Reagan was a pretty good saber-rattler and advocated a tough-talking stance to the USSR that made some people nervous. He also had his share of military actions, including the questionable (Libya) and the highly dubious (Grenada). Add to that the enormous military expansion and Reagan appeared awfully keen on pursuing a more aggressive form of international diplomacy.
In hindsight, of course, he was just a big ol’ pussycat.
I understand that at the time, the right went completely ballistic when he started talking to Gorbachev.
1980 was my junior year in college. We had a college sponsored election-watch party, and the more liberal folks (of which there were a lot) were really pissing off the more conservative folks with there Nazi salutes and etc. when it became obvious that Carter had lost.
There was a lot of fear that he’d take us to war (Ronnie Raygun was a favorite epithet).
This forum isn’t the place to say what I’d think of your father, so I’ll just point out that you’re changing the subject again.
I still recommend reading the Constitution, but now I’d add a basic economic primer to that.
Post-WWII recessions have largely been caused by the Fed deciding that inflation’s starting to take off, so they raise interest rates, choking off economic growth. Then when things have cooled down, they lower interest rates, and things take off again.
The crash of 2008 was caused by the Bush Administration deliberately falling asleep at the switch and letting Wall Street do whatever it wanted. (And this was after a piss-poor recovery from the extremely mild 2001 recession. The net effect of the Bush Administration on the U.S. economy has been the worst of any President since Herbert Hoover.) And the Fed can’t lower interest rates to make the recession go away, because they’re already at zero.
So other remedies have to be brought into play, and Obama does kinda need Congress’ cooperation for that.
I see you changed the subject again. We were talking about honesty. Since nobody’s criticized either Carter or Bush-41 on that score, I guess this means you’ve conceded the point.
Well, I was around.
I remember him being called a “Warmonger”. I remember ABC producing an awful mini-series called “The Day After” about how nuclear war would really suck. Just in time for the 1984 election, as I recall.
Now here’s the ironic thing, and where I part company with my former compatriots at the GOP.
Reagan also did a lot of things that would get him written out of the family bible.
He reformed social security instead of privatizing it.
He granted amnesty to 3 million illegals.
He repealed many of the tax breaks he granted in 1981 in 1986.
There were a whole lot of other things he did that made him more of a pragmatist than an idealogue…not that anyone on left or right would admit that today.
The Repubs have moved far to the right since Reagan. The Teabaggers have dragged the down a Libertarian rathole they can not escape.
Reagan was responsible for the anti government memes that the Repubs have adopted. He was responsible for gutting regulation . We have all seen how well that worked out in the financial and pollution sectors.
yet even as far right as he was, he does not approach the new Republicans.
That’s just not true. Reagan wanted to cut all sorts of government programs and services. He wanted to dismantle the Department of Education. He cut top marginal rates to 28%, and eventually raised them back to 31%, but that was it. He broke up the air traffic controller’s union.
The reason he didn’t do more domestically to shrink government was because he was focused on the cold war and building up the military and confronting the Soviets, and had a pretty full plate. In addition, the economy came roaring back and was quite strong throughout his last term and a half, and that takes the pressure of making changes in the economy.
Also, Reagan had to deal with a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, and it’s the House that originates spending bills. Therefore, he was quite limited in what he could achieve domestically. In foreign policy the President has a lot more leeway for executive action, and even so he had to bargain away some of his domestic priorities to get congressional support for his foreign policy, which he considered more important at the time.
I’ve read a lot of what Reagan has written, including speeches, interviews, his memoirs, and various biographies. I’ve also read the memoirs of his budget director and other administration officials. He was very much an ideological small government conservative. The people that surrounded him were hard-core small government people. George Shultz was a free-market economist from the Chicago school and a disciple of Milton Friedman’s. David Stockman, his budget director, was a fiscal hawk who wanted much deeper cuts in government.
The biggest criticism of him as a squish on small government came from David Stockman, who said that Reagan was simply too nice when it came down to making the actual cuts. He’d say he wanted deep cuts in government spending, but each time Stockman would come to him with a plan, Reagan would say, “oh, no, we can’t cut THAT. Find me something else to cut.” Stockman felt that Reagan had the intellectual belief in small government, but when it came right down to it he didn’t want anyone to suffer from budget cuts. But other administration officials say it had more to do with Reagan having to cut deals with Democrats, or with his political intuition that the kind of cuts Stockman wanted just weren’t politically feasible.
