It seems we can't have a presidential election... or a Wednesday... without mentioning the legacy of Ronald Reagan.

Of course his starting a pretty amusing "firestorm" of political positioning as Clinton wasted time pretending this was a Regan love fest and Republicans took it as a cue to up the ante in their very real deification of Reagan.

...it also inspired a pretty interesting op-ed.


I Remind Me of Reagan

Harsh, I know.

But Accurate?

This article is pretty reflective of my views on the subjects so I hope the opposing view is... lively in its defense of the "Reagan revolution"


What was Reagan's legacy in domestic policy and was it good for America?

What about foreign policy?

Is Reagan a good role-model for the modern conservative movement?

Whoa! Turnea! Great topic, but pretty extensive in scope. I could and might write several books' worth of posts on this one. But, not tonight. So, I'll freeform this one and explain what the "Reagan Revolution" was/is really all about - Cliffs Notes version. I want to start this way because most of those who claim it don't have a clue about what it really means. I think Obama gets it in concept but not in detail and I think McCain gets it in detail, but not in concept. Nobody else pontificating about it on the airwaves or in the print media "gets it". I don't really know why, it's pretty basic and simple to understand what Ronald Reagan was all about.

Ronald Reagan's philosophy was all about individuals.

"Ordinary individuals do extraordinary things". <- That is Ronald Reagan. All one needs to understand.

Reagan wanted lower taxes because he thought people could do better things with their money than the government could. Reagan wanted less government regulation over people's lives because he thought that got in the peoples' way to do great things. Reagan believed in open borders "a wall but with doors in it" and free trade because he believed in the American system, the American worker and American productivity. He thought we could compete with anyone, anywhere, and anytime. He saw a role for government when it was helping ordinary people do extraordinary things as opposed to standing in their way.

Example: When Reagan was Governor of California, he cut the hell out of the University of California system budget. Really ticked off all kinds of people in "higher education". One of my father's best friends was a UC regent at the time and he absolutely hated Reagan. But, what did Reagan do with that money he cut from the budget? Give it to a bunch of rich contributors? No. What he did with that money was to expand the Community College system in California so that more kids in California had a chance to get a college education. Reagan figured it there was more bang for the buck by hiring additional teachers and building additional community colleges to teach more students than there was to build a new marble statue and reflecting pool on the Berkeley campus. Reagan was right.

I don't know about "conservative" or what that means anymore. I addressed this in my "labels" thread, but I don't think that by today's standards and talk radio definitions that Ronald Reagan would be considered a "conservative". He had some pretty progressive ideas on things, things that would be considered "liberal" today. To him it was all about the ordinary person being allowed to do extraordinary things.


I'll get to the other stuff another time, but great topic, Turnea!

Edited to add.....

I didn't really address what the Reagan Revolution really was/is. Reagan challenged the establishment big time. He ran in his own party against a sitting President and darn near won. Today we hear from so many people about how there's no difference between Republicans and Democrats, and that may be true, but back in Reagan's day, the difference was even smaller. They were all for big government because they were big government. There was a political aristocracy in this country where the DC insiders ruled because they thought they were smarter than the great unwashed masses. They knew better than we did. Reagan changed that. He empowered ordinary people from the great unwashed masses and formed a revolution against the status quo. And, they rose up and elected him President twice by huge margins. And, they elected his Vice President (Bush 41) after him, something that hasn't happened any other time in my lifetime. (and I'm old) And, I believe his legacy led to the huge Republican victory in the 1994 Congressional elections despite what Rush Limbaugh might claim.

So, there it is, Cliff Notes version of the Reagan Revolution. I look forward to further debate on the other points and questions posed.


Aquilla

Fair enough but then it was also JFK and every politician after him.

My point is not that Reagan didn't talk a good talk it's the walk I'm looking at.


..but most of the tax break went to higher income brackets.

Income tax went down, yes.... but payroll taxes went up.


The Great Taxer
That sounds a lot like trusting the government to do the right thing with the people's money.

...not to mention how Reagan grew the national deb, borrowing like crazy to make up for the deficit his tax cuts caused.

How about the corruption?

HUD... Savings & Loan

I actually thought of having this debate long ago based on foreign policy so I'll mention a bit of that too.

Grenada

Lebanon

Iran-Contra

...sure the Soviet Union collapsed but he can't take much credit for that

Great Talker... but results?

Gee, working with a congress from the other party and managing to keep Social Security solvent for 38 years, a program that he didn't create, but a promise made to working people by the government. Shame on him. What Krugman doesn't mention is the "hidden tax" - inflation. So, let's look at what happened there......
Check out this chart

When Reagan took office he inherited an American economy on the verge of total collapse. Inflation was in double digits, home mortgage interest rates were approaching 20%, those are credit card numbers. You think the sub-prime problem is big today, you should have been trying to buy a home when Carter was President. Reagan came into office in january of 1981 and from the chart we see the inflation rate was 11.83% which was actually down from the previous year's average. Reagan's economic policies slashed that rate by nearly 2/3rds in his first term in office. Now whether you or Krugman choose to look at inflation as a "hidden tax" the way Reagan did is immaterial. The fact of the matter is that working American family, it was money out of their pocket and it affected the poor and middle class more than anyone. Reagan's economic program fixed the problem.




Actually no, the Democratic Congress' spending like drunken sailors (a term Reagan used) certainly didn't help. Add that to the fact that Reagan had to re-build our nation's defense from the shambles it was in following the disaster that was Jimmy Carter. Thanks to Reagan's resolve, America ended up with a strong and vibrant military that eventually ended the Cold War ( and on yeah, we'll talk about that later). I have seen estimates as high as a ONE TRILLION DOLLAR savngs thanks to Reagan's aggressive approach to dealing with the Soviet Union.



That was a long time coming, and due in part to the huge inflation rate I previously cited. You can read all about it here. Not absolving Reagan of all of the blame, but to claim his policies were the cause is untrue. In fact, had he not put his policies into effect which reduced inflation markedly, the S&L crisis might have been even worse.



Nothing wrong with what happened in Grenada at all. Had Reagan not stepped in we would have ended up with a second Castro and Soviet client state in our backyard. Reagan did the right thing in Grenada.




A mistake, no question and I'm not quite sure how it happened. I recently watched a History Channel documentary about the Beirut bombing and the aftermath and the claim made in that documentary by former officials in the Reagan Administration was that they were ready to go to war with Hezbollah. They knew where they were and they had a carrier task force in the Med with aircraft on deck armed and ready to make the strike. They could have wiped out Hezbollah but at the last moment the strike was aborted. Conjecture is that it was Baker, but nobody's really sure. In any case, it was a failure, we should have taken the cretins out.



Happened under his watch, he takes the hit. However the concept of attempting to encourage moderates in Iran and at the same time securing the release of American hostages held by terrorists in Beirut was a good one. The Contra part was handled improperly in my opinion, but not because Reagan supported the Contras. I realize Daniel Ortega and his merry band of Sandanistas is the darling of the left, but then so again are Castro and Chavez. Reagan should have challenged the Bolen Amendment in the Supreme Court. But, he was right to go after Ortega.



Here we go again... This is utter nonsense, but worthy of a thread by itself. Oh yeah, we had one of those here already. If you want to start a new one, feel free, but Ronald Reagan at the very least hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union. Might have even caused it.




I rest my case for now.



