Skip to footer

Obama, Romney both want Reagan mantle

Both candidates have made comparisons with the conservative icon.

|
Barry Thumma/AP/File
President Ronald Reagan has been invoked by both sides in the 2012 presidential race.
  • By Tom Raum The Associated Press

There they go again. President Barack Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney both like to channel Ronald Reagan. Neither one should probably push it too far.

Obama frequently mentions the conservative icon and hints at parallels between now and 1984.

Then, President Reagan also was seeking a second term after a severe recession that sent unemployment soaring into double digits. His approval ratings that April were in the low 50s. Obama's now are just below 50 percent.

RECOMMENDED: Mitt Romney's top 5 attacks on President Obama

But as Election Day neared, Reagan benefited from a surging recovery and swamped Democrat Walter Mondale. Obama still faces stubbornly high joblessness and anemic growth.

Obama was campaigning Wednesday in Ohio and Michigan — battleground states hard hit by the recession and home in the 1980s to blue-collar "Reagan Democrats."

Obama even tried renaming his "Buffett Rule" proposal for higher taxes on millionaires to "the Reagan Rule" because Reagan supported closing tax loopholes.

But Reagan only favored closing certain ones and never advocated raising taxes on the wealthy as have Obama and billionaire investor Warren Buffett. Republicans fumed, with House Speaker John Boehner calling Obama's gambit "pathetic."

Romney claims the president is trying to hide his identity as a liberal who promotes government programs instead of individual opportunity — the antithesis of Reagan.

Romney portrays himself as a Reagan-like advocate for smaller government and lower taxes, although he's yet to persuade many Republicans that he's truly a conservative. .

He recently suggested the possible elimination of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and dramatically scaling back the Education Department.

Reagan once proposed abolishing the Departments of Education and Energy and criticized the housing department.

RECOMMENDED: Mitt Romney's top 5 attacks on President Obama

But as president, he did little to scale back these agencies.

Romney also reprises the hawkish, sometimes unilateral, foreign policy doctrine that Reagan sounded.

But Reagan served during the Cold War — and global geopolitics were different then.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Obama, Romney both want Reagan mantle
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0418/Obama-Romney-both-want-Reagan-mantle
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe