Legal Commentary

Obama No FDR: Part 2

By Big Tent Democrat

Kevin Drum:

The plain, boring fact is that Obama, like all presidents, is constrained by circumstances and by Congress, and he just hasn't had the Congress to do much more than he's done. FDR and LBJ won landslide victories and enjoyed enormous congressional majorities. By contrast, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Obama won solid victories and had sizeable congressional majorities (though only in the Senate for Reagan). That's who he should be compared to, and on that score he shapes up pretty well: clearly better than Carter and Clinton and quite possibly the equal of Reagan.

I take this to mean that Drum thinks Obama's "achievements" in the first two years (funny how they are the "President's achievements" when you want to give him credit, and it is the "Congress' fault" when you want to let the President off the hook) are as "transformative" as Reagan's and more transformative than Clinton and Carter's. A matter of opinion I suppose, but I am curious why Reagan's "achievements" are rated higher than Clinton's by Drum? Reagan's big achievement was cutting taxes for the rich and corporations. Clinton's big achievement was raising taxes on the rich and corporations and cutting them for the working poor. How is one "achievement" more transformative than the other?

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on August 20, 2010 (boomark / email).