Aquilla

Hmm, "concrete cracked" anyone? The selective memory of those that hero worship ANY politician is dangerous and misplaced. It is best we understand that they are all forms of a sociopaths, and should be scrutininzed and treated as such. Well, at the federal level anyway- there are local people doing good things for their community simply because they want where they live to be a better place- like fixin' up your house.

Okay- lets start with his sponsorship of terrorism-

he armed the contras, a group of death squad terrorists that killed and raped in a wanton and indiscriminate fashion. When we finally stopped supporting these pieces of human offal, guess what? The people we were "liberating" went and elected those very people we didn't want elected. Regan (intentionally misspelled just for disrespect's sake ) was directly responsible, for his Iran-Contra connection, calling them "the equivilent of our founding fathers" in supporting terrorism in central America. I know some survivors of that era - ya, they feel that way too- after all, he was the one funding the rapists and murderers that murdered thier family in a campaign of terror.

S&L crisis is 110% Reagan's doing- through deregulation- legislation he personally lobbied for BTW- though congress deserves some credit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%26L_Crisis

The chartering of federally regulated S&Ls accelerated rapidly with the Garn - St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982, which was designed to make S&Ls more competitive and more solvent. S&Ls could now pay higher market rates for deposits, borrow money from the Federal Reserve, make commercial loans, and issue credit cards. They were also allowed to take an ownership position in the real estate and other projects to which they made loans and they began to rely on brokered funds to a considerable extent. This was a departure from their original mission of providing savings and mortgages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garn_-_St_Ger...nstitutions_Act

he Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982 was a United States federal law enacted in 1982 that deregulated the Savings and Loan industry. This Act turned out to be one of many contributing factors that lead to the Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s.[1]

The bill, whose full title was "An Act to revitalize the housing industry by strengthening the financial stability of home mortgage lending institutions and ensuring the availability of home mortgage loans," was a Reagan Administration initiative.[2]

The bill is named after its sponsors, Congressman Fernand St. Germain, Democrat of Rhode Island, and Senator Jake Garn, Republican of Utah. The bill had broad support in Congress, with cosponsors including Charles Schumer and Steny Hoyer.[3] The bill passed overwhelmingly, by a margin of 272-91 in the House.[4]

TITLE VIII, ALTERNATIVE MORTGAGE TRANSACTIONS, allowed Adjustable rate mortgages [5]

Suffice to say- without Ronald Reagan- there would have been no S&L crisis- because without the law - something regan pushed through, there would have not been the lack of controls that kept this very thing from happening.

Congress's only blame here is this- they were afraid of Reagan's mandate, and pretty much rubber stamped a very bad thing.

and of course, this "shambles" of a military was pretty good- and growing under Carter, after the failure of the salt talks- after all, most of the weapon systems that, you know, worked- came from the Carter administration- unlike boondoggle taxpayer rip-offs like star wars. - things that have proven thier worth- such as the NATO "RDF" rapid deployment forces- and on and on.

However- I do blame Carter and Regan equally for thier bumbling Afghanistan they way they did- Carter started it, Regan expanded it-

it can be said that those two are the #1 reasons we don't have a world trade center today- because of our support for the Muhjadheen. Without our support of those folks, we wouldn't exactly have an OBL or even an Al-Quaida today, hmmm?

Bierut- cut and run after the barracks were bombed. Or, like GW, couple years later- bombed the wrong country

I will give him this though- Grenada was for real the good guys action- possibly the only one in US history since the installation of the Shah of Iran in 53- Bishop was hacked to death, by cuban soldiers and supporters, and that was a legitimate operation. - I have some personal history there as well, it turns out.

When Reagan entered office, the American economy's inflation rate stood at 11.83%, and unemployment at 7.1%. Reagan implemented policies based on supply-side economics and advocated a laissez-faire philosophy,[74] seeking to stimulate the economy with large, across-the-board tax cuts.[75][76] He aimed to reduce the growth of domestic government spending, cut back on excess regulation, and institute a sound currency policy which would end inflation;[77] his approach was a departure from his immediate predecessors.[77] The economic policy, dubbed "Reaganomics", was the subject of debate, with supporters pointing to improvements in certain key economic indicators as evidence of success, and critics pointing to large increases in federal budget deficits and the national debt. His policy of "peace through strength" resulted in a record peacetime defense buildup, including a 40% real increase in defense spending between 1981 and 1985.[78]

During Reagan's tenure, income tax rates were lowered significantly,[79] although effective payroll tax rates increased.[80] Real gross domestic product (GDP) growth recovered strongly after the 1982 recession and grew during Reagan's eight years in office at an annual rate of 3.4% per year.[81] Unemployment peaked at 10.8% percent in December 1982 (higher than at any time since the Great Depression), then dropped during the rest of Reagan's presidency,[76] while employment increased by 16 million, and inflation significantly decreased.[82] The net effect of all Reagan-era tax bills resulted in a 1% decrease of government revenues.[83]


Reagan gives a televised address from the Oval Office, outlining his plan for Tax Reduction Legislation in July 1981The policies proposed that economic growth would occur when marginal tax rates were low enough to spur investment,[84] which would then lead to increased economic growth, higher employment and wages. Critics labeled this "trickle-down economics" — the belief that tax policies that benefit the wealthy will create a "trickle-down" effect to the poor.[85] Questions arose of whether Reagan's policies benefitted the wealthy more than those living in poverty,[86] and Reagan was seen as indifferent to many poor and minority citizens.[86]

The administration's stance toward the Savings and Loan industry contributed to the Savings and Loan crisis.[87] It is also suggested, by a minority of Reaganomics critics, that the policies partially influenced the stock market crash of 1987,[88] but there is no consensus regarding a single source for the crash.[89] In order to cover newly-spawned federal budget deficits, the United States borrowed heavily both domestically and abroad, raising the national debt from $700 billion to $3 trillion.[90] Reagan described the new debt as the "greatest disappointment" of his presidency.[90]

He reappointed Paul Volcker as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and in 1987 appointed monetarist Alan Greenspan to succeed him. Some economists, such as Nobel Prize winners Milton Friedman and Robert A. Mundell, argue that Reagan's tax policies invigorated America's economy and contributed to the economic boom of the 1990s.[91] Other economists, such as Nobel Prize winner Robert Solow, argue that the deficits were a major reason why Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush, reneged on a campaign promise and raised taxes.[91]

though Aquilla- Iran Contra- his answers to questions were entirely inconsistant- was he lying, or was he just stupid? One will never know I suppose.

BTW- Reagan had more indictments and convictions than the Clinton administration- another issue of "why are they okay when regan scuzballs commited crimes, but so outraged when Clinton did it- I would understand if they were consistant- but really- it is rank hypocrisy. After all- we are talking shady real estate deals vs giveing our enemies weapons. Nice.

Oh and Aquilla- during the regan administration- military spending WENT DOWN. That is one of the biggest lie of all about Reagan- that he had anything to do with the end of the so-called "cold war"- it was basically over as soon as Stalin died, though it died with a sputter as soon as Kruschev was removed from power- we just kept it going on GP. You know- the main reasons for the change of power in the soviet union were:

1) crash of oil prices- could happen today with nearly the same effect in the former USSR- it is the driver of thier entire economy to this day- they have managed to diversify- but it is still the lynchpin in thier economy- they would be on hard times if something other than oil becomes the new energy source.

