# Reagan dies! Let's debate his legacy! **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 5, 2004, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850 "2004-06-05T21:01:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Zagadka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zagadka/32/7272_2.png) [@Zagadka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zagadka)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/141 "2004-06-07T03:35:52Z")
> [@iamme99](#): > > Well, on the positive side, he was a good public speaker and did tell a good joke. 😃 Like the one about the people starving being “on a diet”? Yea, he was a laugh riot! ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/142 "2004-06-07T05:32:32Z")
And what was it Tip O’Neill said-something about “balancing the budget on the backs of the poor?” From what I gather, the “ketchup” as a veggie was only supposed to be counted as one along with other foods. What foods? Cheeseburgers and fries, of course! Even the late Senator Heinz thought that making ketchup a vegetable was absurd. (Yes, the husband of Theresa Heinz Kerry). ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/143 "2004-06-07T05:42:36Z")
I remember one I could never quite track down. It was something about RR sharing a horror story regarding the welfare/nanny state, wherein this welfare mooch supposedly bought orange juice with a $1 food stamp, and with the change bought vodka. I remember thinking, its been a really, _really_ long time since RR has bought any vodka. They got thier Reagan nostalgia, and I got mine. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/144 "2004-06-07T10:57:11Z")
The notion that Reagan’s policy led to the collapse of the Soviet Union is fanciful. From [Professor Lawrence S. Wittner](http://hnn.us/articles/printfriendly/2732.html) > [@](#): > > Soviet leaders, terrified that the Reagan administration was preparing a nuclear first strike against their country, nearly launched a nuclear war. In November 1983, during NATO’s Able Archer military exercises, the jittery Soviet government became convinced that, under cover of the exercises, a U.S. nuclear attack upon the Soviet Union was underway. Consequently, Soviet nuclear forces were alerted, command staffs reviewed their strike missions, and nuclear weapons were readied for action. “The world did not quite reach the edge of the nuclear abyss,” recalled Oleg Gordievsky, a U.S. intelligence agent within the KGB. “But during Able Archer 83 it had . . . come frighteningly close.” > [@](#): > > Asked if a U.S. government hard line had forced the Soviet government to become more conciliatory, Aleksandr Yakovlev, one of Gorbachev’s top foreign policy advisors, replied: “It played no role. None. I can tell you with the fullest responsibility.” Arbatov, also a key Gorbachev foreign policy advisor, called the idea that a U.S. military buildup helped alter Soviet policy “absolute nonsense.” Soviet changes, he said, “not only ripened inside the country but originated within it.” Dobrynin did give the U.S. government some credit, but not for the efficacy of its military strength. "If Reagan “had not abandoned his hostile stance toward the Soviet Union ,” recalled the Soviet diplomat, “Gorbachev would not have been able to launch his reforms and his `new thinking,’” but “would have been forced to continue the conservative foreign and domestic policies of his predecessors.” When Gorbachev was asked about the triumphalist claim, made during the 1992 presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush, he replied simply: “I suppose these are necessary things in a campaign. But if this idea is serious, then it is a very big delusion.” Enough of giving Reagan credit for something he had nothing to do with. What evidence to the triumphalists have to show that the Soviets even attempted to match the US military buildup, as is commonly cited as the reason for the Soviet collapse? ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/145 "2004-06-07T11:11:17Z")
In 1980 there was noting inherent in the Soviet system that mandated a collapse within the next few decades. Who says Soviet couldn’t have limped on much like Cuba or Vietnam especially since they in fact have their own oil sources – or, the more likely and awful, like North Korea, alternatively pretending to negotiate and blackmailing the world with its vast arsenal or weapons. Economic collapse sure hasn’t done much towards a policy shift in many African countries. For an alternatively history, had we (the world in general and eastern Europe in particular) been so unfortunate that Carter had won reelection or another person much like him had ruled those two terms – such a person would have been much more likely to prop-up a Soviet state with financial help in return for good conduct – much like as has been seen with North-Korea. I do not believe the Soviet collapse was inevitable, and surely not so quick, and I believe Reagan’s policies had a strong influence in the collapse. Though of course those were not solely to blame, and the strings of cause and effect in the real world are too complex to prove one way of the other. (I also have much respect for Gorbachov – though it bears notice that he in fact failed with his project, since he never intended for the Soviet to collapse of communism to end) I have in my work and travels had quite a few dealings with eastern Europe and Russia (which I also consider European). And, right or wrong, most of those I have spoken to on the subject consider Reagan and the American policies in the 80’ies to be a cornerstone in their liberation. One Russian guy I worked with last