Column: In ethnic pandering, Obama can't top Reagan

It's a good bet history will remember this presidential election as one in which a candidate, faced with polls that showed the contest was too close to call, shamelessly pandered to one of his party's constituencies to boost their turnout and his chances of victory. History will recall that, in a widely covered speech, this guy sounded as though he had less concern for the law of the land than the arch of his political ambition. And it will conclude that in the wake of that grossly political moment, he showed no contrition for his hurtful act.

By Alex Wong, Getty Images

Obama: Discusses DREAM Act Friday.

By Alex Wong, Getty Images

Obama: Discusses DREAM Act Friday.

DeWayne Wickham USATODAY columnist

It's also probably a good bet you don't realize I'm talking about Ronald Reagan— not Barack Obama.

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Though his Republican critics claim that President Obama's decision to stop the deportation of young people — most of them Hispanics — who entered this country illegally as children was a crassly political action, what Obama did last week doesn't compare with Reagan's action in 1980.

A temporary reprieve

In a White House Rose Garden speech Friday, Obama used his executive authority to order an immediate stop to efforts to return these young people to countries many of them left before they even learned to speak. Instead, they will get a temporary reprieve until Congress enacts a badly needed immigration reform law.

"It seems the president has put election-year politics above responsible policies," Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement released by his office.

But while the president's action is clearly intended to court Hispanics, whose votes in the battleground states of Florida, Nevada, Colorado, Virginia and North Carolina could tilt the election to Obama, it was as much an act of compassion as politics.

The same can't be said for what Reagan did. Shortly after the 1980 GOP convention, Reagan went to Philadelphia, Miss., scene of one of the civil rights era's most brutal crimes, to launch his campaign to unseat President Carter. In his speech, Reagan told his audience, "I believe in states' rights," which, then and now, are buzzwords for those who want to undo the civil rights gains blacks made in the 1960s.

Race-baiting tactic

In 1968, Republican Richard Nixon used a race-baiting "Southern strategy" of appeasement of Southern racists to help him win the presidency. It also turned the party of Abraham Lincoln into the party of Strom Thurmond. But in 1976, Carter reversed that gain when he won every state of the old Confederacy except Virginia and put the White House back in the Democratic Party column.

What Reagan did in 1980 to defeat Carter far exceeds what Obama has done to court Hispanic voters in a race with Republican Mitt Romney that many analysts say is too close to call.

Obama's suspension of the deportation of children brought into this country illegally is as much a humanitarian act as a political gesture. It doesn't sit well with right-wingers, I suspect, because they are more concerned with who is allowed to migrate into this country than with whether they got here legally.

They want to slow the arrival of the day, projected to be around 2050, when minorities in the U.S. will outnumber non-Hispanic whites. This is what they mean when they say, "I want my country back."

This is the view of America that Reagan emboldened with his states' rights speech.

And it is the antithesis of the message of inclusion that Obama sent when he announced a decision that's not only, for him, good politics — but also is good public policy in this nation of immigrants.

DeWayne Wickham writes on Tuesdays for USA TODAY.

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On Stump, Romney Is Fond of Bill Clinton and Obama Praises Reagan

And for that matter, just for clarity, Ronald Reagan certainly would not be supporting President Obama, either.

To listen to the candidates on the campaign trail these days is a form of political whiplash. Mr. Romney lavishes praise on the very Democratic Mr. Clinton for breaking with his party’s traditional big-government orthodoxy, while Mr. Obama harks back to the very Republican Mr. Reagan for agreement that millionaires should not pay lower tax rates than the middle class.

The inside-out rhetoric, of course, is mainly about scoring points against the opponent in an increasingly fiery election year. When Mr. Romney refers favorably to Mr. Clinton, it is to make the point that Mr. Obama has abandoned the centrist legacy of his Democratic predecessor. When Mr. Obama invokes the spirit of Mr. Reagan, it is to argue that the Republican Party of Mr. Romney has drifted far away from its popular roots.

But the admiration expressed for the two former occupants of the White House also testifies to the fluidity of presidential reputations. Lost to history, it seems, is just how much Democrats loathed Mr. Reagan in the 1980s as an anti-communist zealot who thought that ketchup was a vegetable. Or how much Republicans despised Mr. Clinton in the 1990s as a slick huckster who dishonored the Oval Office. In the space of time, polarizing presidents have become historic statesmen.

“Presidential candidates occasionally seem to recant their onetime political opposition to a recent president of the opposite party,” said the presidential historian Michael Beschloss. “One reason is that with some historical distance, they may sometimes come to genuinely appreciate leadership qualities they didn’t notice before.” But, he added, “more often it’s politics.”

Mr. Beschloss recalled that Gerald R. Ford and the elder George Bush opposed Harry S. Truman in 1948 but after entering the White House themselves cited him, genuinely, as a role model. Richard M. Nixon derided George McGovern for not living up to the legacy of Mr. Truman and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Even Mr. Reagan cited John F. Kennedy in arguing for tax cuts, overlooking his own past criticism of the Democrat’s economic policies as “old Karl Marx.”

Frank J. Donatelli, a former Reagan White House political director, said the flattery had less to do with genuine admiration than calculation. “You want to show that your opponent is at odds with a respected former president from his own party as a way to marginalize him,” Mr. Donatelli said. “It’s a bid for centrist voters who nevertheless admire Reagan and Clinton’s records and results.”

Still, the notion that Democrats could hold out Mr. Reagan as a model or Republicans could do so with Mr. Clinton suggests how passions fade over the years. Both left office with high approval ratings and came to be appreciated for their successes, while failures and scandals have been overlooked. Mr. Reagan today is remembered for restoring national confidence and helping end the cold war. Mr. Clinton is remembered for reforming welfare and balancing the budget. It helped that both presided over periods of economic growth with comparatively little armed conflict overseas.