2) There was no revolution in russia- the consitution is not fundamentally different from Czarist russia- My ex-wife and mother in law and my in laws there to this day are lawyers and bankers to this day. To have a revolution- you really need a real turnover of power and law. Stalin ran the country no different than Czars before him, from Catherine to Peter to Nicholas- in some ways, he was kinder than many of those Czars- Peter built St Petersburg on the bones of slaves. And on and on. Putin today has more real power than Stalin- with less constitutional controls. Believe it or don't- I don't care.

3) what you had was the wane of the KGB as the driving force ( I call them, the Russian equivilent of the democrats ) vs the corrupt oligarchs of industry ( I call them the Russian equivilent of the republicans) - they are both equally corrupt- but the Russian people lived thier 'golden age" under Breshnev- at this time, there is no generation that had it better in Russia than under Breshnev- the standard of living was much higher for most people

4) the oligarchs had to get thier capital out of the country- that is why you had over night billionares- and we coddle those criminals BTW- Putin has put the smackdown on corruption, and business is better for it. The entire changing of power and shrinking of the "evil empire" - was so corrupt oligarchs could get thier money out of the country- and they are ALL mafia- every single one of them, from Yeltsin on down- they were 110% corrupt and were all officials in the Mafia, and did no business without Mafia help.



What the funniest thing to me is this- you will have ignorant people saying "reagan won the cold war'- and they make this pronouncement like they really know- and can't name three cities in Russia that aren't St Petersburg, Moscow, and the former Stalingrad.

So, yes, Regan DOES bear the responsibility of trillion dollars in debt- hell aqulla- even he admits that

We have him supporting terrorists world wide, on a global scale- in fact, his support cost us the world trade center- though indirectly. Caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in central america. supported some of the most evil individuals this world will ever see. I got the opportunity to see that for my own eyes.

Trickle down economics is a proven bust- helped the rich, did nothing for the poor. On a personal note- he was the one behind the "closing the tax loophole" on waiters and waitresses tips. Frequently- that means they are taxed even when they don't get tipped. Nice guy that regan- stickin' it to the little guy- lord knows that wait staff deserve it.

So overall for the ronnie raygun with the conveniant memory loss - he did contribute one thing to America- he helped the rise of the religious right, which led to the rise of the republlican party, and away from the libertarian ideals of the republican party

he may have been good for the republican party- but very, very bad for America- we have 27-28 years of craptacular neo-conservtives and failed policies to thank him for.

I spit on his grave personally, and feel no remorse for saying so- of course, I got to see some of his polices up close and personal- makes one a bit bitter on that front.



And on and on- let's look at his terrorist ties to honduras, and Negroponte- as evil as a villian as hitler, if not as succesful.

I would almost like to travel to Nicaragua and Honduras again to see what those countries have done with themselves after the evil stain of Regan was foisted upon them- but I wanted to touch one more time on his stench- this time, on battalion 316 and the torture manuals-


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Honduras

The New York Times wrote that the documents revealed

a tough cold warrior who enthusiastically carried out President Ronald Reagan's strategy. They show he sent admiring reports to Washington about the Honduran military chief, who was blamed for human rights violations, warned that peace talks with the Nicaraguan regime might be a dangerous "Trojan horse" and pleaded with officials in Washington to impose greater secrecy on the Honduran role in aiding the contras.
The cables show that Mr. Negroponte worked closely with William J. Casey, then director of central intelligence, on the Reagan administration's anti-Communist offensive in Central America. He helped word a secret 1983 presidential "finding" authorizing support for the contras, as the Nicaraguan rebels were known, and met regularly with Honduran military officials to win and retain their backing for the covert action. [3]
According to investigative journalist Robert Parry (Consortiumnews.com) the cables suggest that Negroponte

was so committed to his mission of making Honduras a base for Nicaraguan contra rebels that he routinely ignored troubling evidence about the Honduran government. At the time, the Reagan administration also had no interest in hearing critical information about key allies, like Honduras. During his four years in Honduras, Negroponte often cast “a friendly eye” at the Honduran government, insisting that he was unaware of evidence of “death squad” operations that eliminated hundreds of political dissidents. He also turned a blind eye to the military’s role in making Honduras a way station for drug traffickers.[4]

ya, real freedom fighter and moral guy, that regan character.

What was Reagan's legacy in domestic policy and was it good for America?

When Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter, I remember thinking, "Well, it's gonna be a cold next four years." I was off about the length of the cold, but not the cold itself.

African-Americans were on the outside looking in when The Reagan Revolution took place. Reagan signed the Martin Luther King Jr. birthday into law. After that, things got pretty bleak pretty fast.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan announced his run for the presidency in Philadelphia, Mississippi., near the site where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964. A coincidence? Not when you consider he was there at the invitation of then-U.S. Representative Trent Lott and Reagan delivered a speech stating his belief in "states rights." In the deep South, states rights has been a euphemism for the federal government taking a hands-off approach to civil rights.

• Reagan's go-slow approach to ending apartheid in South Africa prolonged the suffering of millions and enabled the South Africa to fend off sanctions.
  
• Supported racism with remarks like those that characterized poor, black women as "welfare queens."�
  
• Fired U.S. Commission on Civil Rights members who were critical of his civil rights policies, including his strong opposition to affirmative action programs.
  
• Tried to get a tax exemption for Bob Jones University, which was then a segregated college in South Carolina .

The former Washington Post columnist summed up President Reagan's tense relationship with African Americans following Reagan's death in 2004, "I don't accuse Reagan of racism, though while he served, I did note what seemed to be his indifference to the concerns of black Americans -- issues ranging from civil rights enforcement and attacks on "welfare queens" to his refusal to act seriously against the apartheid regime in South Africa. He gets full credit from me for the good things he did -- including presiding over the end of international communism. But he also legitimized, by his broad wink at it, racial indifference -- and worse."

Raspberry accurately points out what is an essential and enduring component of The Reagan Revolution. Instead of actual malevolent hostility toward African-Americans and their concerns, Reagan exhibited casual disdain and viewed race through rose-colored glasses. He wasn't a bigot as much as he seemed utterly disinterested in the lives of people who didn't share his philosophy.

It would be nice if I could feel as warmly about The Reagan Years as his admirers do, but all I can work up for Reagan is the same indifference he displayed toward people like me.

Um, NT- Reagan fought MLK day tooth and nail- it was only after a veto proof majority passed it did he sign it into law. He pretty much hated the guy IMHO- communism and all that you know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Day

Senator Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina) led opposition to the bill and questioned whether King was important enough to receive such an honor. He also criticized King's opposition to the Vietnam War and accused him of espousing "action-oriented Marxism."[3]

Ronald Reagan was also opposed to the holiday. He relented in his opposition only after Congress passed the King Day bill with an overwhelming veto-proof majority (338 to 90 in the House of Representatives and 78 to 22 in the Senate). Prior to that date, New Hampshire and Arizona had not observed the day.

He may have signed it into law- but he did it under durress.

What was Reagan's legacy in domestic policy and was it good for America?


My attitude on Reagan has shifted and re-shaped itself over the past few years. I believe he simultaneously appealed to the worst and best in Americans -- he could deftly appeal to our can-do spirit of self-reliability and our sense of greed and entitlement in the same speech. He told us that the central choice in American history was not leftwards or rightwards, but "up towards the stars, or downward, towards the ant heap of totalitarianism" or something like that. It's a beautiful, unifying image -- and we democrats wouldn't have a Barack Obama without it.

