I’ve been saying ever since he was a long-shot candidate that if anyone thought that Barack Obama was a bleeding-heart liberal then they just weren’t listening. The man is a hard-core centrist. His fine speaking abilities and outgoing personality combined with that centrisim to put many people in mind of Ronald Reagan. Andrew Sullivan identified Obama as the Democratic Reagan way back in May of 2007, and not in a way that the small-c conservative Sullivan was really thrilled about.
It is interesting though that a traditional (or as I like to think of it “real”) conservative like Sullivan, when faced with the choice of McCain/Palin vs. Obama/Biden emphatically chose the Democratic ticket as the more reasonable choice.
It is also interesting that many of my friends on the progressive side look at the Obama administration’s accomplishments to date and polling numbers and begin to feel despair, and that those on the right looks at the same thing and begin to feel hope. Both of those sentiments are probably premature. First because we are only 10 months into his first term and second, as Charles Franklin at Pollster.com points out, there is a startling similarity between the first 6 month polling numbers of both Regan and Obama.
Of the ten post-war presidents in the chart, Reagan and Obama currently stand as the two lowest at this point in their first term. (Clinton fell lower early, but was recovering at this point before another decline and rise.) Reagan finished as the second lowest just before his midterm in 1982, ahead of only Truman. It happens that the economy under Reagan also bottomed out in November 1982, the worst possible time for the president and his party.
Obama in blue and Reagan in red. Obama’s line is more jagged because polling is more frequent than in the ’80′s. But the trend line is startlingly close. So, progressives: hang in there. Teabaggers: don’t get your hopes up.
