Obama is the Reagan of 2012

Newt and Mitt are clambering over each other trying to claim the Gipper's mantle. But it's a Democrat whose situation and rhetoric best mirror Reagan's

Newt, who was defenestrated in the Florida debates, is marching to the beat of his own manic drummer toward defeat in the Sunshine State and into an unfriendly February schedule with no surcease of setbacks. Meanwhile, Mitt, riding the overwhelming throw-weight of his negative ads, moves a little less stiffly and a lot more aggressively toward a begrudged nomination.

Along the way, they're quarreling bitterly over who's truer to Ronald Reagan. The charge that Gingrich isn't or wasn't is as far-fetched as a near-term colony on the moon. But no matter: Romney, who will say anything or shift any position, has the resources to convert a bald-faced lie into a convincing dividing line. It's rich hypocrisy, literally rich, from a candidate who in 1994 pleaded that he was an independent in the Reagan years — "I don't want to return to Reagan-Bush" — and who in the 1992 Massachusetts presidential primary voted for Democrat Paul Tsongas rather than casting a Republican ballot for either Bush the first or Pat Buchanan.

The GOP is on the verge of selecting the most patently phony nominee in either party since the original empty suit named Warren G. Harding. 

Obama, like Reagan before him, offers an overarching theme that resonates with the distinctive mood of his re-election year.

It was Harding who famously said: "I like to go out into the country and bloviate." And lost in this year's bloviating combat over the Reagan banner is another reality that will at first rile and finally infuriate Republicans as the opportunistic Romney runs and then stumbles toward a November showdown with Barack Obama. For on the evidence of history, it's likely that Obama will be the Reagan of 2012. 

The one is certainly not the ideological heir of the other. But this president is beginning to travel a path along an emerging political landscape that parallels Reagan's in potentially decisive ways.

First, both men had to cope with deep recessions — and Obama with a downturn more global in scope that threatened actual depression. Mid-term, both men looked as if they could be one-term presidents. In the Harris poll, Reagan collapsed from 67 percent approval to 56 percent disapproval in just 11 months; Obama's standing has never been that dire. 

Then the Reagan economy started to recover. Unemployment, which had peaked at 10.8 percent, was 8.3 percent by the time Reagan delivered his election year State of the Union message in 1984. This month, the corresponding figure for Obama was 8.5 percent — down from a high of 10 percent.

Both presidents could report a measure of progress to the country. Reagan said: "Inflation has been beaten down" — and then talked about the millions who were now finding jobs. Obama said: "In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than 3 million jobs." He pointed to the rescue of the auto industry: "Today General Motors is back on top as the world's number one automaker." But both presidents were also tempered. Reagan's words — "We know that many of our fellow countrymen are still out of work" — strikingly pre-figure Obama's reference to "a time when millions of Americans are looking for work."