40 and 44.

• Author: Glastris, Paul
• Position: Editor's Note - On Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama

When asked two years ago for a historical analogy to his campaign for president, Barack Obama gave a surprising answer: Ronald Reagan. The Gipper, he said, "changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not." That comment was widely portrayed as a calculated dig at Hillary Clinton. But in his new book The Audacity to Win (considered by editor Charles Homans in "The Party of Obama," page 19), Obama campaign manager David Plouffe reveals that Obama's high command did indeed study the similarities between their candidate and Reagan. "Like Obama, Reagan was an outsider criticized for his lack of Washington experience and sometimes accused of offering more sizzle than steak," writes Plouffe. The campaign team reasoned that Obama could decisively dispel such perceptions the way Reagan had, with a strong performance in the presidential debates, and they turned out to be right.

Over the past year, Obama has reportedly become more and more convinced of, and reassured by, the parallels between himself and the fortieth president. "He thinks he is Reagan in reverse," notes Newsweek's Howard Fineman, "a patient, genial game changer for the ages." The parallels are indeed hard to miss. Both men took the oath of office amid worst-since-the-Depression recessions, handed to them by administrations widely considered to have been ineffectual. As a result, both were able to pass major pieces of legislation that represented ideologically bold breaks with the past. But both also ended their first year weakened by sagging poll numbers driven by high unemployment. So as we approach Obama's first State of the Union address, it's worth looking at how Reagan handled the same task, with the confidence that Obama and his people are, too.

That 1982 speech is remembered for a story Reagan told of an invited guest named Lenny Skutnik who had rescued a plane crash victim from the icy waters of the Potomac, pioneering the now-obligatory everyday-hero-in-the-audience segment of the State of the Union. But rereading the rest of the speech, what is most striking is its tone, which is much less sunny and triumphant than we remember Reagan. The typical dramatic center of these addresses is the moment the president reports that "the state of our union is strong," or similar words. But Reagan offered what's probably the most subdued variation on the theme in history, promising that "in the near future the state of the...