But Reagan was only interested in the up part of that equation. A lot of people were "down" in the 1980s -- crack, AIDS, the murder rate was boiling over, gangs were taking off, a lot of civil and minority rights movements in America lost their way in that decade. But Reagan wasn't interested in being the president who ameliorated the poverty of inner-city America, or the president who made public education powerful again; those were nasty, devilish details on the down side of Reagan's vision, and it would take a fat boy born in Arkansas to rhetorically address those problems again. Reagan was solely interested in the "up" side of that equation. He painted in bold strokes, promoting the impending end of communism, crying tears with America as the challenger exploded. But then he went something like 7 and a half years before ever addressing AIDS.

So ask yourself, what kind of president wells up when a space shuttle explodes, but goes almost his entire tenure without mentioning the name of an epidemic slaying millions of mostly poor, homosexual, and politically invisible Americans?

Such is Reagan's domestic legacy; it's a legacy of "optimism" and "brightness," which in his world meant, quite often, not focusing on the darkness. He made America's bright parts shine brilliantly. Just the bright parts.

What about foreign policy?

For starters, I don't think history has given Jimmy Carter's foreign policy a fair shake. Like the next president probably will, Jimmy suffered from decades of mis-governance that came before him. His management of the Iranian revolution was ill-fated and short-sighted, but in some ways, so many of the problems he tried to address are still with us:

•Energy conservation
•America's support for untrustworthy, undemocratic leaders (i.e., Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, the Saudi Royal family).
•Nuclear Proliferation (i.e., North Korea, Pakistan, Nuclear Terrorism, "Iraq," until recently, Iran.)
•The ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Jimmy prioritized these problems on a level that no other president before or since has. Had Reagan subsumed Jimmy's priorities, I think we'd be in a much better place.

In some ways, the most obvious legacy of Reagan's foreign policy is the War on Terror. Reagan re-invigorated the Cold War, bringing a slew of Gerald Ford's people back to the mainstage to play out an us-vs.-them game of international chess. George Bush Senior, for instance. In some ways "Evil empire" was the 1980s version of "axis of evil," but the tragedy here is that I don't think American can afford to think about terrorism the way we thought about the USSR. We are not fighting a monolithic, centralized nation here -- even our "nationalized" enemies, like the Taliban and the Baathists have had an ethnic dimension to them that the USSR did not. The leaders of the Bush II administration came from the Reagan/Bush school of foreign policy, and they had very little understanding about those parts of the world where ethnicity means much more than nationhood.

Is Reagan a good role-model for the modern conservative movement?

No longer. Republicans have to shed their skin. The economic picture for the next few years does not look promising, and one of my worries as an Obama guy, is that a President Obama would suffer from George Bush's recession. That he will wake up, somewhere in the first 100 days of his administration, and put all his beautiful ideas about foreign and domestic policy on hold to combat a growing recession. I think Paladin has been comparing Obama to Carter, and for that reason, I see some merit to her comparison.

Consequently, the republicans have to start anticipating the 2012 election, whether or not their are going to win the 2008 election. A conservatism that concerns itself with those making 50,000 or less is the only conservatism worth defending. In my mind, Reagan's conservatism, for all its merits, is not that conservatism. Reagan's conservatism became about appeasing the lower middle class with a mixture of social policy -- pro-life legislation, anti-multi-cultural rhetoric -- and class baiting. Too often we have posters who justly and unjustly accuse democrats of class warfare, without acknowledging the class warfare in their own midst. Too often, Reagan expounded a version of classism that was not "haves" vs. "have nots," but rather, the "have nots" vs. the "haves even less."

In times of recession, a political party can not afford to gauze over the economic questions with social issues and gossamer rhetoric about how great America is doing. Some people are going to want to know what they are going to get from the GOP when the stock barrel breaks, and GOP candidates are going to have to learn how to marry war-on-terror rhetoric with an inspiring economic platform.

Whoa! As I stated in my initial response to this topic, this is a pretty broad-based thread. Lots of stuff to cover......


So far we have a "there was no cold war" by one Reagan-hater and an "if there was he had nothing to do with ending it" by another detractor. Then we have the "Reagan was a racist" claim from the usual "every Republican is a racist, even if they're African-American" crowd and next the "Reagan caused AIDs" argument. Same ole, same ole, probably missed a few of the Reagan-bashing arguments in there, but what the heck, they'll be repeated again I'm sure.

To read this "history" one would think Reagan was the most-hated person in America. And to some on this board, he obviously was. But, is this board really "America"? One must ponder this and consider the FACT that when Ronald Reagan ran for re-election in 1984, he received more votes from the American people for President than any other candidate in history up until 2004. He gained 58.8% of the popular vote and carried 49 states. How did that happen? One must ponder this again. How could so many Americans be wrong? Still pondering here, give me a minute.....

Ok, pondering time over, I think I've got it. "Americans are stupid" <-That's the liberal line. That old wall in Berlin was put up there for the "good of the people". That 747 that the Soviets shot down over Korea was a gas-guzzler and deserved to die. It was our fault that the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and we should have supported Hezbollah terrorists, sponsored and funded by Iran in Lebanon.

Yep, Americans are stupid, shouldn't be allowed to vote or pro-create. That's the liberal line.

Thank goodness it's not the reality.


Aquilla

Yeah, you'd be the expert on what isn't remotely close to reality, wouldn't you, Aquilla?

It's well-established saying anything that isn't remotely laudatory about the life and times of Ronald Reagan is certain to provoke a swift and terrible rebuke from you. However, in your zeal to rush to defend the memory of your dead homey, you tripped over a few "stubborn facts" as the Gipper once said.

ONE: I wouldn't go so far as Cruising Ram as to spit on Reagan's grave. That's a bit too severe for me, but CR does make valid points about Reagan's mishandling of the economy and the Iran-Contra scandal. His curt dismissal of Reagan's involvement in the fall of The Soviet Union is a bit too skimpy for me to agree with him. Reagan basically built up the military building to a level the Soviets found impossible to match and he basically hastened the fall of a corrupt, inefficient and ineffective regime that was bound to topple sooner or later. Conservatives have argued that Bill Clinton's much-ballyhooed economy was really a matter of him being in the right place so he could take credit for policies and a recovery begun by his predecessor, George H.W. Bush. The same charge of being in the right place at the right time has been leveled against President Reagan, but that's one better left to the historians to determine rather than partisans on a debate board.

TWO: I'll make the assumption that my previous post was the source that provoked your fallacious "Reagan was a racist" claim from the usual "every Republican is a racist, even if they're African-American" remark. What is it about worshiping at the altar of Dutch that so badly erodes the reading skills of conservatives? I'm trying to find where precisely I said Ronald Reagan was a racist. As I recall, I wrote, "Instead of actual malevolent hostility toward African-Americans and their concerns, Reagan exhibited casual disdain and viewed race through rose-colored glasses. He wasn't a bigot as much as he seemed utterly disinterested in the lives of people who didn't share his philosophy." (emphasis added for the reading challenged)

Am I wrong that Reagan launched his 1980 presidential bid in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1964 and he spoke glowingly of his belief in "state rights?" Am I wrong that Reagan made the "welfare queens" remark or tried to get Bob Jones University a tax exemption? Is CruisingRam wrong when he makes the case that Reagan only signed the MLK birthday into law because of the political realities demanded he do so?

