August 25, 2010 9:05PM 

# Or a Program That Was Actually Going to Work 

By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) 

---

<a class="js-popover-trigger cursor-pointer popover-trigger" data-bs-placement="bottom" data-bs-trigger="click" id="popover-trigger"> 

SHARE 

</a> 

John Judis [writes](http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/76972/obama-failure-polls-populism-recession-health-care?page=0,3) in the *New Republic* that Obama hasn’t been as successful at selling his economic program as Reagan was:

> On the eve of the \[1982\] election, with the unemployment rate at a postwar high, a *New York Times*/CBS News poll found that 60 percent of likely voters thought Reagan’s economic program would eventually help the country. That’s a sign of a successful political operation.

##### Related Tags 

[Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy) 

[![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) 
This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).