Hunt for a new Reagan

For many Americans, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum is a place of solemn pilgrimage. It is also the site of lavish celebrations marking what would have been the 100th birthday of the great communicator.

Yesterday, Ronald Reagan's widow Nancy laid a wreath at his grave as F-18s launched from the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier and a 21-gun salute was fired. There was a Beach Boys concert, a 6x6-foot birthday cake topped with 20,000 jelly beans (Reagan's favourite) and a bill of $5 million (£3.1 million), to be settled using funds raised privately. Among those paying homage in person were Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, both with presumed presidential aspirations in 2012. The formal start of the Republican presidential campaign will take place in May with a debate at, naturally, the Reagan library.

Perhaps more surprising is that there is a new claimant to the Reagan throne this year: President Barack Obama. Having once routinely derided Reagan as, in the words of Democratic greybeard Clark Clifford, an ‘amiable dunce', the liberal establishment is now seeking to embrace him. Obama first tried to grab Reagan's mantle three years ago when he cited the Gipper as a way of taking a shot at the Clintons by saying that the Republican had ‘changed the trajectory of America' in a way that former presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton had not. Reagan, he added, responded to a feeling that "we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship". Now, Obama sees Reagan's aura as a potential political lifeline as he hopes to emulate his forerunner's feat of receiving a drubbing in midterm elections after two years (in 1982) followed by a landslide re-election victory two years after that. Obama's recent State of the Union speech was full of self-conscious optimism (though the slogan ‘winning the future' is a pygmy compared with Reagan's ‘morning in America') and appeals to bipartisanship — a nod to the celebrated fact that Reagan managed to work with Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, a liberal Democrat.

Weary disdain

Other Democrats, taking this a step further, are using Reagan as a stick to beat the modern Republican party, painting him as a moderate pragmatist who would be out of step with today's hard-right ideologues. Republicans treat all this with weary disdain. To paraphrase s enator Lloyd Bentsen's 1988 put down of Senator Dan Quayle, the older ones are saying: "I knew Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan is an idol of mine. President Obama, you're no Ronald Reagan."

Rich Galen, a Republican strategist who was working on Capitol Hill in the Reagan era, says that conservatives giggle at Obama's attempts to be Reaganesque. "Obama is diametrically opposed to everything Reagan stood for." Even on style, there's little comparison. "Obama is cold and distant whereas Reagan was warm and liked to be around people," says Galen. Some Republicans fear that Reagan is facing a posthumous political emasculation by Democrats who play down his conservatism and recast him as a squishy conciliator. There is little doubt that Reagan would have been drily derisive of Obama's policies and presidency. "Government is like a baby," Reagan once quipped. "An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other."

Obama, by contrast, views government as a kindly nurse and the people as the baby. According to his mindset, the people should submit to those in government who know better and whose role is to make decisions and control the purse strings. Reagan's sunny optimism was all about looking forward. He was not a nostalgic man.

To do battle with Democrats over who Reagan was leads Republicans into a debate over the past when they need to be setting out a vision for the future. It would be best for the Republicans who hope to oust Obama next year if the current 100th birthday celebrations mark the moment that Reagan was finally consigned to the history books. Tussles over who Reagan was and futile attempts by Republican candidates to define themselves in terms of how they measure up with his legacy are exactly what Obama and the Democrats want.