is neither a positive argument for the Democratic party nor the foundation for a governing as the majority party.

    This frustrates me to no end. How much are you willing ot get give up in order to get your revenge? I’d love to personally beat Bush and Cheney senseless with a wrench or some other such heavy blunt object. But it’s far more important to take this opportunity to make the case for Democrats, not just take the easy route of trashing Republicans. “vote for us, cause they suck!” might win the election, but it won’t bring progressivism forward.

    And again, this isn’t just some armchair argument (though it seems obviously true on its face). Every national poll, as ‘meaningless’ as they may be at this point, suggests Obama, the least partisan of the Dems, is the best-positioned to win an enormous, mandate-inducing victory.

  • I have been downright depressed the last two days over the state of the “progressive party”.

    John, agreed. CB, Josh Marshall, Ezra Klein, and Markos have all been refreshingly strong on this issue, which is nice, since neither CB nor Josh have endorses, Ezra has made it clear he prefers Edwards, and Markos has previously lambasted Obama for echoing “GOP talking points” or whatever.

    So that’s nice.

    Particularly worth reading is where Markos points out that everything Obama said could’ve come right out of Crashing the Gates, the DKos bible:

    read here

  • Actually, for Zeitgest, I’m just gonna recreate the entire post. Sorry, you’re just factually wrong when you say the GOP didn’t have ideas

    From Crashing the Gate, page 107:

    Think tanks sprung up like weeds. By the time the Scaife-funded Heritage Foundation launched in 1973, it was their eighth think tank focused on economic and foreign policy ideas. Through the 1970s, more such groups were set up, including the American Legislative Exchange Council in 1973 and the libertarian-leaning CATO institute in 1977. By the time Ronald Reagan came on the national scene to run for president against Jimmy Carter in 1980, the conservative movement had about fifteen think tanks pumping out ideas and refining the message. When Reagan won, Heritage gave him a 1,077-page document titled Mandate for Leadership: Policy Management in a Conservative Administration, which Reagan promptly handed out to every cabinet member at their first meeting. The antigovernment and pro-privatization document was so detailed that it didn’t just promote offshore oil drilling, but specified particular lots that should be exploited. It provided a step-by-step guide on how to transform conservative principles into government policy. It may have been mind-numbingly boring to read, but the paperback version was not only a bestseller inside Washington, D.C., but tangible evidence of the Right’s new sophistication—one that had a detailed core set of ideas and policies. Amazingly, Heritage boasts that “nearly two-thirds of the 2,000 recommendations contained in Mandate were adopted by the Reagan administration.”

    While Reagan ran as an antigovernment Republican in 1980, the conservative machine worked hard through the 1980s and 1990s to create a new agenda for the country, ready for the day that it took over Congress. , to a governing party. “When Reagan and Bush won in the 1980s, they did not have an affirmative agenda for America,” notes Stein. “Their agenda was to lower taxes and dismantle the liberal establishment, the structure of government. Get rid of the Office of Economic Opportunity, all these poverty programs, all these Legal Services—Gingrich, and later, George W. Bush and his frighteningly effective brain trust, drew heavily from Marvin Olasky, a product of the Bradley Foundation and author of the 1992 tome Tragedy of American Compassion. The antigovernment thesis of Olasky argued that only the faith community, private individuals, and charity organizations could tackle poverty. He dubbed his thesis “compassionate conservatism.”

    Eight years later, “Bush used that term ‘compassionate conservatism,’ got elected, and then that affirmative agenda that they had worked on for fifteen years is now everything you see,” Stein said. “It’s Social Security reform, ‘tort reform,’ preemption as a military policy, No Child Left Behind, ‘Clear Skies,’ school vouchers, it’s the entire agenda.” And if you want any proof that those investments in think tanks and research foundations by the big money conservative donors paid off, simply check out the Heritage Foundation website, where you will find this blurb from Karl Rove: “Heritage is the intellectual centerpiece in Washington for conservative ideas … We stole from every publication we could; we stole several key staff persons; we want to steal more of your ideas.”