Apparently not, because you sure don't offer any evidence to the contrary. You're armed and ready with your "Reagan-hater" rhetoric, but that's it for a rebuttal.

THREE: drewyorktimes never said or suggested Reagan "caused" AIDS. He said Reagan never mentioned AIDS for several years and it was not until almost the end of his second term that the president would even speak the word aloud in public.

The right loves to pimp-slap Bill Clinton for his less than effective response to the bomb attack on the USS Cole in 2000 and perhaps with justification. How is it though that the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing that killed 241 American servicemen and Reagan's non-response to the attack but to "cut-and-run" from Lebanon leaves him unscathed from criticism?

I had a rush of deja vu coming on with your overheated rhetoric in defense of all things Dutch Reagan. If one goes back almost four years ago after Reagan's death it all comes thudding back.



Apparently, there should be NO debate over the Reagan legacy as far as you are concerned, Aquilla. You've created a new commandment to follow Reagan's 11th Commandment, "Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican." Now the 12th commandment is "Thou shalt not speak ill of Ronald Reagan."

So many myths, so little bandwidth.....

Addressing NT's concerns over Reagan's Philadelphia, MS speech and the alleged "code words" to appeal to racists, we can turn to this piece written by David Brooks of the New York Times. From that piece......



While some ruminate on that one, let's look at another myth, the AIDS myth that the Reagan Administration didn't address the problem until late in his second term. Actually, they were addressing it in 1983. Maybe not by pontificating about it in public, but through science and medical research funded by the Reagan Dept of Health and Human Services. I point to this interview from PBS's Frontline with Margaret Heckler, Reagan's Secretary of HHS from 1983-1985. From that interview....



This was back in 1983.....

So much for the AIDS myth.....


Aquilla

So what if I hate him? doesn't change the FACT that he aided and abbeted terrorists, and laid the ground work for 9/11 by his actions in Afghanistan, and was directly responsible for death squads in central America, extra judicial killings and all kinds of atrocities in his zeal to control central America (hey, remember, I do give him credit for a good job in Grenada )- but, like hitler or stalin "the end DOES NOT justify the means".

I don't care if some threat of communism was coming to central America- and anyway- like with Southeast asia- once allowed to go thier own way, and undo the harm we had already created- Vietnam became somewhat capitalist all by thier lonesome, even they were also invaded by China.

Bottom line is, Reagan supported very, very evil men, and ignored thier behavior, and that makes Reagan as responsible for his atrocities as much as Hitler or Stalin was culpable for thier actions as well.

And it's just false to say that Communism looked into the eyes of the Gipper and trembled. One man cannot undo an entire system. Reagan was the man at the helm at the time of the collapse, but he was no Lincoln. Lincoln was the original Reagan, but Lincoln was a singular person who carried the nation through a dark chapter of history for this country. Reagan was simply there. He spent us into deficit and happened to be there. Other leaders like Thatcher and John Paul II are mentioned as footnotes to Reagan. That's unfair given the contribution of every other president, Prime Minister, etc. before him.

His domestic policy and its legacy is among the most overrated in the history of the United States of America. Ronald Reagan was [especially with a Democratic Congress] was a fiscal disaster, first and foremost. This shows the steady increase of our Gross National Debt and GND as a percentage of our GNP over the past 60+ years. You'll notice a distinct rise in both during the Reagan years. Next, we have a graph of the Federal budget deficit and the contribution every President since Kennedy has had to it. Reagan is responsible for an $81 billion, or a 52% increase in the deficit. It is truly amazing to me that the myth of this man being a small government conservative is as commonly believed as it is.

And then there's the "War on Drugs", a gov't program that has cost us countless billions of dollars since its [unconstitutional] implementation.


Again, it was overrated. Did he outspend, and therefore lead to the collapse of the USSR, yes [isn't it ironic that he is credited with outspending the Soviets by the same people who claim he is a fiscal conservative]; but it doesn't take a genius to understand that a capitalist American economy is equipped to outspend a communist one. I'll leave the intricacies of his foreign policy to people who know more about it than I do.


Well, since the modern 'conservative' movement is apparently full of neoconservative, Wilsonian, big-government, fiscally irresponsible types, I'd say that Reagan's policies are being largely continued today.

CP

CP- the blatant lie, or myth, continues to be repeated over and over that the soviet Union collapsed because of Reagan's military spending- where do people get this from? Really? I mean- lets be reasonable- if it was Reagan and SDI and all that spending that brought down the Soviet Union- we would have seen a massive spending increase in the soviet union, correct? Well, guess what? Spending went DOWN during this time, and they didn't spend anything really on SDI beaters- because they already knew that SDI was a boondoggle too- here are some specifics:

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/Politics/fitzgerald.html

"As CIA analysts discovered in 1983, Soviet military spending had leveld off in 1975 to a growth rate of 1.3 percent [per year], with spending for weapons procurements virtually flat. It remained that way for a decade. According to later CIA estimates, Soviet military spending rose in 1985 as a result of decisions taken earlier, and grew at a rate of 4.3 percent per year through 1987. Spending for procurements of offensive strategic weapons, however, increased by only 1.4 percent a year in that period. In 1988 Gorbachev began a roun do budget cuts, bringing the defense budget back down to its 1980 level. In other words, while the U.S. military budget was growing at an average of 8 percent per year, the Soviets did not attempt to keep up, and their military spending did not rise even as might have been expected given the war they were fighting in Afghanistan.
"During Reagan's first term, some in the Kremlin were concerned that the U.S. might possibly be gaining a first-strike capability and might actually launch a nuclear war. This was, of course, the mirror image of the fears expressed in Washington in the mid-seventies. Nonetheless, though the strategic arsenjals on both sides grew like Topsy in the 1980s, the strategic balance remained extremely stable. Without any spending increases, the Soviets continued to turn out and deploy strategic warheads at about the same rate the U.S. did. When the START I treaty was signed in 1991, the U.S. had deployed 12,646 strategic warheads, the Soviet Union 11,212--the numbers so large as to be almost meaningless in terms of deterence.

"At the beginning of Reagan's first term, some conservative enthusiasts in the administration might have believed that the U.S. could spend the Soviets under the table in an all-out strategic arms race. But the Joint Chiefs of Staff never thought this, nor did the CIA, for the simple reason that Soviet spending on strategic weapons was a very small fraction of the overall Soviet military budget. According to one MIT expert, Soviet spending for the procurement, operations, and maintenance of its strategic offensive forces amounted to only 8 percent of its entire defense budget. In other words, had Gorbachev achieved the 50 percent reductions he was seeking at Reykjavik, he woul not have made savings of any significance in terms of the Soviet economy.

Vermillion ( I hope he is still safe) actually quoted many first person sources, such as the CIA redbook and other great, empirically based evidence, I will do a search and maybe try to revive the thread- where he was able to show, with the ultimate smackdown on the Reagan myth, that the US defense spending under Reagan has absolutely 0% influence on changes in the Soviet Union. Reagan's only contribution is that he made friends with ol' Gorby, who, BTW- is reviled in his own country as a traitor to this day, and this bolstered Gorbachev's power a bit more, but that is very hard to quantify in any meaningful way- but it could be argued I suppose.