year, considered Reagan the best president the people of USSR ever had. Poland I’ve often heard described as the most pro-USA country of all countries – including the USA. Eastern Europe knows whom they own their liberation to, and it’s not western European appeasement policies. I’m certain much of the reluctance in acceding Reagans hand in the fall of communism springs from an abject terror in facing the fact that these despised and “stupid” so-called right-wing policies actually has been shown to work, while the left’s much more “intelligent” excessive diplomacy and appeasement strategy has been shown to be not only ineffectual but directly harmful. Quite incidentally I’ve just finished a book which included the statement that the rich part of American society actually paid an increasing part of the American tax revenues during the Reagan years, since his tax reductions was followed up by removal of a number of special exceptions. How does this square with the litany of Reagan enriching the rich? Personal reagandote: I was a little skinny runt of a boy at eleven or twelve or something, living in a little godforsaken town wherein nothing ever happened – except this day there was a Soviet Destroyer on guest visit. So I went to have a look. The ship was littered with passed out sailors in drunken stupor, since they had been on a rampage the previous night. The door to the vodka storage or weapon room was broken down with an axe – which was still lying there. The captain, drunk as an otter, was sitting in a little dark room watching television. Laughing loudly pointing to the television where he was watching an old movie starring Reagan, he roared in broken English: “this is their president.” Oh how I admired that captain for years! He’s still, right there besides Reagan, in my daily prayers – had I any. ---
**Author:** ![Desmostylus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/146 "2004-06-07T12:20:42Z")
> [@pervert](#): > > Can you cite this for me? I remember many claims that Reagan was trigger happy, but I never once remember him ever seriously suggesting that we should start shooting. I don’t remember any serious conservative actually suggest war. I do remember many serious liberals suggest disarmament. Are you now saying that the only liberals suggesting disarmament were nuts? Well apart from the classic quote from the moron himself: “My fellow Americans. I’m pleased to announce that I’ve signed legislation outlawing the Soviet Union. We begin bombing in five minutes.”, you aren’t going to see much in the way of people saying “push the button now”. What you will find record of, however, is people advocating programs which were only useful for first strikes. > [@](#): > > [Sympathy For The Devil > By John Perry Barlow](http://www.calpundit.com/archives/002606.html) > > Return with me now to the last time I was convinced he was insanely endangering life on earth. This was back in the early 1983 when Dick Cheney was, at least by appearances, a mere congressman. He was also Congressional point man for the deployment of the MX missile system in our mutual home state of Wyoming. (The MX was also called the “Peacemaker,” a moniker I took at the time to be the darkest of ironies.) > > The MX was, and indeed still is, a Very Scary Thing. A single MX missile could hit each of 10 different targets, hundreds of miles apart, with about 600 kilotons of explosive force. For purposes of comparison, Hiroshima was flattened by a 17 kiloton nuclear blast. Thus, each of the MX’s warheads could glaze over an area 35 times larger than the original Ground Zero. Furthermore, 100 MX missiles were to lie beneath the Wyoming plains, Doomsday on the Range. > > Any one of the 6000 MX warheads would probably incinerate just about every living thing in Moscow. But Cheney’s plan — cooked up with Brent Scowcroft, Don Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, and other familiar suspects — was not about targeting cities, as had been the accepted practice of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). The MX was to be aimed instead at the other side’s missile emplacements. > > The problem with this “counter-force strategy,” as it was called, was that it was essentially a first-strike policy. The MX was to be placed in highly vulnerable Minuteman silos. In the event of a Soviet first strike, all of the Peacemakers would have been easily wiped out. Thus, they were either to be launched preemptively or they were set to “launch on warning.” The MX was to be either an offensive weapon or the automated hair-trigger was to be pulled on all hundred of them within a very few minutes after the first Soviet missile broke our radar horizon . > > In either case, the logic behind it appeared to call for fighting and winning a nuclear war. Meanwhile, President Reagan was bellowing about “the Evil Empire” and issuing many statements that seemed to consider Armageddon a plausible option. > > I spent a lot of time on Capitol Hill during the winter of 1981-82. I lobbied over a hundred Congressmen and Senators against a policy that seemed to me the craziest thing that human beings had ever proposed. The only member of Congress who knew more about it than I did was Dick Cheney. > > Veteran Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory accompanied me on one of my futile visits to his office, where she spent better than an hour listening to us argue about “circular errors probable” and “MIRV decoys” and the other niceties of nuclear nightmare. When we were leaving, she, who had seen a lot of politicians in her long day, turned to me and said, “I think your guy Cheney is the most dangerous