Despite this all, I suspect we’re in for another election cycle full of Republican nomination fighters chanting the name of Ronald Reagan.  There is a simple reason for the Reagan hugging — there is nobody else for the GOP to turn.

Much has changed since the 2008 campaign, when the Republican contenders all were openly competing to be Mr. Reagan’s true heir. In one debate, Fred Thompson invoked Mr. Reagan on tax cuts; Mitt Romney hailed him for championing “our military,’ “our economy” and “our family values”; while John McCain linked “my dear and beloved Ronald Reagan” with his own support for free trade.

In accepting the nomination, Mr. McCain branded Republicans as the party of three heroes: Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Mr. Reagan. In this he followed George W. Bush, who in 2004 pointed to Mr. Reagan rather than his own father as the president whose spirit “will always define our party.”

The Republican base being with the South, there is some minor though not entirely insigificant chaffing at the recitation of Lincoln — as seen by anti-Lincoln books blowing through the breeze at Republican dominated Conservative Action Pac meetings.  Theodore Roosevelt is an interesting figure, and I guess the aggressive nationalism is what McCain projects coming out of Roosevelt — though even here, his placement in the “Progressive Era” unsettles what the Republican rank and file desire.

More to the point, Lincoln and Roosevelt exist outside anyone living’s memory.  What presidents exist in the memory from anyone who is alive right now?  On the outer edge, there is Hoover.  Best to be forgotten.  So there’s Eisenhower.  “Caretaker President”, at the end of his presidency left the Republican Party Apparatus unsatisfied.  And then there’s Nixon.  HA!  Ford.  “Caretaker”, again, and wasn’t even ever elected.  Then there’s the two Bushes.  Hence, out of the Cult of the Presidency, they have the Cult of Reagan, and nobody else.

Meanwhile, who the Democrats have?  The biggest “cult” centers around Kennedy — some pretty good marketing coming out of the post-assassination “Camelot” mythologizing — the successful presidential campaigns of Clinton and Obama tapped it and the unsuccessful candidates Dukakis and Kerry tried to tap it.  But Roosevelt (FD) looms large still — even as the “Greatest Generation” that came of age during his administration dies out — and so right off the bat we have great dissipation of Kennedy as any sort of central focus.  Meantime, the other presidents not rendered with the same sort of “charismatic” personal entrancings still manage to tug on the edges for the Democrat’s identity:  Truman was an unpopular president, but his image was quickly refurbished by history.  Johnson was dragged ashunder by Vietnam and offers up a Cautionary Story, and yet signed the Civil Rights Act.  And Carter built houses after his daunting presidency and warned about Oil Dependence during his presidency.
Clinton?  To be determined.

I suspect in the decades to come, Obama will become as big a focal point for the party as Reagan is to the Republicans — somebody needs to replace Kennedy, after all, lest the Democrats get stuck in the current Republican Reagan rut — only worse.

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