How well-liked was Reagan?

Great Debates
21

The thing is in those days, the GOP was telling people to have a good time. Get rich, buy a yacht (the Democrats were taxing them) do what you like. We’ll get out of your way.

Now the Republicans are a bunch of scolds.

Ron came across as a nice old man who did not want to interfere too much in our lives. The Libertarian Wing of of the Party was in ascendence, the Religious Headjob Wing in eclipse. Now the revers is true; George et. al. want to tell us how to live our lives.

Besides unlike all the presidents since, RR could and did make fun of himself. Can you imagine Bill Clinton making a joke like that?

22

I had the idea that this was in great part due to the Nixon-Watergate scandal - a backlash of cynicism leading to lowered expectations of the President. But I’m not old enough to perceive that change (if there was one) first-hand.

Is that true, or did it begin earlier in US history?

23

More pertinent to the thread: I disagreed with Reagan’s policies, but I didn’t dislike him as much as I disliked the attitude of his more rabid supporters at the time.

I have since read that conservatives felt left out prior to the Reagan years, but as one coming of age during his presidency, it felt like my views were the ones being short-changed and disparaged.

Once it was apparent that Reagan was ill, I softened even more. The only change since then were my views on Nancy, his wife. At the time, I saw her as a rightful object of ridicule, but now I have nothing but compassion for her - even though I’m sure I still wouldn’t agree with her on most issues. But IMO, for her, it wasn’t political at all - she simply loved him and was loyal to him regardless of personal cost to her own political image.

It is a great shame that we were denied Reagan’s (rational) thoughts on what transpired after his presidency. I often wonder what his real feelings were, at the time, and in retrospect - should he have had the luxury of expounding on them.

He did seem to have a well-developed sense of humor, and that is saying a lot for a President. I haven’t seen it since - a small but perhaps significant point.

24

I found Ronald Reagan both fascinating and annoying at the same time (though not necessarily his fault). As my college entrance essay, I wrote about the challenges of his second term.

I definitely saw him as a cheerleader rather than a gutsy decision maker. I perceived him as being “out of the loop” most of the time. I believed that other people in the administration would make the decisions and he would come out and seem so happy about it in a grandpa kinda way. He made people feel good about things. His optimism and his “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” attitude was infectious

However, I also perceived him as being the grasshopper happily playing the fiddle, not worrying about tomorrow. The administration (or was it the culture) seemed to be telling everyone to spend all you got and acquire as much stuff as you can- debt be damned! Buy that big house and that expensive car- the dreary and tense 70’s are over- don’t worry be happy! I was also concerned that there was not enough trickling down to the people that I knew.

I can’t recall any Democrat with any kind of charisma or star power at the time. Reagan was head and shoulders above everyone, he couldn’t be challenged by anyone on the national stage.

He labeled the Soviets the “Evil Empire.” Hating something in common brings people together. I was a democrat and I despised the Soviet Union. I felt so close to Ol’ Ron.

What annoyed me was how people mindlessly fawned over him like he was some kind of savior. Compare it to the way that some people currently fawn over Oprah and everything she does and says. I shared a house with a couple of College republicans at the time, they were so enamored with him, it was difficult to engage them in any kind of serious conversations without them getting all love struck. He could do no wrong in a lot of conservative’s eyes.

25

The unemployment rate for Reagan’s term was:

81: 7.6
82: 9.7
83: 9.6
84: 7.5
85: 7.2
86: 7.0
87: 6.2
88: 5.5

The '82 recession was engineered to break the back of inflation (actually, stagflation) from the Ford/Carter years. I’ll leave it to the reader to determine if unemployment was a plus or a minus for Reagan. Your plopping out of one data point is laughable in it’s obvious partisan spin. No context, no analysis, just pick the absolute single worst possible data point, and hope no one looks behind the curtain. The folks at FoxNews are blushing…

How much, exactly, was spent on SDI?