person I’ve ever seen up here.” At that point, I agreed with her. > > What I was not thinking about, however, was the technique I once used to avoid being run off the road by Mexican bus drivers, back when their roads were narrower and their bus drivers even more macho. Whenever I saw a bus barrelling down the centerline at me, I would start driving unpredictably, weaving from shoulder to shoulder as though muy borracho. As soon as I started to radiate dangerously low regard for my own preservation, the bus would slow down and move over. > > As it turned out, this is more or less what Cheney and his phalanx of Big Stategic Thinkers were doing, if one imagined the Soviet Union as a speeding Mexican bus. They were determined to project such a vision of implacable, irrational, lethality that the Soviet leaders would decide to capitulate rather than risk universal annihilation. > > It worked. While I think that rock ‘n’ roll and the systemic failures of central planning had as much to do with the collapse of communism as did Dick’s mad gamble, I have to confess that, by 1990, he didn’t look quite so nuts to me after all. The MX, along with Star Wars and Reagan’s terrifying rhetoric, had been all along a weapon for waging psychological rather than nuclear warfare. The author goes on to claim that it was actually a masterful strategy, and that Cheney is doing the same thing in Iraq. What it was was a huge gamble that paid off, _only_ because Reagan didn’t follow through. When you actually follow through with stupid, belligerent bullshit like that, you end up getting lots of people killed for no tangible benefit whatsoever. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/147 "2004-06-07T12:22:18Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > He was right that if you pushed the Soviet Union hard enough, it would collapse. The left was too scared to make the attempt, and prefered a status-quo in which the most evil dictatorship on the planet would be allowed to continue on being evil for as long as it liked, as long as was willing to agree to certain security demands. > > Actually, the more radical fringes of the left didn’t even want to maintain detente. They wanted unilateral disarmament. They wanted the U.S. to dismantle its nuclear weapons and roll back the military unilaterally. Remember? The more radical fringes of the right blew up a building in Oklahoma City. Therefore nothing the right wing says is true. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_One](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/45deac/32.png) [@Evil\_One](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_One)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/148 "2004-06-07T13:37:22Z")
This thread appears on it’s way to a quick death. The majority of the people in this thread seem to want to stick their fingers in their ears and chant “Defecits, Iran-Contra and Catsup” over and over again. No minds will be changed here today. If you want me, I’ll be in the corner with my fingers in my ears, chanting “One of the best Presidents ever”, over and over again. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/149 "2004-06-07T14:37:36Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > Quite incidentally I’ve just finished a book which included the statement that the rich part of American society actually paid an increasing part of the American tax revenues during the Reagan years, since his tax reductions was followed up by removal of a number of special exceptions. How does this square with the litany of Reagan enriching the rich? Well, we did note above that some of the later tax reforms during the Reagan era undid some of his original tax policies…as it is said that apparently Reagan himself even expressed some concern about the rich being able to avoid taxes to too great a degree. However, if your claim is based on what I think it is given how you worded it, it is actually based on a simple but fundamental misunderstanding. This is the sort of claim that also appears on the Wall Street Journal editorial page. For example, they will note that the richest 1% paid 19.05% of the total federal personal income tax revenues in 1980 but that it was up to 37.42% in 2000. (See [here](http://www.taxfoundation.org/prtopincometable.html).) The problem with this statistic is that it doesn’t account for the fact that the share of income tax revenues paid not only depends on the tax rate for that group but also depends on the share of the income earned by that group. If the share of income earned by the group grows due to growing inequality, that would lead to a growing share of the income tax revenues being paid by the group even with no change in tax policies. And, a look at the same source I linked to above shows that this is precisely what happened. In fact, the share of the adjusted gross income (AGI) earned by the top 1% went from 8.46% in 1980 to 20.81% in 2000. [The table notes that the definition of AGI changed with the 1986 tax reform act, so the numbers are not strictly comparable…However, a look at the data does not show any sharp discontinuity between 1986 and 1987 when the change occurred.] So, what one finds is that while the richest 1%'s share of the contribution to personal income tax revenues doubled, this is because their share of the income more than doubled! It is in fact just documenting how some combination of economic factors and economic policies resulting in a huge explosion in inequality during that 20 year period. (The fact that the rich pay a significantly higher share of the personal income taxes than their share of the income does show that the