I'll say "white" so you think I mean "black"

Tristero, over at Hullabaloo, offers up an alternative reason why Obama is channeling Ronald Reagan.

But Obama isn't stupid, so he clearly is no Reaganite. Therefore, I am entertaining the possibility that perhaps this is an extremely clever rhetorical strategy on Obama's part, complete with a dog whistle to people like you and me. Surely Obama knows modern rhetoric better than any other American politician and most cultural observers. So I think this may be a plausible explanation of what he's up to:

Obama believes the country isn't in love with conservative ideas per se. But both the voters - but especially the press - loved the way Reagan packaged them.

That is what I think Obama is saying - Republicans win merely on packaging, not on widespread support of their ideas. And he thinks he can win very wide support simply by associating liberal/moderate ideas with an updated version of Reagan's manufactured persona. Going even further with this, Obama is addressing not "the American people" directly, but the people who serve as the mediator between politicians and the people, ie, The Village. This makes sense. After all, The Village are the ones who first have to accept and then spread a politician's manufactured persona. As for Reagan's conservatism, Obama understands that The Village neither knows or cares very much about that, beyond a few short slogans - "death tax, partial-birth abortion," yadda yadda. In other words,

Obama is trying to appropriate the Reagan-Love that The Village feels - and by extension, felt by the voters they influence - for himself.

It doesn't matter that it's all illusion. By co-opting not the legacy of Reagan but simply his image within The Village, Obama makes it difficult for Republicans to paint themselves without a fight as the only heirs of the cheerful, confident, can-do America that Reagan's myth says he was.

Now, we know Reagan was nothing like his image, And Obama knows we know. That's the dog whistle. His Reagan-loving is just bait for a corrupt press corps fixated on images and perceptions. He is playing their own game against them, and he is much smarter than they.

Perhaps, but it strikes me as really convoluted thinking. In the meantime, while we're trying to figure out all this, Obama may lose votes like mine to Hillary or Edwards.