I ask this out of a sense of curiosity, not having experienced those years myself. What I’ve absorbed over the years was that he was liked personally, and things that might have raised a stink otherwise were sort of ignored. Can you give me a “snapshot” of how he was depicted and thought of, and the reality? I was going to ask if he was a “good” President, but that seemed too GD.
I assume you mean Reagan. Your view of Reagan was colored by your political persuasion. He was a hero to my conservative Grandpa. I thought he began us down the road to widening the class division in America. And that he was a clueless arrogant… add pitworthy comments here. The whole illegal arms dealing and wars in central america… just not good for America.
Of course, now he looks pretty good when you compare him to George W.
This one is not likely long for GQ, so let’s go to Great Debates.
Moved. samclem GQ moderator
I lived thru those years, and although he had his detractors on the left, he was generally well thought of by most Americans, and respected by most politicians on either side of the aisle. Things weren’t nearly as nasty in those days, those
His approval rating took a hit during the Iran Contra scandal, but he left office with a 64% approval rating. In his re-election effort in '84, he won 49 of 50 state (he only lost Mondale’s home state), and won the popular vote by 60%.
The media was very protective of Reagan and glossed over his role in Iran-Contra, That helped him to retain his ok approval ratings despite his rank incompetence and his scandal-ridden administration.
From what I remember, people tended to give Reagan a pass for the corruption in his administration because they perceived him as being out of the loop- a pleasant but senile old man who had little awareness of what was actually going on around him. People simply did not expect him to know the difference beween truth and fantasy so he was not held accountable for lying about things like arms for hostages or claiming that trees cause air pollution. He was the nice but addled grampa prattling nonsense. People liked him but didn’t take him seriously.
Interesting that you should spell it Regan. Regan is the classic Irish spelling, and Ronald Regan changed the way he spelled his last name from Regan to Reagan to seem less ethnically Irish – not for politics, I think, but when he was an actor.
During his later political career, Irish-Americans generally embraced him despite this decision to downplay his Irish heritage.
Sailboat
Regan was also the name of the possessed girl in The Exorcist.
To add to the confusion, there was also a Donald Regan who served in Reagan’s administration, as Treasury Secretary during his first term and WH Chief of Staff during his second. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Regan
Arrgghh! Arrgghh! Damn you, Brezhnev! Your mother sucks cock on Wall Street!
One comment I have on Reagan’s legacy is that since him, it’s become increasingly accepted that the president might just be a kind of figurehead, with the real decisions being made behind the scenes. Whatever you might say about Carter, I think it’s generally accepted that he was the driving intellectual idea man in his administration.
Now we’re in a state where it surprises us when our president actually reads and understands the policy questions, and can extemporaneously answer difficult questions about a wide range of topics, foreign and domestic. The fact that being well educated and intelligent and eloquent and literate are now, to a certain extent, DRAWBACKS for a presidential candidate can be traced to Reagan’s legacy.
The best summary, I think, is that he was the Teflon President. He got (and gets) all the credit in the world for his personality and general “leadership”, while skipping out on the blame for all the bad things that happened on his watch. Whether his presidency actually did more good than bad is certainly debatable, but the ridiculous adulation which he receives is just preposterously unreasonable.
And I think most people believe(d) the same, rightly or wrongly, about Bush I and Clinton – that they ran and led their own administrations. (In fact, a friend of mine is absolutely convinced that Bush I is the real acting president now and Bush II merely his puppet.) But you’re right, Reagan did set a dangerous or at least depressing precedent.
Yep, Reagan WAS the original Teflon President. Nothing stuck. And not like it is today with Bush II, where the White House and its unofficially affiliated organs have to spin like endorphin-addicted hamsters on crack to keep him from drowning under a pile of his own crap, but actual shiny-surface, can’t see a speck of dust, squeaky clean with no real effort whatsoever Teflon.
Reagan was well liked overall. He had many corrupt appointees but so did every other 2 term president. He was unfortunately basically senile for the last 2 years in office. His wife was not well liked. Nancy approval rating was probably in the low 40’s.
The military loved Reagan. He rebuilt the military; he was a strong hawk and reestablished our dominance around the world. He built the Navy to the largest & most powerful peacetime fleet ever. He won the unwinnable Cold War. For this I forgive him much.
He had terrible domestic policies but the economy was strong while he was President and this helped his approval rating. People stopped fearing nuclear war as inevitable and this helped his approval rating.
He had good and bad sides. In many ways his popularity was like Clinton’s. Many loved him and many hated.
He was much better than either Bush or Carter.
Iran-Contra was bad but small potatoes compare to an illegal war in Iraq over invisible pink WMDs or the Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon debacle of Vietnam. I think it was more serious that Lewiskygate, but less than WaterGate.
Disclaimer: He was my CIC as I was in Navy 1985-1989.
I was a Libertarian all eight of his years. I thought he was a fool and a jerk at the time. But a lot of people I respect have a lot of respect for him so I softened my view a bit recently.
He should get as much credit for his domestic policies being the CAUSE of the strong economy as Clinton gets for his. I’m no fan of the idea that Presidents create good economies, but if you believe in the Clinton years of prosperity, you should also believe in the Reagan years.
As for his “terrible domestic policies”, that depends on your idea of what good/bad domestic policies are. And if they were indeed terrible, why did he win such a landslide re-election in '84? Some people obviously thought they were good.
Reagan had double digit unemployment and quadrupled the national debt. He overspent on the military and on his asinine Star Wars magical missile shield. Trickle down economics was a miserable failure. His economy sucked.
Geez; I liked him as a president, do I have to be completely glowing in my review. Why don’t you pick on someone who hated him?
My main complaints were the escalating deficits and James Watts as Secretary of the Interior.
I even liked his VP, go figure. I thought having a professional trusted VP was a good idea. I liked the fact the George Bush got good reviews for his years as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Reagan and Clinton were both good cheerleaders for the economy, they said the Economy was good and that in itself, seemed to promote consumer confidence. W said the economy was terrible and consumer faith was shaken. In that regard the presidents do seem to have an effect on the economy. I know it is far more complicated, but the do have an impact.
John Mace: You would be better off debating DTC, he is much stronger in his views than I and very much the opposite your views.
Of course, the double digit unemployment happened during the first two years of his term; by the end of his time in office unemployment had dropped considerably. You can’t possibly pin unemployment problems on Reagan; that is one indicator that improved, by a lot, during his watch.
His personal approval ratings were always very high, even among voters who disagreed with his policies, probably because his sunny optimism was a welcome change from 70s pessimism. He projected warmth, confidence and a sense of humor, and most of the nation respected that.
However, there were plenty of people then saying the sorts of harshly critical things some are saying here. He was viciously hated by many on the hard left; and he had a very adversarial relationship with Democrats in Congress. It was not as bad as things are with W, in part because he was so popular with the voters, in part because his cheerful personality simply made him a hard person to demonize.
His relationship with the press as well was largely adversarial, but they too were somewhat disarmed by his popularity with the voters and by his personal charm. Assertions that they were protective of Reagan are frankly absurd; the reality was that he earned the nickname of the “Teflon President” precisely because the Press tried on many occasions to make various allegations or criticisms “stick” to Reagan, but that in the eyes of the people, they never did.