While Barack Obama may not have meant to praise the former President, it is hard to read his statement that Reagan offered a "sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing" as something other than a compliment. In any case, in his recent, well-publicized remarks, Barack did NOT say anything specifically contemning Reagan's policies (other than to say that he did not agree with all of them).
Obama is, of course, hardly alone in this. His supporters (and I now count myself as one) have correctly pointed to similar remarks by Hilary Clinton and others. Paul Krugman argues that this failure to condemn Reagan's policies and what they have done to our country (e.g., the huge income gap; the profiting of the top 1% at the expense of everyone else, etc.) is a huge mistake. In his NY Times column today, Debunking the Reagan Myth, Krugman argues that any discussion of Reagan needs to puncture the haigiography the political right has imposed on our discourse:
Historical narratives matter. That’s why conservatives are still writing books denouncing F.D.R. and the New Deal; they understand that the way Americans perceive bygone eras, even eras from the seemingly distant past, affects politics today.
This is especially important because Bush's economic legacy -- which our next President must undo -- is simply Reaganomics run amok:
Like Ronald Reagan, President Bush began his term in office with big tax cuts for the rich and promises that the benefits would trickle down to the middle class. Like Reagan, he also began his term with an economic slump, then claimed that the recovery from that slump proved the success of his policies.
And like Reaganomics — but more quickly — Bushonomics has ended in grief. The public mood today is as grim as it was in 1992. Wages are lagging behind inflation. Employment growth in the Bush years has been pathetic compared with job creation in the Clinton era. Even if we don’t have a formal recession — and the odds now are that we will — the optimism of the 1990s has evaporated.
This is, in short, a time when progressives ought to be driving home the idea that the right’s ideas don’t work, and never have.
Krugman goes on to agree with Obama that Clinton failed to change the country's trajectory and argues that the failure to change the Reagan narrative -- what author Daniel Brook calls "the low tax vision of freedom" (which has led to the U.S. becoming just about the LEAST entrepreneureal and socially mobile of the world's developped countries) -- is the prime culprit:
The great failure of the Clinton administration — more important even than its failure to achieve health care reform, though the two failures were closely related — was the fact that it didn’t change the narrative, a fact demonstrated by the way Republicans are still claiming to be the next Ronald Reagan.
Krugman's conclusion is worth noting for ALL progressives, not just Obama:
Now progressives have been granted a second chance to argue that Reaganism is fundamentally wrong: once again, the vast majority of Americans think that the country is on the wrong track. But they won’t be able to make that argument if their political leaders, whatever they meant to convey, seem to be saying that Reagan had it right.
I would go further and say that our leaders need to say over and over again that Reagan had it exactly wrong. We need an economy that protects and lifts up everyone and does impose higher taxes on the extremely wealthy (who benefit the most from society's protections) to fund the things we need as a nation including world class education, health care, infrastructure, renewable energy investment, etc.
It's not low taxes on the extremely rich that makes us free -- as Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan argued, and Bush implemented beyond their wildest dreams. It's societal investment in the things all people need that allows people to get ahead and truly be free.
If anything, Ronald Reagan killed off the "dynamism" this country had in the 1940s-1960s when our economy was the envy of the world (and our top tax rate ranged from 70 to 94%). (The problems of the 1970s had to do primarily with oil shocks not the top tax rate.) We need to proclaim this from the rooftops!