Reagan had a degree in economics, and his biggest influences were Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. He believed in free trade and free markets.
If Reagan were around today, he would be considered the ‘scary right-wing candidate’.
That said, I do think Reagan would be more willing to entertain modest tax increases if that’s what it took to get a deal to cut the budget. He would be terrified by the current fiscal meltdown of the U.S, even though he ran the deficit up a lot himself.
Reagan - a corrupt administration lead by a man without political will. But, that’s off topic. Sombody should start another Reagan thread.
Crane
Lots of stuff named after Reagan.
I don’t think anyone is going to be naming anything after Obama.
Perhaps so - However, Obama has faced massive challenges and handled them well.
Reagan had 8 years of relative calm. His foriegn policy was a disaster.
The Reagan icon craze is Republican fluff. It has nothing to do with the mans’ performance in the White House, except possibly that he was not as bad as Nixon.
Scholars already rank Obama above Reagan, but I doubt we will ever have an aircraft carrier named the 'Obama".
Crane
Guy, I remember the Reagan years, and the Carter years that preceded them. “calm” isn’t exactly how I’d describe them, at least not at the begining. By the end, yeah, we were pretty calm, Reagan had done a lot to restore the national pride and confidence that we had lost during the 1970’s, when we had real open discussions about whether the Russians, the Arabs or the Japanese were going to take us over. Today we are discussing whether the Chinese are going to take us over. I don’t think it’s a real threat, but the fact we are having the discussion isn’t a good sign.
I don’t pay much attention to “Scholars” for that reason. I live out here in the real world. I remember the Reagan years as probably some of the best ones of my life. I am not going to look back at the Obama years nearly as fondly.
“National pride and confidence.” Uh-huh. Daddy, did we win the war in Greneda? No we sure didn’t worry about the Russians, the Arabs or the Japanese taking us over in the 80’s – we were too busy wondering where the best place to relocated in order to dodge the nuclear holocaust that we came within a body-hair of experiencing. Of course, Star Wars was supposed to save us, even though it didn’t have a prayer of working.
So I’m supposed to be impressed that they named an aircraft carrier after Reagan? Given the blank check he gave to the military-industrial complex back in the day, I’m surprised they didn’t rename the Pentagon after him.
Well, I guess we both happen to have different memories of that time.
Mine actually reflect reality.
Even the Current Occupant tries to invoke Reagan when he can..
I never understood the pride in America problem. We had landed men on the moon and were in a leadership position in science, semiconductors and computers. American exceptionalism was at its’ peak.
Reagan was the beginning of the end.
Crane
Well, if you see us at the end or in an end process, that might a bit of your problem.
I see that people did see a decline, of people burning our flag in contempt, etc. Of Iran taking hostages and there still being Iranians alive afterwards.
Reagan restored that pride, which declined under the shiftless Nixon and Gutless Carter.
So why all this hostility towards Reagan. Were you like an Air Traffic controller or something?
Uh, yes, of course there were Iranians alive afterwards. What, you think we should have glassed the entire country?
:dubious: Obama is the first black president. Regardless of what he did in his four (or eight) years, things were already being named after him in November 2010.
I exaggerate of course, but just by being elected Obama leapfrogged the lowest tier of presidents. Where he ends up is debateable, but being responsible for bin Laden’s death probably pushed him up another rung.
No hostility, just oberved facts.
The hostage situation was just political theater by Iran.
Reagan incompetence was real. There was the Sabra snd Shatila fiasco. As a result Reagan lost 241 killed because the ‘White House’ countered the decision of the commander on the ground to move his troops to a defensible position.
And there was Iran-Contra and providing the waivers to Saddam that allowed him to buy the chemicals to gas his citizens.
Oh yeah, the Grenada invasion where our Commander in Chief almost got beat by a local police force.
Then there was the Savings and Loan fiasco and the HUD scandal
Like I said, I never had a problem with American Exceptionalism. Reagan made it through 8 years, but he was nothing special.
Crane
No exaggeration - by August 2010, Obama already had 7 schools named after him.
:eek: Damn, I stand corrected.