Mr. Obama began citing Mr. Reagan during the 2008 campaign as a political jab at his primary opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Unlike her husband, Mr. Obama said, Mr. Reagan had been a “transformative political leader.” Now with Mrs. Clinton in the cabinet and Mr. Clinton on the campaign trail alongside him, the president has dropped the comparison, but he still cites Mr. Reagan to make arguments in favor of economic, immigration and nuclear disarmament policies.

He quoted Mr. Reagan just last month as he pushed for a new tax on millionaires. “That wild-eyed, socialist, tax-hiking class warrior was Ronald Reagan,” Mr. Obama said. “He thought that in America, the wealthiest should pay their fair share, and he said so.”

A couple weeks later, Mr. Obama was at it again. “Ronald Reagan could not get through a Republican primary in this election cycle,” he said. “Could not get through it. Here’s a guy who raised taxes. That in and of itself would have rendered him unelectable in a Republican primary.” Standing with him that evening was none other than Mr. Clinton, no longer a poor shadow of Mr. Reagan in Mr. Obama’s rendering but now a president who accumulated a “remarkable record” as he turned around a party that “was a little bit lost.”

Mr. Clinton has become a frequent touchstone for Mr. Romney lately as well. Instead of the president impeached for lying under oath to cover up an affair with an intern, Mr. Clinton in this telling is the apostle of fiscal responsibility as opposed to that “old-school liberal” now in the White House.

“Almost a generation ago, Bill Clinton announced that the era of big government was over,” Mr. Romney said this week. “Even a former McGovern campaign worker like President Clinton was signaling to his own party that Democrats should no longer try to govern by proposing a new program for every problem.

“President Obama,” he went on, “tucked away the Clinton doctrine in his large drawer of discarded ideas, along with transparency and bipartisanship. It’s enough to make you wonder if maybe it was a personal beef with the Clintons, but really it runs much deeper.”

From Mr. Romney’s perspective, it does not hurt to remind centrist Democrats of the past tensions and disagreements between Mr. Obama and the Clintons.

Not that every president from another party becomes suddenly acceptable. Mr. Romney has implicitly compared Mr. Obama to Jimmy Carter, while Mr. Obama routinely links Mr. Romney to the policies of George W. Bush. When Mr. Bush endorsed Mr. Romney before ducking into an elevator this week, Mr. Romney made little note of it, but the Obama camp eagerly spread the news.

To guardians of the former presidents’ legacies, the latest campaign-trail tributes ring hollow. John D. Podesta, a former Clinton chief of staff who now leads the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund, said it was “ironic that Romney is so exuberant in embracing Clintonomics” since Mr. Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy, invested in education and technology, and balanced the budget. “Maybe Romney was too busy firing people in the ’90s to have noticed,” Mr. Podesta said.

Craig Shirley, a conservative consultant and Reagan biographer, likewise said that Mr. Obama’s invocations of Mr. Reagan were off base. “At first blush, I would say good for him,” he said. “But deeper, I would say Obama is profoundly misinformed if he thinks Ronald Reagan would agree with any of his policies. The fundamental difference is Reagan believed in people while Obama believes in government.”

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Reagan Democrats’ could decide winner of Michigan primary - Boston Herald

SHELBY TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Mitt Romney has to win Michigan’s Republican primary Tuesday. So does Rick Santorum.

They’re going about it in very different ways.

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, promotes himself as a "son of Detroit" who left to conquer the business world. His carefully scripted rallies feature not only reminiscences of the old Detroit area neighborhood, but also reminders of his history as a successful corporate turnaround artist.

Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, offers a different story. He roared into Michigan with strong momentum, having won three contests this month. His freewheeling stump speeches usually are laced with heartfelt reminders of his devotion to God and family.

Polls have shown Santorum and Romney running about even. A Romney loss in a state where, on paper, everything should go his way would be a serious blow. A Santorum defeat would raise new questions about his appeal beyond die-hard conservatives.

A victory by either man would demonstrate appeal in a blue-collar industrial state and give him an important boost in next week’s primary in neighboring Ohio.

Michigan Republicans are torn. Do the residents of this economically ailing state put aside their skepticism about the depth of Romney’s conservatism and choose the businessman who seems best positioned to win in November? Or do they follow their heart sand pick Santorum? And where does Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who campaigned vigorously over the weekend, fit?

Shelby Township, a Detroit suburb visited by both Santorum and Romney in recent weeks, is in an area known in political circles as the suburbs that made famous "Reagan Democrats," rank-and-file workers who felt Democrats let them down economically and culturally and began voting Republican in the 1980s.

At Biggby Coffee on Van Dyke Avenue, the customers drink the $2 java and tell the state’s still-evolving Republican primary story.

"The jury’s out on who people like most," said franchise owner David Danyko.

Customers Stan Grot, Bo Chapman and Mike Torres have similar views — solidly conservative, eager for lower taxes and less regulation, and wary of President Barack Obama.

Grot supports Romney. Chapman prefers Santorum. Torres likes Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who’s making virtually no effort in Michigan.

Grot, the township clerk, worked in manufacturing engineering at General Motors. He lost his job in 1980, spent a year on unemployment and left the Democratic Party.

"I listened to Ronald Reagan’s message," he said. "Ronald Reagan spoke to opportunity and personal responsibility. He created an environment so businesses could thrive."

Grot liked how the 1981 tax cuts put more money in consumers’ pockets, and he opened a restaurant in Hamtramck. He ran it for eight years before selling the place; it’s still thriving today.

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