Barack Obama's fan club has endured deserved criticism. The Nobel Peace Prize made the joke almost too easy. Love is indeed blind, for liberals globally. But lest we forget, conservatives too have known blind love.

Before Obamaites there were Reaganites. "People can be accused of being unreasonably ga-ga over Obama," said Fred Greenstein, a Princeton University presidential historian. "One forgets, there was a similar response to leaders on the right; and Reagan was perhaps the best example."

Ronald Reagan won an historic tax cut during his first year in office. But the next year, amid a deep recession, he backed a $100 billion tax hike. Reagan was a fiscal conservative who created a larger budget deficit than any president before him.

Reagan is rightly revered for his clear and firm rhetoric. But his actions often didn't square with his words. Reagan would not trade arms for hostages. Until he did. He would not "cut and run" in Lebanon. Until he did.

Reagan is memorialized as a hawk's hawk. But Reagan too talked to enemies, including arranging secret Iranian negotiations. He opposed every major arms treaty in the seventies. As president, Reagan signed the first treaty reducing the super powers' nuclear arsenals.

The conservative infatuation with Reagan, like liberals today with Obama, begins with archetypes. Reagan was the classic leading man. Tall, dark and handsome. A man who meant what he said. Even his pompadour was reminiscent of the "the good old days."

Reaganites relationship had history, unlike Obama. Reagan was the conservative spokesman who never left America's living room. From verbally opposing communists in Hollywood to speaking for General Electric to the speech on behalf Barry Goldwater, Reagan earned conservative street credit. It was a relationship rooted in principles but bonded by words. The Americana he first embodied on film offered a backdrop. But Reagan won conservatives, and later America, with masterful oratory. This partly explains why Obama admires Reagan as "transformative."

Recall social conservatives in 1980, when they first rallied to the modern GOP. Back in California, Governor Reagan took a hard-line stance against counter culture protesters. But he also opposed legislation banning gays from teaching in public schools. He signed relatively liberal abortion legislation. Reagan was from Hollywood, divorced and hardly a regular churchgoer.

But Reagan spoke in symbolic language of the struggle between good and evil. Communism was anti-God. And Reagan was the crusading anti-communist. His breakthrough moment came one month after accepting his party's nomination. Reagan stood before 15,000 conservative church leaders in Dallas and said, "I know that you can't endorse me, but ... I want you to know that I endorse you."

President Reagan did not, however, turn that endorsement into policy. As Pat Robertson told me during George W. Bush's presidency, "Reagan talked a good game but I think Bush is delivering." Implication: Reagan did not deliver.

Reagan's legend, like JFK before him, began and thrived on image. Reagan ushered in the permanent campaign. Obama's reliance on a TelePrompTer is famous, or notorious if you prefer. But Reagan's was the first scripted presidency. And the actor relished his starring role on the world stage.

"Ronald Reagan seemed to be regarded by certain members of his inner circle not as the powerful and utterly original leader that he was, but as a sort of supreme anchorman whose public persona was the most important element of the presidency," observed his former Chief of Staff Donald Regan. "Every moment of every public appearance was scheduled, every word was scripted, every place where Reagan was expected to stand was chalked with toe marks."

Back in 1980, Reagan's campaign had a brilliant grasp of the president as communicator. "The primary leadership function of the American president is to reaffirm constantly the country's highest purposes and the potential for individual efforts to alter the course of the future in a positive direction," Reagan's confidential 1980 campaign plan read. And no president affirmed like Reagan.

Reagan, not unlike Obama, campaigned on a "cult of personality." One poster exhibited Reagan's large image looming over the White House. "Let's make America great again," it read, as if the nation was not great unless Reagan led it.

Like all relationships, timing mattered with Reagan. James Campbell, a specialist in presidential campaigns, noted: "Reagan was the beneficiary of being the first real conservative president in 50 years." That gave Reagan additional leeway with conservatives. It's the same with Obama, the first active-state liberal president since Lyndon Johnson.

Obama wont be the last president to cultivate an outsized image. And Reagan was not the first. "Father Abraham," Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, JFK, and many less notable, all played up the personalized presidency.

Democrats forgave JFK's slow progress on civil rights. And despite substantive misgivings, Gallup records nine in 10 liberal Democrats still approve of Obama. Conservatives sometimes spoke out in Reagan's day, but they too stood by their man.

During the 2004 Republican convention, social conservatives held a gathering at Tavern on the Green. I asked Ann Coulter whether she was upset with W. over any issues.

President Bush "is not our ideal," she replied, "no human can be the ideal unless he's Jesus Christ." And, she added, "Reagan was as close to Jesus Christ as we got." Coulter was only partly joking.