Barack Obama met with the Editorial Board of the Reno Gazette-Journal earlier this week and had some interesting things to say about himself as compared to past Presidents:
Obama, in his interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal’s editorial board, made the case that his movement is as much about a national moment as about him as a “singular” individual, and he drew a rather odd analogy for a Democrat: Ronald Reagan.
“Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not, and a way that Bill Clinton did not,” he said, describing Reagan as appealing to a sentiment that, “We want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism nad entrepreneurship that had been missing.”
Naturally, a lot of people are emphasizing the fact that Obama compliments Reagan, and, as Ron Chusid notes John F. Kennedy, as the same type of “agent of change” that he wants to be, while at the same time saying that Bill Clinton, who just happens to be the husband of his principal opponent, had an impact on the nation similar to Richard Nixon’s.
It will be interesting to see how the lefty blogosphere reacts to this one.
Here is a YouTube video of the relevant part of the interview:
And the full interview (all 49 minutes of it) can be found here.