    There is nothing shady about this VRWC, there is nothing illegal about the network of conservative organizations promoting and coor- dinating their efforts. In fact, what conservatives have built over the past thirty years is nothing short of brilliant. We can admire it the way we would admire the precision, engineering, and craftsmanship of a stealth fighter.

    Yes, Republicans had ideas. Yes, they were looking outside conventional wisdom for solutions to problems.

    Yes, they were bad ideas. But Obama didn’t say otherwise. He just said they had ideas.

    And they did. Their entire movement was built on them, like it or not.

    Note the part especially about being ready to transition from opposition to majority party. Dems have an agenda for that, but do they have an electoral and governing strategy to match the same? For Edwards, no. For Hillary, no. A populist uprising that’ll never spread beyond the party base is not a strategy for getting to where we want to be, nor is it the philosophical foundation for a governing strategy. Nor is “ready to lead from day one/strength and experience/the smart choice” (Hill’s new one). A candidacy and campaign based on challenging the Beltway, social and civic engagement, defining progressive priorities and solutions as the challenges for bipartisan work (universal health care, restoring America’s image abroad, strengthening the middle class, etc)…that’s precisely what the Dems need.

    They might all be running for the Dem nomination, but only one of the campaigns seems to be planning on running to actually establish the Democratic party as the party of a working majority, and do it grounded in progressive principles.

  • As many of the comments have attempted, I will not make excuses for Obama’s pandering to the right-wing Las Vegas Review Journal in order to position himself for independent and Republican votes in the general election. By invoking Reagan’s name, the union buster in chief, Obama pissed off many Democrats and validated the conservative myth that big government is our enemy. Clinton and Edwards were right to jump on him about it. This is a Democratic caucus for Democrats. I hope sending out flyers saying, “You can be a Democrat for a Day” at the Nevada caucus, causes him to lose plenty of votes. The Culinary Workers Union should never have endorsed him. If he believes, the union hating Republican party was the party of ideas, he should run on the Republican ticket.

  • I think the lesson here for Obama is that subtlety doesn’t work in today’s politics. It won’t work against Clinton and it won’t work against the Republicans. If a remark is interpretable it will be interpreted in the worst possible way.

  • What do you want Hillary to do? Be a wimp?

    She’s running for President of the United States.

    Her opponent is Barack Obama, a guy who’s spokesperson jumped in on it when a Democratic congressman basically called Clinton disrespectful of MLK, Jr., and the civil rights movement. That’s bullshit. Barack obliquely apologized, but the original statement was already out there.

  • It’s hard to overstate how disappointing this is….

    Yeah but Slick Willie doesn’t give a damn what you think.
    He will say what he wants and do what he wants without regard to the truth:

    http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0108/Bill_Clinton_claims_he_witnessed_voter_suppression.html

    Because Sick Slick Willie knows this:

    Most of you will prove yourself dutiful card carrying members of your sacred political party. He knows in the end you will hold your nose and troop off like good foot soldiers to vote for his stanky wife. The “lesser of two evils,” and all that other sweet rationalizing belly rot you have grown to be so good at. Yes, the Big Dog is counting on you to do your duty…

    Not me of course.
    I am straight republican ticket for as long the Clintons are around.
    And if you think voting like that is going to be easy for me you are dead-drunk wrong.
    But I am simply cannot tolerate these Clinton reptiles anymore…
    Like Kansas, I’d rather vote against my own self interest rather than stomach these two reprehensible creatures one moment longer.

  • lowdowndog —

    Nobody’s making “excuses” for Obama. Its not necessary, since he didn’t say anything wrong (unless you think making factual statements that are easily misrepresented by dishonest opponents wrong),

  • CB (welcome to the thread – I don’t recall the last time I saw you actually jump into the discussion!) – not surprising, I largely agree with your analysis. I don’t know that I would say (and have not said, I don’t think) that Pres. Clinton was “transformational.” But I do think he was very successful and accomplished a lot of good, if not always headline-grabbing, things.

