Not at all.
Reagan won the Cold War and beat the Soviet Empire into the dust bin of history.
Palin says, she “can see Russia from her front porch”.
Next.
You’re absolutely right about the Reagan thing. RR was underestimated and mocked and minimized and lied about and treated with disdain by the press and the likes of House Speaker Tip O’Neill.
Read one of the Reagan biographies to get a sense of the similarities between him and Palin. Surely, not exact parallels, but similar.
From the Cannon biography, which was not a cheerleading book, believe me:
“First impressions die hard, and professional politicians treated Reagan condescendingly even after he had served two terms as governor and was well into the second term of his presidency. This was in part because politicians who rose through the ranks in orthodox fashion were reluctant to admit that a former actor could do so well at their profession and in part because Reagan worked at being underestimated. When... O’Neill, an accomplished politician, met with President-elect Reagan on November 18, 1980, he tested him by saying that his Sacramento experience was ‘minor league’ and that legislation might not move swiftly for him in Washington. ‘This is the big leagues,’ O’Neill told Reagan, who smiled while his aides fumed. Reagan told me later that he thought he would do better if O’Neill underrated him. Six months and two budget defeats later, O’Neill was asked by a constituent in Boston what was happening. ‘I’m getting the s**t whaled out of me,’ speaker replied.”