federal income tax is progressive. However, the progressivity of the tax system **as a whole** is considerably less than this federal income tax data shows because the payroll taxes and state and local taxes are actually regressive.) And, in fact, if you compare 1980 to 1990 (again using that Tax Foundation source), you see that the average federal income tax rate for the top 1% went from 34.47% down to 23.25%…which is a much more dramatic drop than any of the other groups shown received. (For example, the average rate for the income from everyone went from 15.31% to 12.95%.) A looking more holistically at what happened to the aftertax income of the rich and poor between 1979 and 2000, and also looking at each decade individually, is given in [this report](http://www.cbpp.org/9-23-03tax.htm) by the liberal think tank CBPP but based on Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data that you can find [here](http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=5324&sequence=0). One can clearly see the effects of Reagan’s policy’s (along with other convoluting factors, presumably). For example, the after-tax income in real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) terms actually fell a few percent for the bottom 40% of the population between 1979 and 1989 while those for the top 1% rose by 77%! By contrast, the gains in real income between 1989 and 2000 were **somewhat** more equitably distributed. (Basically, there were equally big gains at the top, but there were also lesser gains going all the way down the economic ladder, with even the bottom 40% receiving ~14% gains.) Note how over the entire period from 1979 to 200, the top 1% saw real incomes increase by 201% while the middle quintile saw only 15% gains and the bottom quintile saw only 9% gains. (Another fact showing how strongly weighted things were to the top end of the scale is the fact that the average real income went up by 40%…or almost 3 times what the medium real income went up.) So, the short answer is that what you quoted is a good example of how one can lie with statistics and unfortunately your book sounds like it is doing more to spread ignorance on this particular subject than to dispel it. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/150 "2004-06-07T14:42:50Z")
> [@Evil One](#): > > This thread appears on it’s way to a quick death. The majority of the people in this thread seem to want to stick their fingers in their ears and chant “Defecits, Iran-Contra and Catsup” over and over again. No minds will be changed here today. If you want me, I’ll be in the corner with my fingers in my ears, chanting “One of the best Presidents ever”, over and over again. Whatever…Some of us are actually trying to engage in a careful look at the facts. I agree with you that you don’t appear to be among them. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/151 "2004-06-07T14:59:01Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > You’d have a point if it was really that small a fringe. But the disarmament movement was huge. Is this anything like your often-cited (and often-smacked-down) claim that “more people protested the US war against Afghanistan than protested the US war against Iraq”? :rolleyes: > [@elucidator](#): > > I remember one I could never quite track down. It was something about RR sharing a horror story regarding the welfare/nanny state, wherein this welfare mooch supposedly bought orange juice with a $1 food stamp, and with the change bought vodka. I remember thinking, its been a really, really long time since RR has bought any vodka. Are you sure you’re not misremembering Reagan’s whopper about the “welfare queen” who cheated the government out of so much money she bought a new car with her checks? > [@Evil One](#): > > No minds will be changed here today. If you want me, I’ll be in the corner with my fingers in my ears, chanting “One of the best Presidents ever”, over and over again. Putting aside that [Cecil himself](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_229.html) was singularly unimpressed with ol’ Ron, I’ll just use this as an excuse to shoehorn in this relevant quote from another sagely American: > [@](#): > > **Isaac Asimov:** Anyone can persuade Reagan to do anything, if only it’s stupid enough. And he did that amongst a great many other stupid things. Unfortunately it’s considered unpatriotic to blame him for our national debt; to blame him for our adverse trade balance; to blame him for the S&L fiasco, to blame him for the atmosphere of greed that permeated the United States in the 19805 and resulted in having us now act as the world’s policemen when we’re only ticking on two cylinders. And it’s all Reagan, all Reagan and the men who control him. > > **Peter David:** Do you feel it’s been perpetuated by Bush (Senior)? > **Isaac Asimov:** Oh, yes. It’s been completely perpetuated by Bush. Bush isn’t as stupid as Reagan, because it’s impossible to be as stupid as Reagan. But Bush isn’t very much smarter than Reagan. > > –Isaac Asimov, November 1990 > (interview with Peter David via the Sci-Fi Channel) And I wonder how many of the Reagan retrospectives actually paid attention to the fact that the man [once co-starred in a movie with a chimpanzee…](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043325/) ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_One](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/45deac/32.png) [@Evil\_One](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_One)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/152 "2004-06-07T15:14:12Z")