    But I’m not sure one has to be transformational or headline-grabbing to be a great President. And as we’ve discussed re Reagan, what some perceive as “transformation” is not always positive. Moreover, few Presidents are given the opportunity or circumstances to be transformational – that is amuch a function of luck as anything.

    That said, I think as “transformational” is somewhat relative and in the eye of the beholder, just as Obama’s comments can be considered in the range of “fair,” it would also be fair to suggest that the change in trajectory on numerous issues — from the economy, to crime rate, to the role of government, to the relationship between the President and the people — between GHW Bush and Clinton is so sharp it can fairly be defined as a transformation.

    I really sense that the negativity toward President Clinton has much less to do with an honest assessment of what he did manage to accomplish or how dramatic a change he was from the preceding 12 years than it is an anger about what people perceive as to what could have been. That strikes me as a bit complicated because (a) we don’t really know if he would have gotten any more done absent the drama – he was often at his best politically when his back was to the wall; (b) the Republicans would have found something, even absent Monica – they played a type of hardball not seen in generations, and no one on the Dem side was ready with a response; (c) the moment wasn’t there – people lament Clinton’s allegedly cautious centrism, but in some ways he blew it by being too bold. The first week he was in office he said he’d allow gays in the military and it totally blew up on him and he had to settle for DADT. He was well ahead of where the country was at the time on gay rights. And finally (d) while Clinton was far from innocent, there is a bit of blaming the victim here — the Republicans were being obstructionist pre-Monica, and things like refusing to give judicial nominees votes is wholly independent of the scandals (and that ignores that the scandals should never have happened – WhiteWater was a wasted, pointless witchhunt that turned into a weird, prurient witchhunt and complete waste of tax dollars.)

  • Reading Obama’s quote, it sounds as if he was putting airquotes around the “party of ideas” phrase. Along with his comments on Reagan, Obama seems to be referring to the packaging Republicans have been using to gussy up their counterproductive ideas to make them more palatable to the voting public which came across as refreshing to some. The Republicans, since Reagan have managed to project an image that they have a new and more pragmatic way of looking at things. Obama does point out that their ideas were instead wayward and we need to get back on track.

  • CJ: Everyone’s stupid in an election year, Charlie.
    Charlie: No, everyone gets treated stupid in an election year, C.J.

    What if Obama’s gambling that people really are hungry for change, they really are paying attention, and the usual distort-and-smash glibness isn’t going to play out? What if he remembers that this is a nation founded by and full of political junkies and that participatory democracy is in fact our time-honored national passtime? What if he’s betting that we’re not as stupid as we’ve been told we are (and, admittedly, as we’ve been acting for two decades)?

    What if Bill and Hilary, deliberately mishearing his statements, are in fact playing directly into his strategy?

    It’s gonna be an interesting year…

  • He said what he said! Geez, can’t Obama just come out and say that President Clinton was a GREAT President? That does not mean that Hillary will be a great President. She is running, not Bill. Can’t he come out and say that Reagan was a terrible President for the middle class and poor?

    Look folks. I was an Obama supporter. Now, I am on the fence. He said what he said. At the very least, he could have chosen his words much better. You remember the spinning and twisting of John Kerry’s comments. Yes, they were taken out of context, but he was STUPID for making statements that can be twisted. Obama is showing inexperience and that is not good. And, once again, he said what he said. I will see if Obama makes a full retraction or comes out with an attack on Reganomics and praise for President Clinton’s tenure. Otherwise, he is history with me.

  • I agree with much of what Doug just said. And I’ll add that Obama’s comments weren’t some innocent mistake — he was intentionally slighting Bill Clinton’s presidency and giving a dog-whistle signal toward Republicans and independents to support him in the caucuses

    He may have thought he was cleverly protecting himself by not explicitly praising GOP ideas, but unfortunately for him Team Clinton decided to respond to the spirit, not the letter, of his words (even if they had to severely distort the latter in order to do it). Eschewing literal accuracy, they grabbed the dog whistle out of Obama’s mouth and rammed it down his throat.

