Reagan's Legacy - How will he be remembered?

[Dis]

hmmm, maybe Reagan wasn't a good president after all...

[Verto]

Don't encourage him.

[alva]

Diss, exactly how often do you change vote/opinion??

Yu're not related to Kerry are you?

[GePap]

What si Reagan know for and to be remembered for?

1. "Bringing back confidence"-well, this is an act not of policy or diplomacy, but personal charisma and oratory. Thid he did.

2. Some will continue to hial him as "the victor of the cold war". This is contentious at best- I have twice laid out why I think it is false, I won't do it again.

3?

The most important internal programs Reagan undertook that surived his very term (all his tax cuts were in one way or another reversed since he proved singularly incapable of restraining the budget, even as he axed many Great Society programs) was the beginning of deregulation. Beyond that, what? He is not at all in the same league as Nixon, Johnson, FDR, Truman, or Roosevelt in terms of starting programs or agencies that have had long and deep impact on the US. Nixon was a greedy, terrible man, but in terms of creaitng things that last, he did more than Reagan. Even Billy Carter, with hi9s efforts at Camp David, left more of a legacy./ When is the last time anyone remembred the 10th or 15th anniversary of anything Reagan did?

You know, oratory has its place, but being a good communicator and making people feel better about themselves is secondary to actually making them better off, and Reagan was certainly lacking in that departrment.

[JohnT]

Billy Carter

Jimmy Carter. Unless you were trying to be funny??

[Lawrence of Arabia]

reagan blew chunks. thanks to him, we've got all the problems we've got now including terrorism.

[GePap]

Originally posted by JohnT
Jimmy Carter. Unless you were trying to be funny??

WOOPS

Maybe we should remane Reagan, Reagan the therapeutic president, since that seems to be the main reason people here admire him (save the contentious CW claim)

[Harry Tuttle]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
reagan blew chunks. thanks to him, we've got all the problems we've got now including terrorism.

Yeah, like pants. And orangutans. All him.

[Sava]

I guess I'm just dismayed that revisionist reagan supporters are forgetting what it was like during those years...

farm bankruptcies
the savings and loan scandal (and the environment that allowed it to happen)
bank failures
double digit unemployment
"$640 Pentagon toilets" - wasteful spending
Iran-Contra (selling arms to terrorists)
Ed Meese; Fawn Hall; Oliver North; James Watt
retreating in the face of terrorism (Beirut)
lying to Congress
financing the illegal war in Nicaragua
the trade deficit

it just goes on an on...

Dissident. Read about the stuff that went on during the Reagan years. It's really sickening all the revisionist crap I'm hearing in this thread... but I expect that from Poly I guess.

[Jaguar]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Sorry I don't feel like bashing my head against an impenetratable wall of stupidity. I'm suprised John did so for as long as he did. Raising infants must be good practice for stuff like that.

Edit: I shouldn't have insulted Sophie like that. I'm sorry John.

DD, I just love your posting style. You never seem to get trapped in ugly arguments, and in your rare posts throughout a thread, you always have a nice witty response.


Sava, from the list you posted, it's obvious that the time of the Reagan administration was horrible. The opinions of Americans of the time prove it: Reagan lost 49 states in 1984.

Oh wait, my mistake, he won 49 states in 1984.

I guess the voters in 49 of 50 states didn't think it was that bad.

[Sava]

Sunday, June 6, 2004
by Greg Palast

You're not going to like this. You shouldn't speak ill of the dead. But in this case, someone's got to.

Ronald Reagan was a conman. Reagan was a coward. Reagan was a killer.

In 1987, I found myself stuck in a crappy little town in Nicaragua named Chaguitillo. The people were kind enough, though hungry, except for one surly young man. His wife had just died of tuberculosis.

People don't die of TB if they get some antibiotics. But Ronald Reagan, big hearted guy that he was, had put a lock-down embargo on medicine to Nicaragua because he didn't like the government that the people there had elected.

Ronnie grinned and cracked jokes while the young woman's lungs filled up and she stopped breathing. Reagan flashed that B-movie grin while they buried the mother of three.

And when Hezbollah terrorists struck and murdered hundreds of American marines in their sleep in Lebanon, the TV warrior ran away like a whipped dog … then turned around and invaded Grenada. That little Club Med war was a murderous PR stunt so Ronnie could hold parades for gunning down Cubans building an airport.

