John Judis of The New Republic has an interesting article about the lessons President Barack Obama can learn from Ronald Reagan and the 1982 midterm election. Much of what Mr. Reagan did was inspired by Franklin Roosevelt and the 1934 campaign.
Reagan and the Republicans ran against Carter and the Democrats in the same way as Roosevelt ran against Hoover. Baker and Atwater had studied Roosevelt’s and the Democrats’ 1934 campaign. (They even swiped “stay the course” from FDR.) But Obama and his advisors have been reluctant to stigmatize George W. Bush and the Republicans–perhaps out of a spirit of bipartisanship. That’s a mistake, as Obama seems finally to have realized.