    Rough justice, if you ask me.

  • ***ROTF whatever*** “Stanky wife?…slick Willie? Reprehensible Creatures? You are so petty and filled with hate that you have no credibility as everything from you is an attack and degrading to any discussion. I’m glad you are voting Republican…stick your head right up Cheney’s butt and breathe deep because that’s what you sound like. Rather than help change anything you must find it easier to just condemn it. So go troll somewhere where you can show your support for the GOP, they can really appreciate your hatred of the Clintons. Here you are not appreciated.

    ***Michael*** that was unnecessary. Like saying the Nazis were the party of ideas…can’t deny it. They did what all the conservative think tanks did…who, by the way were entirely wrong on everything they have said about the war/occupation or economic policy. Well funded propaganda machines are of course full of ideas. None of this was pertinent and Obama’s motivation was to draw in repub/independ. support. If he didn’t know that only the first part of his sentence would be quoted then he’s inept. “The republicans were the party of ideas”…would be all anyone really would hear. The Clinton’s twisted the comment to make it worse and that was disappointing, but consider if how you would feel if Hukabee or McCain had said..” You know, the democrats have been the party of ideas for the last 15 yrs”…would that comment not have made you amiable to that candidate?
    Zeitgeist hit it right on the head. Face it, voters are out in droves to become involved in this election not out of “Hope” but out of “Necessity”. They are furious at what has happened to our nation. They includes me. We see that something must be done before our nation is lost. There is a sense of urgency to stop the direction this country is going in and it won’t be done by invitingthe same people who stubbornly put the nation in this condition to the table to continue to obstruct changing direction. We must restore our constitution and our freedoms by eliminating those who would take it from us. by regulating the profiteers who have prospered from our grief, from war, from health care, from robbing our treasury.

    I don’t like how the Clintons framed it but Obama was pandering to the right with his comments and should know better. The GOP was the party of many things, but ideas are way down the list…how about the party of hypocrisy, of greed, of corporatism, of corruption and conspiracy. And ***Stellaa***lest you forget those nine most hated words Reagan the Terrible mentions…”I’m from the government and I’m here to help”…brought smiles of relief to Katrina victims, to family members of those suffering from Alzheimer’s, to those disabled returning vets, to all the poor sick and needy uneducated millions. The only people that it brought misery to were the greedy profiteers who did not want anyone regulating their greed or their profits, or telling them how to treat the environment. Reagan was a bought and paid for President who brought more harm to this nation than nearly any other president till Bush.

  • Just a quick note, not all progressive ideas will be winners for this country either.

    And have I said recently that I would be very happy with either Obama, Clinton or Edwards as my Dem candidate?

  • Please, keep the “Obama is the ONE” meme a little lower. I can’t read this blog anymore if everything Obama does is sent down, and everything Clinton says is a lie. Perhaps you should change the name of the website to “Blogging for Obama – THE ONE, and p.s. Hillary is a witch”.

  • I’m sorry to say that I believe your analysis was completely off the mark. I found no fault with Obama until he made those pretty ignorant comment. If Obama had said the Republican party was innovative in the last 10 to 15 years I would have been less offended by his comments. But what he said was the Republican party was “the party of ideas.” How many parties do we have in our political system? So if the Republicans were the party of ideas what were the Democrats? Non-thinking entities. Let’s put in perspective. Let’s say a white political analyst had said: “I think it’s fair to say Whites were the race of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time over the last century, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.” Are you telling me blacks(and other minorities) wouldn’t take offense at that? Of course they would, because saying that one group was THE group of ideas, implies that another group in that same category did not have any ideas. And if you think that’s true then you need a refresher course on the Clinton administration.

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