Obama's just the first guy really seeing how far he can push things.
How about Reagan?
How about Reagan?
I was around for all of these presidents, and I don't remember even a "nattering nabobs of negativism" from Team Reagan (although I'd be happy to be corrected there), let alone declaring that opposition was inherently illegitimate and the organs of the state then acting in congruence with that.
Reagan was focused on two particularly broad things, that I'll also note were stunning successes: rescuing the economy and government fiscal situation (e.g. the prime rate was around 20%), and ending the Evil Empire. Both required working with Democrats in the Congress (Republicans only held the Senate in the beginning) and in the permanent bureaucracy.
For those of you who weren't of political age during the '70s and especially the Carter Administration, it really was a time of losing hope. I don't know of anyone including myself who thought Reagan could put the nation out of its tailspin, and while the medicine was plenty bitter (helped by the idiots in the Congress insisting on phasing in the tax rate cuts), he truly did save the nation.
Another way of looking at it is to ask which recent president Obama compares himself to: it's Reagan, the most recent who was significantly consequential, just like Obama has been consequential (I mean, the Democrats have been trying to achieve government health care since Truman (that's 1945-52), and Bill and Hillary! famously flamed out on it). Obama does not dismiss Reagan ... I guess he is smarter than the average bear....
I could see his war on drugs falling under economic rescue, although my understanding is that this effort has had serious deleterious economic effects in the U.S.
"Although Nixon declared the War on Drugs in 1971, the policies that his administration implemented as part of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 were a continuation of drug prohibition policies in the U.S., which started in 1914. Less well-known today is that the Nixon Administration also repealed the federal 2–10-year mandatory minimum sentences for possession of marijuana and started federal demand reduction programs and drug-treatment programs. Robert DuPont, the "Drug czar" in the Nixon Administration, stated it would be more accurate to say that Nixon ended, rather than launched, the "war on drugs". DuPont also argued that it was the proponents of drug legalization that popularized the term "war on drugs"."
I can remember creating in 3rd grade in 1969-70 in class (along with everyone else) a workbook detailing all the common illegal drugs of the time, names, effects, and why they were bad for you, etc.
And as you probably know it continues to this day, the Obama Administration has been a terrible disappointment to those seeking decreased restrictions on marijuana (harsher than Bush? I forget). This has long been a Progressive cause (remember Prohibition?), and most don't know or remember that Nixon was a Progressive domestically, a long Republican tradition. EPA, OHSA, there's a whole list of things like that that Nixon signing into law and supported.
I think my memory is being influenced by what I remember vs. what I read in history class. Reagan did say "We’re taking down the surrender flag that has flown over so many drug efforts; we’re running up a battle flag", and he did increase funding (including a big jump in the late 80s). Still, it's clearly not accurate to state he started the war (although I think he helped/supported/funding the militarization of that issue).
Please consider my incorrect view of history to be amended.
But I don't remember any president in my politically aware lifetime really being "weak" on drugs (any more than they were weak on crime, that is). And by the same token, opposition to the War On Drugs is not particularly ideological, it's a requirement for libertarians, lots of notable conservatives including William F. Buckley have opposed it ... overall it's a colossal mess.
Although I'm entirely uncertain a complete reversal would be better for anything but civil rights, especially since efforts in that direction in other First World countries have not worked well to my knowledge. And there are worrying studies that indicate marijuana might kindle schizophrenia, which we as a society no longer handle well at all.
Me, I said prior to all we've learned in the last few months that make it look like a sideshow, that we could have a free society or a war on drugs, pick one. This made no impression on parents I've discussed it with, they are terrified their kids will be harmed by them.
ADDED: And the press lied through their teeth. E.g. we were constantly regaled with horror stories of vicious budget cuts ... but in the rarefied lingo of the Beltway, a decrease from the automatically rising baseline, even if more nominal or real dollars are spent than last year, is a "cut".
