Forbes Magazine has an article out showing that President Obama’s term in office has economically outperformed President Reagan’s in pretty much every category.  Oh, and he also has shrunk the deficit and reduced government.  The deficit grew dramatically under Reagan and the size of government increased as well.  I don’t see this as a “take that Reagan lovers!” article as much as it’s a “take that imaginary history!” article.

Here’s the problem with idols; your image of them is grossly distorted from their reality.  In fact, your image of them is more a reflection on yourself than reality.  Reagan is the epitome of this.  Everything good under the sun is attributed to Reagan even though a very simple analysis of the data would show that he wasn’t really that great.  Lots of bad stuff happened under his watch.  Unforgivable stuff.  Some good stuff happened too, but most of the good stuff is made up from whole cloth.

Maybe twenty years from now, the image of Obama will be like that of Reagan today.  Who knows?  I doubt it, though.  Obama will likely go down in history as the perfectly adequate politician that he was.  A pragmatist to Reagan’s idealism.  And that’s the story of Republicanism in the United States these days.  Idealism divorced from reality.  It works wonderfully for short-term gains.  Everyone loves people who pretend to be idealists.  The next Presidential election will be full of them.  Pretty much everyone that is expected to run for the Republican ticket is a pretender and so is likely next POTUS Hillary Clinton.  Sadly, that’s how you win elections.  Even Obama ran on a very idealist platform while all the time showing himself to be a pragmatist’s pragmatist.  The results have been mostly good with some bad thrown in.  Seriously, ignore the faux-scandals and make a list of all the stuff that was accomplished.  You know, stuff that was passed.  Here, let me help you (caution, swears).  List them in two columns, ones that are good and ones that are bad.  You would be hard pressed to come up with a list containing more bad than good.