The Clinton smear campaign, which repeatedly has attacked Barack Obama for one occasion where he was praising Ronald Reagan's communications style, is hoping people won't find out about this. In 1991, Bill Clinton went a major step further, praising Reagan's policies as well as rhetoric.

E.J. Dionne Jr. has a better memory than the Clinton smear campaign would like us to have.

"The idea that we were going to stand firm and reaffirm our containment strategy, and the fact that we forced them to spend even more when they were already producing a Cadillac defense system and a dinosaur economy, I think it hastened their undoing," Clinton declared.

Clinton was careful to add that the Reagan military program included "a lot of wasted money and unnecessary expenditure," but the signal had been sent: Clinton was willing to move beyond "the brain-dead politics in both parties," as he so often put it.

It was common knowledge at the time that the Soviet Union had collapsed on its own, without any help from Ronald Reagan. It already was widely known that the Reagan Administration had intelligence early on that the Soviet Union was collapsing but lied to Congress in order to make military contractors richer.

In other words, Bill Clinton told a whopper of a lie.

But, lying is exactly what one would expect from someone who lied about the military ban, "welfare reform," NAFTA, the WTO, trade normalization with China, genocidal sanctions against Iraq, and so many other substantive issues. Clinton's constant stream of lies is typical for a Republican like him.

No wonder he liked Ronald Reagan so much.

Hat tip to the Genius of Insanity for pointing this out.