In his Op Ed today, I think Krugman's taking one sentence way out of context.  Obama is no fan of Ronald Reagan, but he's smart enough to see how clever Reagan was in appealing to a broad swath of Americans to advance his agenda.  Obama wants to do the same thing -- ironically, to largely undo that agenda!

Now progressives have been granted a second chance to argue that Reaganism is fundamentally wrong: once again, the vast majority of Americans think that the country is on the wrong track. But they won’t be able to make that argument if their political leaders, whatever they meant to convey, seem to be saying that Reagan had it right.

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January 21, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

Debunking the Reagan Myth

By PAUL KRUGMAN

www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/opinion/21krugman.html

Historical narratives matter. That’s why conservatives are still writing books denouncing F.D.R. and the New Deal; they understand that the way Americans perceive bygone eras, even eras from the seemingly distant past, affects politics today.

And it’s also why the furor over Barack Obama’s praise for Ronald Reagan is not, as some think, overblown. The fact is that how we talk about the Reagan era still matters immensely for American politics.