I’ll post actual data instead of opinion. Is that OK?

Real economic growth averaged 3.2% per year during Reagan’s terms.

The economic upturn beginning in 1982 was the longest peacetime expansion of the economy since WWII.

Interest rates went from 10.4% in 1980 to 4.2% in 1988.

Yeah, that economy sure sucked. :rolleyes:

26

He had this father figure attitude that appealed to a lot of people. Many of the rest of us found it to be particularly grating. I think that had a lot to do with the “Love him or hate him” divide.

In 1984 my high school held a mock election where we all voteds for Mondale or Reagan. I remember one of the posters the Reagan support group put up in the main hallway simply read “Uncle Ronny” in letters two feet high. That says a lot right there about the way he was percieved.

He had a terrific understanding of the way the public recieved and processed information, no doubt gleaned from years in show business, and he used it like a surgeon to craft his image. The incident that stands out most in my mind was actually a minor event, but typical of how Reagan operated. He pushed an economic package through congress which included cuts to a huge number of social programs, but the cuts were buried under tons of obsfucating paperwork, and it took a bunch of economists to explain it. The day it was voted on, the White House released a bunch of video footage of some rocket tests from the Star Wars program. Impressive looking stuff, too, although it was meaningless in terms of actual news.

Remember that most everyone got their news from the major network news broadcasts. What do you suppose their lead story was that night? You guessed it, meaningless rocket footage. I remember CBS played the same footage twice because it looked so cool. Dan Rather said something to the effect of “They aren’t allowed to tell us what the results of these tests mean, just that they are very significant.”

After the rocket test circus act was over, the newscasts turned to the economic package, and the story consisted of five minutes of economists droning on in monotone about the significance of the cuts contained therein. The next morning, everybody remembered the rocket footage and nobody remembered the economist’s report. Through skillful manipulation, Reagan had effectively killed any national dialog about his economic package.

I don’t mean to relate this story as a criticism, just an observation of how the guy operated. He was entertaining! He called the USSR the “Evil Empire” and he made everyone feel like he was the only one who could save us from them. He made the Democrats, with their complaints about his economic policies, look dull, annoying, and they appeared to be focused on the wrong priorities. He was like a magician, making you look in the direction he wanted you to, while ignoring what he wanted you to ignore. That’s why they called him “The Great Communicator”. If you agreed with his policies, you admired this and thought he was a genius. If you didn’t like his policies and recognized what he was doing, you thought he was the devil incarnate. Either way he was quite a guy.

27

Exactly! “Heck of a guy.”

I read Kitty Kelly’s book on Nancy. No matter what KK said (and how she said it) I grew more impressed with Ron. Hell of a come-back story if nothing else.

I would compare him to LBJ. Love him or hate him, he was larger than life.

28

Yeah, for a lot of us it sure did. Heavy unemployment for half a decade followed by uneven growth that accellerated the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. The key quote in the cite is " The Gini index for households indicates that there has been growing income inequality over the past quarter-century. Inequality grew slowly in the 1970’s and rapidly during the early 1980’s."

Trickle down was a painful lesson in what did not work for a large portion of America. In the 80’s teenagers where I lived couldn’t get part time jobs because they were all taken by the grown men trying to support a family. The overall economic numbers can certainly grow even if the growth is slanted towards the high end of the scale.

29

I think John Mace has already dealt with the “heavy unemployment” nonsense. The “poor getting poorer” is also wrong.

They can also grow if unemployment and poverty decrease.

The Reagan years are when I learned that some people will always spin numbers against whoever they don’t like. If there is major job growth, that is terrible because they are entry-level jobs and therefore low paying. If the job growth occurs in high-paying sectors, that is worse because poor people don’t have the qualifications to get those jobs. General economic growth is bad because it leads to income inequality. Etc.

