Obama doesn’t believe in the technology, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit of Americans, Pendley told me. He believes in big government and its regulations. Pendley points out how he’s given the environmentalists a seat at the table where Reagan denied them the moral high ground. When the environmentalists—who for the previous two decades had been cloaked with an aura of inevitability, invincibility, and infallibility—said they “spoke for the planet and the needs of all living things not human,” Reagan responded: he “spoke for the dream of the American people and for the unborn generations to be free and prosperous.”