However, there is NO basis in reality that "the Soviet Union collapsed because of Reagan's defense spending".

Ah- found the thread- as usual, the reagan myths were blown to pieces by Vermillion's posting of facts, vs the " We all knew Regan did it" chanting of the lie, over and over again.

http://www.americasdebate.com/forums/index...?showtopic=6792


Interesting, after reading that whole thread again- it seems as though Aquilla is much more on his "feeling" of Reagan "ending" or "winning" the cold war than offering any evidence- such as, Oh, how about a massive military budget increase to keep up with us naughty and might Americans?


Ah, to Quote Aquilla in that very debate:

There is of course, no definitive way to prove this. There are no links, and there aren't any books that delve into the recesses of Ronald Reagan's mind. Thus, I can't offer cold "facts" for this. All I can offer is history and the fact that for the first time in American history Ronald Reagan stood before that wall and demanded it be torn down and yes, Moif, the "common people" tore it down. Did they do it for Reagan? Absolutely not. They did it for themselves. And Moif, that's exactly what the Reagan Revolution was, and is all about.

What you are saying, that just because everything you say he did can't be proved in any way- we are wrong to just mindlessly have faith in your hero doing this things because you believed he did it, and so did alot of other Americans- who happen to be woefully ignorant on this entire subject.

On the other hand, you have overwhelming proof that he had little or nothing to do with it at all. Vermillions said 'some to little" because he continued the pressure like the prior presidents.

Offer us some, you know, proof, something that showed by spending more money, the Soviets spent money to the point of collapse- well, of course, they did not, you have been given reems of evidence now that they had no real increase in thier military budget at all- or at least, it was static since 1975, and decreased in 1987.

So where is the cause and effect Aquilla? Why should Americans believe a lie just because it makes you and other Reagan worshippers (and make no mistake- it is all faith, nothing more, it is no more rational than believing in UFO and anal probes by little green men) think we should believe this too, and because we don't believe the lies, and have proof and evidence that it is just a myth, we are wrong for believing the, you know, facts and evidence?

And who was inspired in the Soviet Union by Reagan's speeches? Most folks over there know the name, but sure as hell didn't hear his speeches- or even pay attention to them if they did (they had American TV then, just as much or more then, than they do now- most prefer European TV today ) - they certainly weren't "inspired" by Reagan's speeches.

the most popular leader in Russia of all time is Putin. Reagan is just a footnote in history in most Russian's eyes.

Here is a nice quote by English Horn, that happened to grow up in Russia, that put it this way:

Maybe it's because I was fairly young. Maybe it's because I come from prosperous, large city and not from some forgotten village in the middle of nowhere. Maybe it's because my parents taught me to be happy with what I have. But I didn't need "hope" and I don't know anybody who did. I never felt "oppressed" and I don't think my parents have. You see, Aquilla, when you live within a system for a whole life you get used to it and learn to live a fairly happy life within its limits. Yes, travel outside of USSR was severely limited - but most people don't travel even if they have the freedom to do so (look at USA - what percentage of population actually travels abroad?). Private business ownership didn't exist, but once you grow up without having it as an option, you don't miss it. Here's an example - we're prohibited by the government to travel to Cuba - yet 99.9% of population here are not missing colonial architecture of Havana and sandy beaches of its suburbs - because nobody knows what they're missing. Freedom is a very relative thing - yes, you couldn't critisize the system publicly, but how many people have the time to do it anyway?

It's late and I am not sure I am making my point clear... I guess the only reason I am writing this message is because I sense by your choice of words that in your mind you have a sort of equivalency between soviet society and... well, something like Taliban. Not true. But this whole thread is a different topic, so I digress....

And I love this personal anecdote from my time there:

They do like Bush the first though- they call big chicken legs "bush legs" to this day- because of the chicken he sent over there as humanitarian aid that was needed after the collapse.

Well, Fred Kaplan of all people disagrees. Hardly a "Reagan worshipper", he nonetheless wrote this article in Slate Magazine. In this article sub-titled "How Reagan won the Cold War" Kaplan writes the following........




In Peggy Noonan's book - When Character was King, an author apparently unknown to CR's quoted "expert" on the Cold War in another thread here, she writes about Reagan's belief that there would emerge a new leader in the Soviet Union that would have the vision to move it forward. She was there with Reagan in Iceland when he met with Gorbachev. In her book she also writes about Reagan's abhorrence of nuclear weapons, something alluded to in Kaplan's writing.....



Ronald Reagan, the great "warmonger" as portrayed by the left hated nuclear weapons? How could that be? How could that be? Quick show of hands here, how many of you knew that?

(Raising my hand)... feeling alone.... Oh well, nothing like debating in a target rich environment. Reagan brought about a fundamental change in US-Soviet relations. Rather than the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD and it was) doctrine, he sought a better way. He didn't want to just limit nuclear weapons, he wanted to eliminate them entirely. But, he knew the genie was out of the bottle, so he sought a way to counter-act them against rogue states that might acquire them in the future. That was SDI. He offered to share it with the Soviets and that offer was genuine. After 30 years of MAD, it was difficult for them to believe a US President would do that but Reagan would have. Oh well.... We still have nukes all over the place and they pose a threat in many parts of the world. Wouldn't it have been good if Reagan "the peacemaker's" plans had come to fruition.


Aquilla

Aquilla, I didn't find your post very constructive.




When I want feckless hyperbole, I turn on the radio.


Here's what the SFGate had to say about Ronald Reagan's record on the AIDS issue:



Is Reagan a good role-model for the modern conservative movement?

Reagan spoke about the challenger shuttle explosion within hours of the incident. In fact, he leaped for the cameras every chance he got: Reagan's greatest gift as a politician was his ability to use TV as a mouthpiece and he knew it. Any problem that could be addressed with a televised speech, he addressed it. Called up a camera crew and started talking. No president before or since used television as such an intricate part of foreign policy, and I think Reagan deserves oodles of credit for that.

So why did it take him so many years to address the AIDS crisis on camera?

The reason I bring this up is it fits a pattern that even Reagan's admirers have to admit. Presidential mistakes usually fit a pattern: Bush was stubborn and too trusting of his close advisers and cabinet staff. Clinton was disorganized, impulsive, and temperamental. Richard Nixon was secretive and vindictive.

Reagan nurtured a form of optimism that was quite often blind optimism. He was not interested in poverty, addiction, disease, or the rising murder rate. Many Republicans at the time, including up-and-coming Rudy Giuliani were interested in all of those things. Many evangelical leaders were and still are are concerned with those issues. But Reagan was not. He wanted his presidency to be about the fall of communism, and the re-invigorating of the national spirit. He wanted to launch space shuttles into orbit and make nuclear weaponry obsolete from the far reaches of outer-space.

If you were standing at a distance from those problems, Reagan was great. He made a lot of middle class Americans feel great about their nation again, and his way of paring down government let a lot of Americans feel like the government was somehow accountable to them. Suddenly, government could be a common sense matter after all.

But if you saw AIDS, if you saw crack, or the spiking murder of the 1980s, if you had friends and family members mugged on Ponce De Leon in Atlanta every month like it was some kind of urban right of passage, then I think those Americans could be excused for feeling like the president fixated on space shuttles and Gorbachev, but ignored their problems. Those Americans could be forgiven for feeling like Reagan's bootstrap rhetoric was a pleasant way of ignoring the situation.