Actually, Jshore, I’m a bit more politically aware than that post appears. I made that statement for effect. I know the difference between the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Mangagement and Budget. I know the difference between Gross National and Gross Domestic Product. And I know that anything that Reagan did will be discounted and mocked by those who find him ideologically offensive. His supporters will focus on the good, his detractors on the bad. Statistics will be analyzed and spun. And in the end, no minds will change. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/153 "2004-06-07T15:41:06Z")
> [@jshore](#): > > (Another fact showing how strongly weighted things were to the top end of the scale is the fact that the average real income went up by 40%…or almost 3 times what the medium real income went up.) Of course, that was supposed to be “median real income”. (More precisely, I am comparing to the real income of the middle quintile, which went up by 15% in that 1979 to 2000 time period.) ---
**Author:** ![aerodave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f08c70/32.png) [@aerodave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aerodave)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/154 "2004-06-07T15:56:07Z")
I find myself entrenched in a pretty polarized situation. I work for DoD, and am surrounded by a fairly conservative bunch that doesn’t really understand or like that fact that I think Bill Clinton was a good president. (The word “Clinton” is _verboten_ around here.) They don’t sympathize much when I say that I can’t decide who I might vote for in November. And they all idolize Reagan. At the same time, I waste all my time here on the SDMB, which has its political center of gravity pretty far to the left. And I see a lot of people on this thread grasping pretty hard for any way to ignore the fact that Reagan was a great president. **jshore** says that we’re trying to examine the facts…but while each side is presenting a lot of evidence, the other side isn’t really listening. Here’s how I feel about Reagan…and what I think his legacy will be: RWR had an economic strategy that was excellent in theory, and awful in practice (not unlike Soviet Communism). However, I’ve always believed that a president has little direct control over the economy, only over the mood of the nation. The boom of the 90s can’t be credited to Clinton any more than the growth of the 80s to Reagan. Of course, became involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, but scandals are par for the course of any presidency. And even if it was a deluded justification, there was a moral basis for the whole affair. It was done with a purpose that Reagan may have sincerely felt was for the greater good. I’m not saying that justifies it…just that there was at least a reason for it. You can’t say the same for other presidential debacles like Watergate and Clinton’s sexcapades. And at least he accepted responsibility when the scandal was blown open…in a prompt address directly to the American public. I don’t think any president since has had the balls to admit to their mistakes so openly. But most of the people who place Reagan on a pedestal don’t do so because he was perfect. The reason for his greatness lay in the fact that he was a powerfully charismatic leader. You can look at the two decades since, and easily two decades prior, and see that most of us haven’t seen real leadership like that from a president in our lifetimes. Particularly apt is the example given far above in this thread about the differences in how RWR and GWB comforted the nation after the Space Shuttle tragedies. Try to think of how any president since Kennedy would have handled it, and it gets pretty hard to imagine. He truly was the “Great Communicator.” And that can be a qualifier for greatness in itself. Some of you are villifying him for doing nothing more that producing sound bites. But isn’t it one of the main functions of a president to represent the nation and shape its image? During the 80s, RWR reperesented America as tough, determined, and proud. That’s what we needed then in the face of the climax of the Cold War (and we could use some more of it now.) Whether he was responsible for the fall of Communism isn’t the real debate. But the fact that he appeared to many—especially outside the partisan bickering of his own country—to lead us victoriously through that difficult time is the key to his greatness. Clinton may have possessed that same charisma, but lacked the grit to go along with it. And W? Well, all I have to say is “strategery.” I’m not giving him personal credit for singlehandedly changing the world like so many do. But I recognize the fact that the was a strong, popular, and determined leader when the country really needed one. Like them or not, he had convictions, and stuck to them no matter what. And part of being a good leader is having the guts to do what you think is right even when half the people are telling you very loudly that you’re wrong. I’d rather see a leader do something I didn’t agree with, but do it with determination and conviction, then see someone waffle and try to make everyone happy. Sounds like the [Russians](http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/06/07/003.html) would agree: > [@](#): > > Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, 61, remembered Reagan fondly for his humor and his toughness. “His phrase, ‘evil empire,’ became a household word in Russia,” said Bukovsky, who now lives in Cambridge, England. “Russians like a straightforward person, be he enemy or friend. They despise a wishy-washy person.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’ll soon see anyone with that sort of firm leadership and grace, or someone with the same ability to unite the nation. With only a few exeptions (most of whom appear to post on the SDMB), it seems that even the people who hated Reagan still liked him. I can’t think of any other recent presidents who you could say the same things about. I have no doubt that history will look back FDR and RWR as the two great presidents of the 20th century. Then again, there isn’t a lot of competition. (Interesting that FDR and RWR were so different in their ideologies…ironic because Reagan got his start as FDR’s protege.) ---