I remember Nancy, a skull and crossbones prancing around in designer dresses, some of the "gifts" that flowed to the Reagans -- from hats to million-dollar homes -- from cronies well compensated with government loot. It used to be called bribery.

And all the while, Grandpa grinned, the grandfather who bleated on about "family values" but didn't bother to see his own grandchildren.

The New York Times today, in its canned obit, wrote that Reagan projected, "faith in small town America" and "old-time values." "Values" my ass. It was union busting and a declaration of war on the poor and anyone who couldn't buy designer dresses. It was the New Meanness, bringing starvation back to America so that every millionaire could get another million.

"Small town" values? From the movie star of the Pacific Palisades, the Malibu mogul? I want to throw up.

And all the while, in the White House basement, as his brain boiled away, his last conscious act was to condone a coup d'etat against our elected Congress. Reagan's Defense Secretary Casper the Ghost Weinberger with the crazed Colonel, Ollie North, plotted to give guns to the Monster of the Mideast, Ayatolla Khomeini.

Reagan's boys called Jimmy Carter a weanie and a wuss although Carter wouldn't give an inch to the Ayatolla. Reagan, with that film-fantasy tough-guy con in front of cameras, went begging like a coward cockroach to Khomeini pleading on bended knee for the release of our hostages.

Ollie North flew into Iran with a birthday cake for the maniac mullah -- no kidding --in the shape of a key. The key to Ronnie's heart.

Then the Reagan roaches mixed their cowardice with crime: taking cash from the hostage-takers to buy guns for the "contras" - the drug-runners of Nicaragua posing as freedom fighters.

I remember as a student in Berkeley the words screeching out of the bullhorn, "The Governor of the State of California, Ronald Reagan, hereby orders this demonstration to disperse" … and then came the teargas and the truncheons. And all the while, that fang-hiding grin from the Gipper.

In Chaguitillo, all night long, the farmers stayed awake to guard their kids from attack from Reagan's Contra terrorists. The farmers weren't even Sandinistas, those 'Commies' that our cracked-brained President told us were 'only a 48-hour drive from Texas.' What the hell would they want with Texas, anyway?

Nevertheless, the farmers, and their families, were Ronnie's targets.

In the deserted darkness of Chaguitillo, a TV blared. Weirdly, it was that third-rate gangster movie, "Brother Rat." Starring Ronald Reagan.

Well, my friends, you can rest easier tonight: the Rat is dead.

Killer, coward, conman. Ronald Reagan, good-bye and good riddance.

God I love Greg Palast. http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=336&row=0

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by Jaguar

DD, I just love your posting style. You never seem to get trapped in ugly arguments, and in your rare posts throughout a thread, you always have a nice witty response.


Sava, from the list you posted, it's obvious that the time of the Reagan administration was horrible. The opinions of Americans of the time prove it: Reagan lost 49 states in 1984.

Oh wait, my mistake, he won 49 states in 1984.

I guess the voters in 49 of 50 states didn't think it was that bad.

Clearly your appeal to popularity will not work

[DinoDoc]

God I love Greg Palast.

The first I heard of him was in another Poly thread when a person was relying on him to advance a theory. Palast, the poster, & his conclusion got shreaded fairly easily. Stupid people must stick together I guess.

[Sava]

That's okay DD... continue to insult all you like. It doesn't bother me one bit. The facts are on my side, and that's all the confidence I need.

[Alexander's Horse]

I remember the Reagan Presidency as being pretty frightening at the time. Nuclear war seemed like a realistic possibility for the first time since the Cuban missile crisis. This was after the long period of detente in which the superpowers took a live and let live attitude to each other.

Fortunately the Soviet Union imploded rather than lashing out. It was a big gamble and noone foresaw what happened with Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost reforms. I do remember the SS20's and other theatre nukes, not to mention the 20,000 Soviet armoured vehicles in Europe poised to strike. It seemed like it was all on a hair trigger for a while with only a few minutes warning to fix any problems before war started.

Reaganomics were pretty crazy, as was star wars, but Reagan had good people around him. He was more like Chairman of the Board than a hands on leader. He had good competent people around him like Casey, Weinberger, Schultz and Baker.