It was more than symbolism, it was explicit desperation. The fact that the first Republican presidential debate was held in the Reagan Library -- and the presence of Nancy in the audience -- captured the nostalgia of the party for the gauze of Gipperdom, and its fear that the current crop of candidates is a gallery of the stunted and flawed.

The profound irony is that the candidate who bears the closest similarity to Reagan is the Democratic Senator from Illinois. Of all those running, Obama is the only figure capable of the inspirational role that Reagan enacted in American life. While the debating dunderheads struggled to connect to the Reagan legacy by liberally dropping the word "optimism" into their responses -- as if it were some kind of a political spice that can be sprinkled rather than embodied -- it is Obama whose transformative promise is the most optimistic vision of all. And whose life is a representation of it.

So if I told you that The Audacity of Hope was the title of a recently-discovered Reagan memoir, admit it, you would think the title fits the man.

The fact that you can't think of new two less likely people to be linked as national change agents isn't the point. The fact that Obama is an intellectual who taught constitutional law, and that Reagan was a plainspoken Hollywood actor without an intellectual bone in his body, is irrelevant to their personal power. The fact that their politics and belief systems are divergent has nothing to do with the fundamental level of their appeal; their connection to a deeply American belief in the possibility of change -- real, not manufactured optimism -- is profound. (And by the way, Obama's recent speech that takes Black America to task for insufficiently valuing accomplishment enough is not that distant from Reagan's belief in personal responsibility).

The political implications of this will be substantial. Reagan was able to create a powerful and landscape-changing bloc of "Reagan Democrats" who were furious that their Democratic Party, captured by the McGovernites and the New Left, had left them. So too will we witness the creation of a segment of millions of "Obama Republicans" who are disgusted by the capture of the party by the extreme right.

Reagan's self-confidence, perceived regular-guy qualities (something Obama has to work on) and "Morning in America" mysticism were able to win over Democrats who had grown frustrated by a party that was seen as defeatist, as owned by special interests, and also as "Blame America first-ers." Reagan promised to unlock America from the acceptance of a range of fixed notions and limits, both geopolitical and economic. In his uncomplicated and perhaps naïve way he did believe that the Berlin Wall could come down. And entrepreneurship, now the Holy Grail of American economic life, and a big part of the Clinton agenda, was a word you didn't hear nearly as much before the Reagan years.

A parallel structure exists today, although the issues have changed. Millions of soon-to-be-created Obama Republicans are fed up with a party that has been hijacked by a bunch of ambitious panderers who are only too ready to raise their hands to say they would sleep better if Row vs. Wade was overturned (even though Chief Justice Roberts has said it is a matter of settled law), who believe in Creationism, and who cling -- with varying degrees of adhesiveness -- to the current course of the war.

These Obama Republicans -- like the vast majority of Democrats, are also waiting for someone to unlock America from the acceptance of another range of fixed notions: that American politics has to be as futile and rancorous as it is currently conducted, that we've lost the chance to find any common ground, that America is destined to be loathed around the world.

I've previously blogged here about my support for Obama, and my strong belief that he will be the next president. But I hadn't thought about the irony of him emerging as the most Reaganesque of the candidates till the Republican debate last week.

I'm sure that some people will think the comparison is nuts. (And don't mistake it, please, for a full-on endorsement of Reagan's politics or policies.) How could a raging Democrat with a Kenyan father and an American mother, who has admitted to smoking dope, be in any way connected to the profoundly white, Norman Rockwellish Gipper. Those things are true but don't matter. Logic isn't relevant. In this case, black is the new white. And something tells me that Reagan, a creature of Hollywood who understood the power of narrative and personality to create a logic-defying reality, would see the point.