Generally, one president yields his successor. Dishonest Richard Nixon yielded honest Jimmy Carter. Incompetent Jimmy Carter yielded common sense Reagan. In 1988, Reagan was popular -- George Bush Sr. rode into office on Reagan's approval rating.

But it was only a matter of time before Reagan's vision of America made the political landscape ripe for a candidate who could fixate on the economic plight of common, individual Americans. "It's about the economy, stupid," was as much a criticism of Reagan as it was of Bush.

As I said, Reagan had a transformative impact on American politics, and in some ways his ideals will always be with the GOP. But to win in 2008 or 2012, the party has got to learn how to do what Clinton did -- focus on the economic plight of individual Americans. It's politics. You learn from your worse enemies.

Fair enough. When someone advances a reasoned argument, I'll respond with a reasoned argument, as I have done in this thread. ( for the most part) But, I've been around this forum long enough to have seen the invective leveled at Ronald Reagan by several active posters on AD. It seems from their side of the aisle (which appears to be yours as well), they are really good at dishing it out, and really bad at getting it thrown back at them. Well, if you throw a bomb over the wall, expect at least two of them back.




Your SFGate article is factually incorrect. Reagan first addressed AIDS in public in a press conference on 17Sept1985. This is documented in this article in National Review. From that article......



The FACT of the matter is that the Reagan Administration was addressing AIDS. This link shows how. Check Table 2. Under Reagan, HIV/AIDS funding sky-rocketed, no doubt to the chagrin of those who accuse him of running up the deficit. The FACT of the matter is that Ronald Reagan did take AIDS seriously. I refer you back to the interview I cited earlier by his Secretary of HHS who has stated that she considered AIDS to be the number one priority. Lets move on.....



Reagan didn't speak about AIDS in public because at the time we didn't know enough about it to know what to tell the President of the United States to say. Here is a historical timeline of AIDS. They didn't even know how to screen blood until March of 1985, just a few months before Reagan addressed the AIDS question in a press conference. Yet, from the previous citation (Table 2), the Reagan Administration had been aggressively pursuing scientific research into the causes/cures for AIDS.

The Challenger tragedy was addressed differently than AIDS for a variety of reasons. First of all, it cost the lives of 7 fine American astronauts, including a teacher that was on-board because Reagan wanted a teacher to be the first true "civilian" in space. But, tragic as it was, it didn't threaten anybody else. It happened, we'll find out why and fix the problem before we launch another shuttle, but meanwhile, nobody's life was threatened by what happened. And, we knew what happened - a shuttle blew up, killed 7 people. We built it, we should be able to find out why.

But, AIDS.... That's a whole new cat. We didn't know much about AIDS, and unlike the Challenger, it did threaten people, everyone. We didn't know enough back then to know what caused it, how it was transmitted, how to protect against it. What would you have had Reagan say? What could he have said that would have made any difference, other than to possibly make things worse? Do you remember the AIDS panic in the mid-80's? People afraid they could get it by dirty dishes or giving blood. The Red Cross had a real problem with getting enough blood donors in those days because people were afraid of contracting AIDS from a needle. Others donated their own blood for their own use should they need it because they were afraid of contracting AIDS from a blood transfusion from an infected donor, and that possibility couldn't be ruled out until march of 1985. Should Ronald Reagan, President of the United States added fuel to that fire? Or, should he have done what he did and let his Sec of HHS who said AIDS was her number one priority fully fund the scientific and medical communities in the NIH and the CDC to research and find a cure for this terrible affliction? Which option would you choose?



To paraphrase a biblical citation "If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you teach a man how to fish, he will eat for a lifetime". That could have been Ronald Reagan. The so-called "War on Poverty" introduced by LBJ nearly 20 years previously wasn't working. 20 years and there were still poor people and as you yourself stated, it wasn't getting any better. Maybe there was a better way than the system of political patronage where the "servants" of the "lower class" were kept subservient by politicians who doled out just enough money to keep them alive - and poor. "Let's throw them a fish, but by God we ain't givin' them a fishin' rod". Well, Reagan disagreed. I talked earlier in this thread about Governor Reagan's cuts to the UC system in favor of the Community College system in California. Why did he do that? So a bunch of rich kids from Beverly Hills could go to Santa Monica Community College? No, it was so kids in East LA and South Central could continue their education and break the cycle of poverty. Kids of janitors and cleaning ladies, not kids of bankers lawyers and plastic surgeons. You think I'm a Reagan fan, you should talk to one of those people. Talk to the graphics artist I worked with at Disney who was able to go to college in Long Beach, get his associates degree in graphics arts, go to work for Disney and make enough money to buy a house in Arcadia to move his mom the hell out of South Central. Most of that was due to his own effort, but he had a helping hand. There was no "bootstrap rhetoric" from Ronald Reagan. It was real, and he meant it. It all goes back to "ordinary people doing extraordinary things". He wasn't as successful on the national stage as he was in California, but that wasn't for a lack of trying. And, it most certainly wasn't because he "ignored the situation".


Aquilla

Okay Aquilla, address these:

1) Does an american hero upholding american values give aid in all forms to death squads and terrorists in Central America?

2) Did the Russian military budget increase any more than any other year in Russia from 1975, in fact did the Russian's increase any spending in any significant way to match Reagan's massive spending? Can you show any cause and effect or any good evidence, other than opinion, something emprical, to prove your case on Reagan having anything to do with the political changes in Russia?

3) Did payroll taxes increase under Reagan, yes or no?

4) Did he increase the national debt and did domestic AND foriegn spending go up under Reagan?

5) Did he or didn't he play an integral part in the S&L crisis by deregulating ( an initiative he personally pushed through, yes or no?)nd ingoring the warning signs?

I mean really Aquilla, can you really point to anything the guy did except get the Republican party in the white house, to call him great? I mean, something emprical like you can with FDR or Lincoln that would convince one that he deserves the title of even "good president"

If inspiring speaches is all ya got, hollywood had plenty of them before and after he was in Hollywood.

THIS JUST IN!!! Aquilla still honors and reveres President Ronald Reagan. Others disagree. Film at 11.

Heroes are hard to find. Not just the title of a pre-Buckingham and Nicks Fleetwood Mac album, but a fact. The way Aquilla feels about Ronald Reagan? That's the way I feel about Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. So, I can kind of understand if he feels a bit like a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest. He's definitely advocating the minority viewpoint so far.

As I recall, Aquilla attended a memorial service for Reagan after he passed away. That's a bit further than a "casual" fan of the man would go. I don't share his admiration for the Reagan Presidency, but I think I do understand why he considers the man one of, if not the greatest, presidents that he's ever lived under.

If the subject of this History Debate was MLK instead of RR, a critic of Dr. King would have no shortage of ammunition to rely upon to sully, tar and muddy the image of him. His sexual improprieties. Serious allegations of plagarism in his doctoral dissertation. The blind eye he turned to possible Communist infiltration of the civil rights movement. Charges have been made that King "big-shouldered" other leading figures in the civil rights era aside and grabbed the spotlight for himself. Hell, King forbade any photos of him smoking cigarettes out of personal vanity (I have seen one picture of King sparking up, but it's hard to find even on the web). King was growing somewhat irrelevant and out of step with many Americans due to his refusal to embrace the militancy of the Black Power phase and his outspoken opposition to President Johnson's Vietnam War.

