The media won’t stop making comparisons between Obama and Reagan.

“Throughout this long year, President Obama’s advisers have sometimes looked to Ronald Reagan for comparison and inspiration. If the Gipper could survive a deep recession, low approval ratings and an adverse midterm election in his first two years and win reelection handily two years later, then Obama could easily do the same, they reason.

Obama’s presidency has looked like Reagan’s in some broad ways. Both men succeeded unpopular presidents of the opposite party. Both offered big and bold plans — Reagan with massive tax cuts, Obama with a massive stimulus package and national health care — that set the country in a new direction. Reagan’s goal was to shrink government. Obama’s efforts have enlarged government.

Both presidents were forced by events that preceded their elections to contend with economies in serious trouble. Both saw the unemployment rate rise sharply during their first two years in office — under Reagan, the rate hit 10.8 percent by November 1982 — and both saw their approval ratings decline as the numbers of jobless grew.”

Whooboy. Today different periods of time. But let’s let Balz continue.

“Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University and author of “The Disappearing Center,” said the most important thing to remember about a midterm election is that it indicates nothing about future elections.

“It doesn’t predict either the next presidential election or the next congressional election,” he said. “We won’t really know what may happen in 2012 until we get into 2012.”

Whatever the outcome in November, and whatever interpretation is placed on the results, the real question for Obama is what happens to the economy afterward. On that measure, comparisons with Reagan are discouraging for the current president.

The economy rebounded significantly during Reagan’s third and fourth years in office. The unemployment rate declined, although not spectacularly. It was still at 8.3 percent in December 1983 and at 7.5 percent in August 1984 as the general election campaign was entering its final months.

More important, however, was the rise in gross domestic product, which experts say is a far more reliable political indicator. The U.S. economy experienced a growth surge in 1983 and 1984 that helped set the stage for Reagan’s gauzy “Morning in America” ads and prepared the ground for his huge reelection victory.”

A couple of things wrong with this. First and foremost Obama is not Reagan. He’s not even close. While the media likes to talk about Obama’s “gift of communication” and compare it to Reagan’s, the fact is that there was one distinct difference. Americans believed Reagan when he spoke, they don’t trust Obama. Reagan said and did what he said. Obama has done what he has said but it’s the opposite of what he said to get himself elected.

Obama is distant from the American public. Reagan connected. Yes Reagan got bad ratings just after entering office but they were due to the conditions of the country coming out of years of Carter. But Obama’s bad ratings have more to do with something you just can’t remove with time. He has the lack of trust of the American people. They are on to his game, his “words” which have meant nothing over the last months of inaction with the economy or with the oil spill in the Gulf.

Reagan didn’t shove unpopular legislation down American’s throats in his first 18 months. He did appear to be completely enamored in his own world of what he wanted in spite of what the people he supposedly represents want.

What Americans see isn’t Reagan, but Carter and a worse than Carter.

Obama isn’t Reagan and isn’t fit to tie his shoes.