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ANALYSIS:
"Ideas":
These dueling radio ads are a continuation of a recent spat that stems from comments Obama made Jan. 14 in an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal editorial board. At one point, Obama discussed Republicans and President Ronald Reagan in the context of elections that represent shifts in political direction. At no point does Obama endorse Republican ideas, which is a strong implication in the Clinton ad. Indeed, at one point he is actually dismissive of Republican tax cut policies.
In his interview, Obama said: "I do think that, for example, the 1980 election was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 60s and the 70s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think he tapped into what people were already feeling. Which is, 'we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.'
"I think Kennedy 20 years earlier moved the country in a fundamentally different direction. So I think a lot of it has to do with the times. I think we're in one of those times right now, where people feel like things as they are going aren't working. That we're bogged down in the same arguments that we've been having, and they're not useful. And the Republican approach, I think, has played itself out.
"I think it's fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10-15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom."
"Now, you've heard it all before. You look at the economic policies that are being debated among the presidential candidates and it's all tax cuts. Well, you know, we've done that, we've tried it. That's not going to solve our energy problems, for example."
"Anything Radio":
Clinton did speak in favor of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was enacted during her husband's presidency, in the 1990s. She has since said the trade deal "did not realize the benefits it ... promised." She and Obama have said they would reopen NAFTA to strengthen enforcement of labor and environmental standards. Clinton did vote for the use of force resolution that paved the way for the war in Iraq. She has said she was not voting for war, but for leverage over Iraq.
Clinton does comment on Reagan in Tom Brokaw's book "Boom! Voices of the Sixties: Personal Recollections on the '60s and Today." But it is Brokaw, not Clinton, who describes her assessment of Reagan as "tribute."
In the book, Clinton expresses a preference for Reagan over current conservatives such as Karl Rove. Brokaw writes that
Clinton told him that Reagan was "a child of the Depression, so he understood it (economic pressures on the working and middle class). When he had those big tax cuts and they went too far, he oversaw the largest tax increase. He could call the Soviet Union the Evil Empire and then negotiate arms-control agreements. He played the balance and the music beautifully."
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