Just to play fair ... because it the right thing to do ... there is a link at the bottom to the complete article that points out the truths and falsehoods made by all three candidates in the debates Monday night.

Clinton attacked Obama for supposedly supporting Republican ideas, which she said included federal deficits and "privatizing" Social Security:

Clinton: [He] has said in the last week that he really liked the ideas of the Republicans over the last 10 to 15 years, and we can give you the exact quote. ... They were ideas like privatizing Social Security, like moving back from a balanced budget and a surplus to deficit and debt.

Obama pushed back, saying he had never endorsed such notions:

Clinton: [You] talked about the Republicans having ideas over the last 10 to 15 years.

Obama: I didn't say they were good ones.

Clinton: Well, you can read the context of it.

Obama: Well, I didn't say they were good ones. ...

Clinton: It certainly came across in the way that it was presented...

We can’t speak to how things "came across" to Clinton, but we’ve listened to the entire interview and to our ears, it’s just flatly false that Obama said he "really liked the ideas of the Republicans." Clinton is referring to what Obama told the editorial board of the Reno Gazette-Journal. A video is available on the Internet.
Here’s what Obama actually said in the portion to which Clinton referred:

Obama (Jan. 14, 2008): The Republican approach has played itself out. I think it’s fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10, 15 years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom. Now, you’ve heard it all before. You look at the economic policies when they’re being debated among the presidential candidates, it’s all tax cuts. Well, we know, we’ve done that; we’ve tried it. That’s not really going to solve our energy problems, for example.

There’s a difference between praising someone for having ideas and praising the idea itself. Obama is doing the former – and just as clearly not doing the latter. He says the GOP approach has "played itself out," for example.

It’s also false to imply – as Clinton did – that Obama endorsed Republican proposals to set up private Social Security accounts or that he praised deficit spending. We listened to the entire 49-minute interview, and Obama said no such thing.

Obama's Reagan Remarks to Reno Gazette-Journal,
Jan. 14, 2008
Obama: I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what’s different are the times. I do think that, for example, the 1980 election was different. I mean, I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not, and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path, because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like, you know, with all the excesses of the '60s and the '70s, you know government had grown and grown, but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating, and I think people just tapped into – he tapped into what people were already feeling, which is we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism, and, and, you know, entrepreneurship that had been missing.

I think Kennedy, 20 years earlier, moved the country in a fundamentally different direction. So I think a lot of it just has to do with the times. I think we’re in one of those times right now, where people feels like things as they are going right now aren’t working, that we’re bogged down in the same arguments that we’ve been having, and they’re not useful. And the Republican approach, I think, has played itself out. I think it’s fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10, 15 years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.

Now, you’ve heard it all before. You look at the economic policies when they’re being debated among the presidential candidates, it’s all tax cuts. Well, we know, we’ve done that; we’ve tried it. That’s not really going to solve our energy problems, for example. Obama also has been taking heat for praising Ronald Reagan in that same interview. See the text box to the left for his exact words. Clinton tried to avoid mentioning that, for good reason, but Obama turned it against her anyway:

Obama: The irony of this is that you provided much more fulsome praise of Ronald Reagan in a book by Tom Brokaw that's being published right now, as did – as did Bill Clinton in the past. So these are the kinds of political games that we are accustomed to.

Obama is correct: Both Bill and Hillary Clinton have lauded Reagan’s political skills. Tom Brokaw’s "Boom! Voices of the Sixties" quotes Clinton as saying that Reagan was "a child of the Depression" who understood pressures on the working and middle class:

Hillary Clinton (in Brokaw book): When he had those big tax cuts and they went too far, he oversaw the largest tax increase. He could call the Soviet Union the Evil Empire and then negotiate arms-control agreements. He played the balance and the music beautifully.

And here’s Bill Clinton in 1998 at the dedication of the Reagan Building in Washington, D.C.:

Bill Clinton (May 5, 1998): The only thing that could make this day more special is if President Reagan could be here himself. But if you look at this atrium, I think we feel the essence of his presence: his unflagging optimism, his proud patriotism, his unabashed faith in the American people. I think every American who walks through this incredible space and lifts his or her eyes to the sky will feel that.

We’ll leave it to others to decide who's praising Reagan more. The fact is that Bill and Hillary have done it, not just Obama.

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There is only one real Democrat candidate left and he's hanging by his fingernails...even though he obviously won the debate last night.

