Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton – Leaders Comparison Essay

Comparison of Reagan’s and Clinton’s presidency demonstrates several common traits that made them effective leaders.

Both Reagan and Clinton have striking personalities. Clinton is described as “a president whose persona became the overriding issue of his administration.”1 Independent of liking or not liking Clinton, his character can be described as charming, “seductive”, and “crowd-pleasing.”2

Being an actor, Reagan professionally knew how to please and delude a crowd and used his skills together with his “irrepressibly optimistic temperament.”3 Reagan and Clinton are presidents “that we are not likely to forget or witness again for some time.”4 Although Reagan is described as “un-intellectual or anti-intellectual”5, he “undertook a serious self-education in politics through reading.”6 Clinton’s “considerable problem-solving skills, his agile mind and questioning manner”7 signifies of his “intellectual prowess.”8 Critical thinking of Clinton and Reagan made them doubt when choosing between Democrats and Republicans.

Similarly, Reagan and Clinton actually shifted to the right when they felt it was a right thing to do. Reagan’s “idiosyncratic conservatism, which combined forward-looking optimism with his deep regard for our heritage”9 still poses a lot of questions and challenges people to wonder about his shift to the right.

Reagan was supported by religious conservatives, a phenomenon known as “the New Right or New Christian Right” fighting “pornography, homosexuality, the advocacy of immorality in school textbooks.”10 Likewise, Clinton signed “the Defense of Marriage Act, prohibiting the federal government from recognizing state-licensed marriages between same-sex couples.”11

Both presidents won votes of people with the shift to the right although it was risky. “Reagan’s switch required considerable courage”12 when he left Democratic Party “at a time when conservatism was still in the political wilderness and regarded by the respectable elites as beyond the fringe, if not plain nutty.”13Clinton went to 1996 elections as moderate and won fifty percent of votes14, which supports the efficiency of his shift.

Economic growth as a result of Reagan’s and Clinton’s presidency can be seen as one of the main reasons to consider both presidents effective leaders. Defending his idea about a tax cut during the debates with Carter, Reagan said, “I would like to ask the President why is it inflationary to let the people keep more of their money and spend it the way they like, and it isn’t inflationary to let him take that money and spend it the way he wants?”15.

When Reagan became a president, there was “a massive budget deficit” and tax reduction would “contradicted traditional Republican economic doctrine.”16 Nonetheless, Reagan introduced a new theory that cutting taxes would increase revenue. So, in 1981 Congress passed Economic Recovery Tax Act, “cutting personal tax rates on lowest incomes from 14 to 11 percent and on highest incomes from 70 to 50 percent.”17

Success and economic growth followed this risky and new theory. Clinton’s presidency is also described by flourishing economy. By Family and Medical Leave Act, AmeriCorps, Earned Income Tax Credit for low-wage earners Clinton used this economic upturn for the people of the United States according to his “promise of change”18.

Both Reagan and Clinton wanted to make people believe in government serving the people for good.

Bibliography

Hayward, Steven. “How Reagan Became Reagan.” The Claremont Institute.

Roark, James, Michael Johnson, Patricia Cline Cohen, Sarah Stage, Alan Lawson, and Susan Hartmann. The American Promise, Volume II: From 1865: A History of the United States. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008.

Wayne, Stephen J. “Clinton’s Legacy: The Clinton Persona.” Political Science and Politics 32, no. 3 (1999): 558-561.

Footnotes

1. Stephen J. Wayne, “Clinton’s Legacy: The Clinton Persona,” 558.
2. Ibid., 559.
3. Steven Hayward, “How Reagan Became Reagan,” 6.
4. Stephen J. Wayne, “Clinton’s Legacy: The Clinton Persona,” 561.
5. Steven Hayward, “How Reagan Became Reagan,” 2.
6. Ibid., 4.
7. Stephen J. Wayne, “Clinton’s Legacy: The Clinton Persona,” 559.
8. Ibid.
9. Steven Hayward, “How Reagan Became Reagan,” 1.
10. James Roark, Michael Johnson, Patricia Cline Cohen, Sarah Stage, Alan Lawson and Susan Hartmann, The American Promise,1120.
11. Ibid., 1154.
12. Steven Hayward, “How Reagan Became Reagan,” 1.
13. Ibid.
14. James Roark, Michael Johnson, Patricia Cline Cohen, Sarah Stage, Alan Lawson and Susan Hartmann, The American Promise,1155.
15. Steven Hayward, “How Reagan Became Reagan,” 3.
16. James Roark, Michael Johnson, Patricia Cline Cohen, Sarah Stage, Alan Lawson and Susan Hartmann, The American Promise,1122.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid., 1152.