So, there is considerable opportunity to poke gaping holes in the persona of Ronald Reagan. You can't be President of the United States for eight years and not have stumbled multiple times and provided ample ammunition for critics.

At the end of the day though, what does it matter? Ronald Reagan's legacy cannot be built up or torn down by what we write here on Nor will anything be offered here to make the man any less of a superstar to some and pond scum to others.

What is relevant to me is how Reagan relates to the here and now of American politics. The syndicated columnist Cal Thomas offers up his perspective:

This just in: Ronald Reagan is dead and he's not coming back. Now, can conservatives please move on?

Reagan always spoke about the future and its possibilities. Today's conservatives, however, can't seem to break with the past and the nostalgia for the Reagan years. Even in his letter to the American people in 1994 in which he revealed he suffered from Alzheimer's disease, Reagan wrote of his "eternal optimism" for the country's future. Too many modern conservatives seem embedded in a concrete slab of pessimism, preferring to go over a bridge and drown rather than "compromise" their "principles." If you can't get elected, your principles can be talked about on the lecture circuit, but are unlikely to be adopted in Washington.

John McCain, some say, is not a true conservative. Was Reagan? Reagan campaigned as a tax cutter. He cut taxes, but he also raised them. He promised conservative judges and spoke of his opposition to abortion, yet named two justices to the Supreme Court (Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy) who voted to uphold Roe v. Wade. Against the advice of some, Reagan deployed Marines to Lebanon and saw them murdered by a homicide bomber. Reagan engaged in an arms-for-hostages deal with Iran. As president, Reagan seldom went to church, unlike his evangelical base. If conservatives knew in advance these things about Reagan, would they have voted for him in such numbers?

link

IF Reagan were alive today, would today's Republican Party canonize the man or run like scalded dogs from his record the way they are from George W. Bush? It makes me wonder...

The point is, hindsight is always 50-50. I'm of the mind that while Reagan may not have been quite the shining knight Aquilla at times lauds him as, neither is he the ogre with bloody fangs, CruisingRam depicts him as either.

Everything NightTimer says is true, and fine, and well, but my point here, and the reason I bring up AIDS -- simply because it fits a pattern -- is that the focus of Reagan's vision is ill-suited for today.

Reagan's administration routinely overlooked growing socio-economic problems festering among the poor that, by 1992, had spread to the middle class: drugs, health care crisis, crime, etc. It's one thing to simply not "throw money at a problem" or slap AIDS with a fish or throw a fishing rod at a baker inside of a deli with 500 loaves of bread and only 2 loaves of hillside Jews to keep the muffin man in business. My point is that talk is cheap. Reagan, and many of his idolizers, didn't/don't rhetorically address the socio-economic plight of common Americans on an individual basis. And talk, unlike wasteful government programs, Aquilla, is cheap.

Clinton did rhetorically address those problems. He "felt" a lot of people's pain, even when one constituency's "pain" directly contradicted another's. Clinton by virtue of his rags-riches, poverty-to-politics backstory, was a master of positioning himself as a lower middle class warrior. A fat, slobbering, big mac hound who comes to washington to fight fisticuffs for his mama's health care. The crowd loved it. Hardly anybody, even today, stops to ask "wait a second, here's a guy who spent thirty, forty years cozying up to big business, and holding galas with the richest people on planet earth, and we're supposed to believe he's a friend of the common man by virtue of his taste for big macs and fleetwood macs?"

The GOP has got to learn to play that same game -- Huckabee has it figured out -- and its not a game Reagan knew how to play, or wanted to play, or cared to play.

Reagan was focused on the big results, fine and well, but in 2008, 2012, there were almost certainly be a recession that the GOP won't be able to blame on wasteful, liberal social programs. They will need a new paradigm in conservative economic thought, one that maybe emphasizes reducing this billowing deficit of ours.

Exactly Drew= we have a lot of talk, and very little real results, and even worse- all the claims of "tax cuts" ended up with the middle and lower class tax payers paying MORE in taxes- not less. Only his rich buddies benefitted. The massive spending of his regime ended up costing taxpayers more than any president in US history- until GW. We spent more on his S&L boondoggles than any tax cuts saved us, by a large margin- hundreds of billions just to bail out crooks that he allowed into the cookie jar by his "deregulation"- really a "you get to rob people more easily" initiative- without a doubt.

War on drugs- you have to be kidding me- this is the genius, along with this wife, that came up with the national joke "just say no"

Seriously- I wonder about anybody that worships heros- I have none, and think it is a much healthier way to view those in power is disdain, distrust and a fair amount of disgust for thier need to rule over others- a very sociopathic behavior in and of itself.

I have no hero worship for Clinton, and I evaluate his presidency simply on it's merits and failings- and he had plenty of both.

GH Bush was actually not a bad president at all- very competent, and got the job done. He was a victim of Reagan's economic policy, in the end.

But I don't worship the dude like those that worship the empy shell that is Reagan.

He was no hero by any stretch of the imagination for any reason other than he got the neo-cons into power- so he would be a hero for neo-cons, and that is about it.

But NT- anyone that supports the atrocities commited by people he funded, and publically at that, comparing them to our "founding fathers" in thier virtues, when, in fact, they are pedophiles and murderers, well, he deserves the same scorn we give hitler, stalin and pinochet. Pinochet, Saddam and the contras are all people that Reagan supported- and history has shown what scuzballs they are- and the scuzzball that supported them deserves equal blame here.

Interesting....

Earlier in this thread Drew criticizes Reagan for "not addressing AIDS" because of the myth that Reagan didn't talk about it in public until late in his second term. After providing proof that not only did Reagan talk about it in 1985, prior to that his administration was attacking the problem by funding research into the causes/cures for AIDS. The response? "Talk is cheap". To quote a line from some movie - "I think what we have here is a failure to communicate".

Ignoring CR's usual and predictable rant, let's move back to something that NT had to say on the matter.




I prefer the term "target rich environment", but that's not bad, not too bad at all.

But, I digress, just had to acknowledge that one. NT raises an interesting question about Reagan and the GOP today.....



Wonder no more my friend, the answer is no. The Republican Party, at least in the context I think you're using that term would utterly reject Reagan as not being "conservative enough". Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter - all those other "king makers" wouldn't touch Reagan with a 10 foot pole. And, guess what, Reagan wouldn't care. He hated labels like "conservative" hyphens. He was Ronald Reagan, a Republican. He didn't allow himself to be defined by labels, he preferred issues and his stance on many issues would be ripped by some of the wackjobs on the right today.

But, let's step away a bit from the context I assumed you were referencing as the "Republican Party". Let's look at the normal everyday, kiss the wife/hubby/domestic partner, get the kids off to school and go to work part of the Republican Party. Would they vote for Reagan? You bet they would, they did twice in huge numbers.

In the context of the upcoming election, I think McCain is making a huge mistake right now by declaring himself "a conservative". Reagan would never have done that. What McCain should be doing is saying, "I'm John McCain, this is who I am and this is what I believe". It worked for Reagan, no reason it couldn't work for McCain. Or, your man, Obama, for that matter.


Edited to add.....

I wanted to address one other thing that NT said in his last post......



This statement is correct. I went out to Simi Valley to pay my respects to Ronald Reagan and his family. And, I wasn't alone. There was quite a line there of people who also wanted to pay their respects. I was there with my kids all night long. Sat through a traffic jam on