Not that it only comes from one side of the aisle, but still…

Regards,
Shodan

30

Reagan was a particularly polarizing figure, as I remember. My sense was that your like or dislike for him was almost entirely driven by your ideology. I also seem to remember that people generally had had enough of him by the time his second term ended. I think he gets a bit of a retrospective gloss because of his battle with Alzheimer’s, and because people have a tendency to look back fondly at years when they were younger.

31

No matter what, far more people liked Reagan than either Bush, Carter or Nixon.
His popularity was generally higher than Clinton’s.
I can’t speak to Johnson and JFK was granted near Sainthood after his assassination, so it is hard to get a good perspective on him.
As JFK is generally considered the first TV President, that is probably far enough back.
Wasn’t Johnson very disliked? I think that was why he bowed out of the 1968 election.

32

You’re memory is wrong, and that’s why it’s better to stick to the facts. As per my first post in this thread (#4), his approval rating was 64% when he left office. It’s highly unlikely that Bush Sr would ever have been elected if people generally disapproved of Reagan. People generally had had enough of Bush by the time he stood for re-election, and he got booted.

33

I don’t know if he was “disliked”, but the war in Vietnam was his undoing. He was a very good politician, and was used to getting what he wanted, Texas style. He knew the Senate in and out.

34

Because the machinery of getting elected and the machinery of running a country are two entirely different things.

35

JFK was all Camelot during his term, but later the bad stuff leaked out, like the drugs and the women and the Mafia ties. Re(a)gan was apparently similarly lionized, then and now. Clinton never was, the bad stuff was out as soon as it happened. Interesting.

36

This OP was not on whether Reagan was a good President, just

(I’m glad someone fixed the title)

He was well liked by a larger percentage than any recent President.

Why he was good or bad is really a different thread.
Why you liked/disliked him is your opinion and please express your reasons here.
You seem to be starting a new debate with your post above.

37

In my readings, I got the impression that many were not overjoyed with JFK and he did win by the smallest margin until the 2000 election.
It seemed like his detractors clammed up for many years after his assassination out of respect for the office.
Wasn’t part of the Texas appearance to shore up his own popularity?

38

[QUOTE=jrfranchi]
This OP was not on whether Reagan was a good President, just (I’m glad someone fixed the title)

My post was in response to John Mace’s comment about him winning landslide elections. I’ll be the first to admit that he was very well liked by alot of people - that made him easily electable. Warren G. Harding was well-liked as well - he was an affable, good looking guy that was completely in over his head as President (by his own admission).

39

During his term Reagan was VERY well liked by a pretty diverse group of folks. Oh, there were a few nay sayers (such as those in this thread) who couldn’t stand the man and would do or say anything, accurate or not, against him. But over all it was surprising (too me) the diversity of the people who had good things to say of him at the time (this has since changed somewhat as a lot of ‘liberals’ have attempted through various means to discredit him…‘asleep at the switch’, ‘puppet’, and ‘had Alzheimer’s while in office and knew not what he did’ being some of the current crop served up).

Whats really interesting to me is how the various partisans have a hard time understanding each other…though they act exactly the same in their responses. The ‘left’ can’t see why Reagan was so revered, especially by those on the right but actually by a lot of folks from all walks of life, despite his many flaws. The ‘right’ can’t see why Clinton was so revered, especially by those on the left, but also, again, buy a lot of folks from all walks of life, and again despite his many flaws. Both sides go to sometimes ridiculous lengths to discredit the others president while leaping through lots of hoops to support theirs. Its actually kind of funny to me to watch the contortions.

-XT

40

Reagan was well liked. Harding was well liked and incompitent. Therefore, Reagan was incompetent. Yeah, we get what you’re trying to imply. Problem is, there’s a little logical fallacy that gets in the way of that implication.

Reagan being “in over his head” has been debunked over and over. The portrayal of him just being some aged actor pretending to be president makes a nice story, but it simply isn’t true. Take the time to read the book of his letters that was published a few years ago, and you’ll see that he was a student of government and politics for decades with well thought-out, intelligent postions on important issues.