AMERICABlog’s Robert Arena wrote a stirring review of Barack Obama’s acceptance speech, and it turns out we reacted to some of the same lines, notably the following:

“For over two decades, [McCain has] subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy – give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is – you’re on your own… Well it’s time for them to own their failure. It’s time for us to change America.”

In 1980, Ronald Reagan brought a change of philosophy to the Republican Party and government as a whole. Reagan famously argued that “Government is not a solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

Reagan not only gave Republicans a philosophy to rally around, he set the gorverning agenda for three decades – so much so that the only Democratic president to be elected since Reagan was elected, Bill Clinton, campaigned on “re-inventing government.” That’s why, after the 2002 and 2004 elections, pundits claimed the Democratic party was out of ideas and existed only as the Bluto to the Republicans’ Popeye.

The Republicans have at least paid lip service to limited government but not put their money where their mouth is – or taken credit for the things that have gone well, such as President Bush’s tax cuts. And they certainly haven’t done a good job pointing out that Clinton-era policies that opened up the real estate market was the air that inflated the housing bubble that popped so dramatically last year.

Now Obama and his campaign apparatus are putting forth a new ideology: Government can work for the people. As Arena wrote, Obama “made the argument for government.”
And it’s working. Like Reagan, Obama combines charisma with a clearly defined ideology. The liberal base of the Democratic party is excited. There’s a real chance that a Obama could be elected President on the back of this philosophy, despite its repeated failures every time it has been tried.

Worse, if Obama is as successful at Reagan in setting the agenda, America could be looking in vain to government for decades, searching for solutions as the problems get worse.

The Democratic National Convention ends tonight, and the Republican Convention begins Monday. Every time I’ve tuned in over the past four days, I have heard a different politician encourage bipartisanship and cooperation in one breath before bashing Republicans as wrong-headed and uncaring in the next. (I’m picking on the Democrats because their convention was first; these hypocritical tirades are not isolated to either party.)

So it was nice to see this commercial from John McCain praising Barack Obama – with no strings or caveats attached: