FAIRFAX, VA. — Republican Ronald Reagan once quipped that the most "terrifying words" in the English language were "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." Democrat Bill Clinton proclaimed in a State of the Union speech 13 years ago that "the era of big government is over."
But in an address here Thursday, President-elect Barack Obama said government was the solution.
Obama's speech had a practical political purpose: coaxing lawmakers into quickly passing his massive stimulus plan aimed at reviving the economy. But there was another message embedded in the text.
In his 17-minute talk, Obama previewed what he wants his presidency to be. Rejecting decades of rhetoric casting government as an impediment, he vowed to do more than pull the nation out of its economic downturn. His aim, he said, was for people to drive cleaner cars, study in modernized classrooms and live in buildings powered by wind and sun. The agent for transformation on this sweeping scale, he said, is government.
The president-elect told the audience at George Mason University that only government was capable of ending the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
Only government, he said, can restore the purchasing power needed to preserve jobs.
He said he would "act boldly," a phrase echoing Franklin D. Roosevelt's promise, in the teeth of the Depression, to pursue "bold, persistent experimentation."
"It is common sense to take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another," Roosevelt said in 1932. "But above all, try something."
What Obama is trying is the stimulus package. He wants it passed quickly -- before Congress leaves town for its February break. The package is big, totaling nearly $800 billion. It contains tax breaks for the middle class, billions for updated bridges, roads and tunnels, and provisions to double the production of alternative energy in three years.
The idea is to lift the economy out of recession, but also to use the crisis to broaden the government's role in large swaths of American life. In Obama's language and in his early plans, presidential experts see a bookend to an anti-government era ushered in by Reagan.
"Ronald Reagan in 1980 began the new conservative era in America. And 2008 is 1980 in reverse," said Allan Lichtman, an expert on the presidency at American University in Washington.