I disagree ... I think all three still have a shot. It all depends on how they play the game.

the third one doesn't have much of a shot...they were making jokes about Edwards' chances of winning tonight on Tucker and the Democratic expert was joining in....they obviouly watcheda different debate than I saw.

one of America's most beloved Presidents in history...is looking like a buffoon,he's reenforcing his image as a liar,he's NOT helping Hillary,she looks better than he does now on stage and interview...and he's tarnishing his legacy as a great President...is this the Bill Clinton we'll remember ? I'm afraid so,personally.

I really like Bill Clinton but I have to agree with you. I have to disagree with you where Hillary is concerned though. There has been an awful lot of talk about how she sits back and shakes and nods her head in that condescending way while other people are speaking and the overly forceful way that she fires back at people at the debates. There is a fine line between delivering a strong message and overdoing it to a point that speaks more of desperation. I'm not saying she doesn't have good things to say, she does, but the way she delivers it and the way she acts causes her message to get lost. Her manner distracts from her message and I'm not the only one that has noticed this. I wouldn't write Obama off in the trouble he can cause her. I admit that his chances of winning this thing aren't that great but he is starting to get his fight back and they have been commenting on this all day. His problem is that he doesn't know how to fire it back as fast as it comes at him.

It won't necessarily come down to the best person for the job ... it will come down to who plays the game the best.

I don't think praising a bad politician is automatically a bad thing, as long as you're clear and accurate in your praise.

In my book, one could even get away with praising Hitler for building the Autobahns or praising Nixon for pulling us out of Vietnam, notwithstanding what monsters the men were. So certainly there are things for which one could justly praise Reagan. Specifically, I think it's right to praise his optimism and his energy and his charisma, which I think were good things for this country. I think this country did need a shot of confidence and enthusiasm, at the time, and he provided it.

I also have been known to praise him for having rejected the advice of the neocons, when it came to the Soviet Union, and instead pursuing a policy of increasing gestures of goodwill and negotiation. I also praise him for pushing forward with talks to control the nuclear arms race. I think it's also fair to praise Reagan for having kept us out of any major military conflicts for eight long years, which is something not too many American presidents have accomplished. He may have been a terrible president, overall, a deeply immoral human being, and the leader of a breathtakingly unethical administration, but he did have virtues, and they can be praised specifically.

So where I fault Obama is not in the fact that he found words of praise for Reagan. It's that his praise was ridiculous. For example, he claimed Reagan was a more transformative figure than Clinton, which is clearly wrong. The Reagan era was more of the same when it came to the problems that had been mounting for America for decades (more deficit spending, more high unemployment, failure to make significant progress against poverty, near-stagnation of incomes, deep recession, overblown peacetime military spending, and escalating social problems like teen pregnancy and crime.) There was no great transformation to speak of. We just fell deeper into the same old rut.

The Clinton era, by comparison, was dramatically transformative, in the way it reversed so many negative trends that had been so long established that most people hadn't expected them to change in our lifetimes. As of 1992, how many commentators thought we'd soon be running budget surpluses? How many thought we'd soon have plummeting poverty and sky-rocketing median incomes? How many thought the crime and teen pregnancy epidemics were about to go through an unprecdented era of improvement? How many thought that the growth cycle would last for ten years -- longer than any growth cycle in history?

Obama was being dishonest. He was offering up the tired old disinformation that the conservatives had turned into conventional wisdom, about Reagan being a transformative figure and about him returning accountability to government (which is a particularly bad joke, given that the Reagan era was one of unprecedented bloat in government, especially in terms of military-industry welfare). And he was contrasting Reagan with Clinton in a dishonest way for the specific purpose of taking a dig at his opponent, while playing for "Reagan Democrats."

THAT'S why I object to what Obama said, while I'm much more lenient about the more accurate and less cynical Reagan praise offered up by the Clintons. Praise Reagan for his genuine virtues, and I'll give you a free pass. Praise him for the fairy tales conservatives have invented about him, and I'll take you to task.

Arkady, you make a very good point. I admit it was a stupid comment for him to make. I simply posted what I thought was a little clarification of what was actually said as I have seen things posted on this board that did not reflect the truth of what was said. Perhaps I chose a poor title for the post.

I do not back any particular candidate at this point. There are, of course, many things that need to be taken into consideration and I don't pretend to be one that knows the answers to all of it. It is why I make the rounds of many political boards to read other people's opinions and see if they make mention of things I haven't thought of or heard and post information that backs up what they are saying. You have posted here since before I was here many years ago and I have always appreciated your opinion as you have always intelligently debated you positions. Even when I didn't post here I still came back from time to time to see what other people had to say.

I am simply trying to decide who is more likely to bring people together and get done what needs to be done.