Reagan and Obama: Not so different?
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At first glance, they share few of the same characteristics. But upon closer examination, you'll find some striking parallels.
Editorial
By Robert Schmuhl*
The Chicago Tribune
January 14, 2007
Just before U.S. Sen. Barack Obama admitted on the TV television program "Meet the Press" last fall that he was thinking about a run for the presidency, host Tim Russert asked him to define a great president.
Noting that 90 percent of any White House agenda is "set by circumstances" beyond a president's control, Illinois' junior senator selected one Republican (Abraham Lincoln) and one Democrat (Franklin D. Roosevelt)--both for their abilities to master tumultuous times.
Then, waxing more philosophical, Obama addressed the broader, cultural significance. "When I think about great presidents," he said, "I think about those who transform how we think about ourselves as a country in fundamental ways so that, at the end of their tenure, we have looked and said to ourselves, that's who we are. And ... you know, there are circumstances in which I would argue Ronald Reagan was a very successful president."
While confessing disagreement with Reagan on many issues, Obama observed that when Reagan left the White House, "People, I think, said, `You know what? We can regain our greatness. Individual responsibility and personal responsibility are important.'"
In terms of political philosophy, professional background and racial heritage, Obama and Reagan are distinctly different, one a figure of the new century and the other a representative of the previous one.
Look more closely, however, and you see a number of striking parallels between the young senator contemplating a White House campaign and the late, Illinois-born two-term president.
The mom factor
Both men come from families dominated by their mothers. Nelle Reagan was, according to journalist and biographer Lou Cannon, "the exemplar for Ronald Reagan." That Reagan took to calling wife Nancy "Mommy" is telling, simultaneously a term of endearment and a tribute. In "President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime," Cannon refers to the nickname as "a special compliment from a man who as a child had depended upon his mother for stability and guidance in a world made unstable by his father's alcoholism."
In Obama's case, his parents separated when he was 2, with his father returning to Africa. His mother, from Kansas, was "white as milk," in the son's words; he described his Kenyan father as "black as pitch." This mixed-raced background made him the offspring of two worlds, a situation he tried to better understand by writing his memoir, "Dreams From My Father."
When the book was reissued in 2004, he notes the death of his mother shortly after the book was originally published. "I won't try to describe how deeply I mourn her passing still," he writes. "I know that she was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known, and that what is best in me I owe to her."
Both Reagan and Obama had careers outside of politics before embarking on campaigns for elective office in states where they had moved as young men. Reagan was a fixture at movie and television studios in Hollywood for a quarter-century. Obama spent nearly a decade engaging in community organizing and practicing civil rights law in Chicago.
In an interesting coincidence, both published autobiographies a year before becoming political candidates for the first time. Reagan's "Where's the Rest of Me?" appeared in 1965 just before his 1966 gubernatorial campaign in California, and Obama's "Dreams From My Father" came out in 1995 in advance of his 1996 race for the Illinois state Senate.
Once elected, neither was shy about trying to improve his political position. In 1968, Reagan made a late, ill-fated run for the Republican presidential nomination, losing to Richard Nixon. In 1976 (two years after completing eight years as governor), Reagan challenged incumbent Gerald Ford to be the GOP standard-bearer, getting edged out at the party's convention. Four years later, he won the nomination and, ultimately, the general election against then-President Jimmy Carter.
Ambition propelled Obama to take on four-term Congressman Bobby Rush in the 2000 Democratic primary for a U.S. House seat from Chicago. Obama was trounced and returned to the state Senate before prevailing in the 2004 U.S. Senate race against Alan Keyes.
Obama now sees his attempt to unseat Rush as humiliating and misguided, calling it in his recent book, "The Audacity of Hope," "a race in which everything that could go wrong did go wrong, in which my own mistakes were compounded by tragedy and farce." Reagan, too, realized that his halfhearted attempt to gain the presidential nomination in '68 didn't help him politically.
Reagan and Obama also share the mysterious yet magical quality of charisma that attracts and inspires others. Their ready smiles, rhetorical eloquence and rock-star magnetism transcend day-to-day politics, and citizens respond emotionally as well as intellectually.
At a time when so much political oratory sounds processed by an anonymous speech writer, Reagan and Obama's words have the ring of authenticity. In addition, the optimism that comes from patriotic reverence provides a thematic refrain for each figure.
The power of words
To Reagan, in speech after speech, the U.S. was "the shining city on a hill," and, echoing Lincoln, "the last best hope of man on Earth."
To Obama, there's "an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation" and, in the last sentence of "The Audacity of Hope," "My heart is filled with love for this country."
Both Reagan and Obama delivered a single speech that captured the public's attention and catapulted them to the front rank of national figures. On Oct. 27, 1964, Reagan as a private, albeit well-known, citizen spoke in a paid political telecast on behalf of Barry Goldwater's presidential candidacy. The Arizona senator lost in a landslide to Lyndon Johnson a few days later, but Reagan--telling voters, "You and I have a rendezvous with destiny"--became fixed in their minds as a political force on the strength of his message and delivery.
In much the same way, Obama's keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention made people take notice of, in a phrase from his speech, "a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him too."
Since then, Obama has become a literary celebrity, with the new edition of his memoir and his policy-oriented "The Audacity of Hope" enjoying best-seller status.
Are such parallels predictive? Of course not. The disparity between Reagan and Obama in governmental experience is profound. Eight years as governor of the country's most populous state is executive training that eight years in the Illinois state Senate and less than a full term in the U.S. Senate could never offer. And other differences abound.
But the intriguing similarities reveal two political figures possessing common traits, including vivid personalities with rare skill in connecting with the public. Both, in their ways, speak American, the distinctive dialect of the nation's ideals and yearnings. Reassuring smiles and welcome wit of self-deprecating humor notwithstanding, electoral ambition is an animating drive for each.
In Reagan's case, it took three campaigns spanning 12 years to reach the White House. Will Obama's future follow such a course? His much-anticipated decision about 2008 will start to answer that question.
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*Robert Schmuhl is director of the John W. Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics & Democracy at the University of Notre Dame and author of "In So Many Words: Arguments and Adventures," a collection of essays.
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