But most of all I think they hated how successful and happy he was, even with the Democrats holding so much power. Of course, back then enough of them realized we were facing existential threats from the two areas I've remarked on; the same in terms of threats is true today, but it's less in your face for the moment. But wait until we can no longer run "trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see" because we can't maintain zero percent interest rates (which by themselves are crushing so many, especially retirees).
You might even think he did it for good reasons, e.g. because the threat of communism was sufficiently dire that it really did justify a suspension of the usual legal niceties in order to defend the U.S.'s national interests. The point is not "Reagan was wrong", but rather a more descriptive one: Reagan pushed the boundaries of executive power. Maybe that's good, maybe it isn't. But as a descriptive matter, Reagan is an important link in the modern chain of presidents broadening executive power on national-security grounds.
I don't think this is particularly controversial even among conservative historians. The debate is over whether Reagan's general tendency towards a strong-executive, law-and-order-via-military-if-necessary position (shared with folks like Edwin Meese) was justified, not over whether it was the case. Even going back to his pre-presidency days, for example, conservative historians typically argue that Reagan's declaration of martial law in Berkeley in 1969, in which he sent in the national guard to put down a series of protests, was necessary to maintain order and prevent subversive elements from gaining a foothold. Nobody actually argues that he didn't do so, or that it was some kind of situation where he was tricked into it. He was pretty explicitly a national-security hawk in favor of a strong executive.
And of course, the information Morison leaked was positively anodyne compared to entire databases full of diplomatic cables, or North Korean proliferation intelligence sources, or the precise details of which Chinese computers the NSA TAO group was hacking. Which is funny, because the NYT editorial called some of that kind of information out as the sort of the Congress did want to outlaw leaks in.
But that aside: I was stepping back from leak prosecution to the broader issue of transparency.
The Reagan administration was less transparent than this one, or even the Bush Administration (which was itself also less transparent than this one). The Reagan administration not only got the US involved in a war based on entirely opaque objectives and analysis, but conducted the whole war without the knowledge of the American people.
The 2 year sentence would argue his leaks were "anodyne" ... it all depends on how little you believe the Soviets knew or assumed about how good our spysats were.
Which war were you referring to? Certainly not fighting the Communist Sandinistas, that was about as secret as Obama's drone strikes in Pakistan are today, and you don't need any more justification than distracting them from other mischief, anything else is gravy.
As for transparency, where outside of the Cold War was Reagan significantly less transparent than Obama or Bush for that matter? While the hits are noisy, just try a search for obama in private for starters.
And I guess you weren't reading the same sources I was, and as I looked up the the Dear Comandante letter from 1984 I'm reminded of at least one overt, passed by the Congress in 1988 (!) aid bill to help the Contras, point your favorite search engine at contra aid bill. Which makes it crystal clear the simple picture you are painting is far too simple to be true.
Ah, and how about this, from the AP's archive (http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1985/Reagan-Signs-Foreign-Aid-B...):
"REAGAN SIGNS FOREIGN AID BILL, PRAISING CONTRA AID
AP , Associated Press
Aug. 9, 1985 1:37 AM ET
WASHINGTON (AP) _ President Reagan, hailing new funding for Contra rebels fighting the Nicaraguan government, has signed a $25.4 billion foreign aid bill.
''I am particularly pleased that the Congress approved the renewal of aid to the Nicaraguan freedom fighters,'' Reagan said Thursday before he signed the measure...."
Gaaah, bad memories. Anyone who thinks our foreign policy is messed up today should really review post-Vietnam War Cold War policy, where way too much of the nation up to and including Congressmen were openly on the other side. And then there's Carter's 1977 "inordinate fear of communism", and, oh, hugging and kissing Brezhnev on the signing of the SALT treaty, following in just 6 months by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Which we're still paying the price for (as well as Iran, but that wasn't so Cold War specific).
And if you wonder why today's domestic politics are so bad, it was noted when the Sandinistas theoretically fell in a popular vote in 1990 those people ran out of Socialist Worker's Paradises to support, leaving them pretty much with the US as their only target.