Everyone on all parts of the political spectrum has it wrong. President Obama is certainly not the embodiment of any previous famous Democratic president nor is he a Liberal Ronald Reagan. Let’s compare President Obama to another President of the late 20th Century who is rarely mentioned by either political party today. So what former President does Obama most resemble?

1. They both grew up in relative poverty and obscurity but both possessed keen intelligence, determination, and unique personalities that got them through law school, making them influential allies who pushed them into politics, and thereby leapfrogging their careers well ahead of far more experienced and well-named individuals while both were still very young.
2. They both were elected President by stitching together a new coalition of voters that had been growing for some time but had not yet successfully coalesced around any one candidate.
3. They both kept most of the international, military, and security policies of their widely-maligned predecessors who were of the opposing political parties.
4. They both claim(ed) to be realists, and each appointed a number of recycled people from prior administrations, some of whom were/are a bid paranoid.
5. Both inherited large, expensive, and unpopular overseas military adventures that they originally claimed would be ended, but instead they have expanded the wars exponentially.
6. During both their first terms, each has become infuriated with releases of secret documents of prior administrations strongly suggesting that the current wars in progress are messes and unwinnable, yet both asserted those who released documents are threatening America’s national security.
7. They both proposed (and Obama actually signed into law) a very expansive new approach to significantly alter American health insurance with additional federal mandates such as requiring all persons to purchase and businesses to provide subsidized policies from private companies – all at a time their popularity ratings were dropping precipitously. The late Senator Ted Kennedy regretted his opposition to the original proposal and didn’t live to see Obama’s amazingly similar version enacted into law.
8. The former opened up closed and backwards communist China to the World and offered money to the Chinese government to help rebuild it. The current President wishes that he could just stop China from overtaking the U.S. in every economic measurement during his term in office, and has asked for Chinese assistance to help rebuild the U.S.
9. The former reluctantly established Amtrak on his watch as there was no viable alternative, and the current wants to expand Amtrak and high speed intercity rail but has not put in the necessary funding to actually accomplish anything.
10. The both deplored the U.S. dependency on Middle East Oil but were and currently are unable to do anything about it.
11. They both brought two young daughters and a pet dog to the White House.
12. “Make no mistake” has an eerily-similar sound to “I want to be perfectly clear.”

The list goes on and many TMV readers might feel compelled to add other striking similarities. What we might have gotten with President Obama is a tanned and more outwardly relaxed Richard Milhous Nixon reincarnated.

No wonder both Presidents induce nightmares for both Liberals and Conservatives, and Republicans as well as Democrats. President Nixon had that uniquely divisive way with many people in the U.S. but he retained a solid core all the way to his early self-inflicted demise as a national political figure. Perhaps President Obama may avoid the same fate as old “Tricky Dick” but then the current economic and fiscal health of the U.S. was never as fixable as Nixon found them. In the early 1970’s the U.S. financial sector was small and uninfluential relative to the overall economy, we still made many things in the U.S., and the public and private sectors were not indebted to heights matching the Rocky Mountains.

Some people swear history repeats itself in rhyme, and others admonish that those who do not understand history are condemned to repeating its worst mistakes. Still other cynical ones have observed that history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce.

At least President Obama has a much nicer and more genuine smile than the one President Nixon struggled to form on many occasions. He may need it over the remainder of his Presidency.

Submitted by Marc Pascal, the ranting happy lunatic from Phoenix, AZ. I noticed that I have found a number of “Libertarian” streaks in my worldview and I have made an appointment at the Mayo Clinic for their team of physicians to find the appropriate cures.