**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/155 "2004-06-07T16:10:08Z")
[Ted Kennedy](http://www.ronaldreaganmemorial.com/a_tribute_associatedpress.asp), for one, ceratinly seems to believe that Reagan had a hand in the downfall of the Cold War. > [@](#): > > Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who from his seat in the Senate watched the rise of Reagan and with him the Republican resurgence, said: “We often disagreed on issues of the day, but I had immense respect and admiration for his leadership and his extraordinary ability to inspire the nation to live up to its high ideals.” > > Departing from the Democratic pattern, Kennedy also said Reagan “will be honored as the president who won the Cold War.” He drew a direct connection between Reagan’s handling of the Soviet Union and his brother’s, saying that “his ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall’ will be linked forever with President Kennedy’s ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’” ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/156 "2004-06-07T16:22:03Z")
**audilover** , those were interesting comments, and no doubt sincere. Unfortunately, the general attitude on this board is that facts are what matter most, not the bullshitting ability you call “communication” and admire the man for. That so many people are eager to believe anything that makes them feel better in no way exalts the one who is willing to tell it to them. I think most of us would say that a good leader will listen when, as you put it, “half the people are telling you very loudly that you’re wrong” - it is always at least possible that they’re right and you’re leading them into a disaster made inevitable by your own pigheadedness, isn’t it? Wouldn’t an honest leader, like an honest citizen, consider views he doesn’t already hold? A “leader” who refuses soon finds himself without people willing to follow him - and especially when he forgets that \*he \* works for _them_. Most of us would also not give much credit for “an economic strategy that was excellent in theory, and awful in practice”. It’s the practice that tripled our debt and flowed so much money from the middle and lower classes to the upper one. On what basis can you call the theory of voodoo economics “excellent”, and how do you reconcile that with your simultaneous observation that Presidents don’t affect the economy anyway? So, when you say that “the other side isn’t really listening”, what _facts_ are we ignoring? Does that foolish insistence on remaining grounded in reality make this board “pretty far to the left”, as you say, or are we just generally not fooled by style over substance? ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/157 "2004-06-07T16:25:46Z")
> [@audilover](#): > > Of course, became involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, but scandals are par for the course of any presidency. And even if it was a deluded justification, there was a moral basis for the whole affair. It was done with a purpose that Reagan may have sincerely felt was for the greater good. I’m not saying that justifies it…just that there was at least a reason for it. You can’t say the same for other presidential debacles like Watergate and Clinton’s sexcapades. And at least he accepted responsibility when the scandal was blown open…in a prompt address directly to the American public. I don’t think any president since has had the balls to admit to their mistakes so openly. I really don’t understand why you stress there being a reason for Iran-Contra and why do you say he was “involved” in it. Everyone does things for a reason which seems like a good idea, to them, at the time. I think this is true even of those who are insane. As to Reagan being only “involved” in Iran-Contra. I don’t understand how such a complex operation could be conducted in the Executive Department without the president’s knowledge and approval. Oliver North was a _Lieutenant Colonel_ for crissake. In DC such ranks are usually messengers unless they are acting with the backing of those with real authority. North spent money and, if I remember correctly, let contracts. I don’t think you simply can get a disbursing officer to pay money or a contracting officer to let a contract unless they know their ass is covered. Sure, the president has discretionary funds that **he** can use for any purpose. Or at least any legal purpose. And the president can delegate to others the authority to allocate them. But the president has to do the delegating. I don’t see how Ollie could have just taken it upon his own initiative to use the money. I have got to believe that the scheme was hatched, presented to Reagan who OK’d it and then said, “Make sure I have ‘plausible’ deniability.” So I think Reagan lied about the matter. Of course he wasn’t the first president to lie. I remember Ike lying about U2 spy planes. Unfortunately the Soviets had a U2 pilot prisoner at the time. ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/158 "2004-06-07T18:04:17Z")
> [@audilover](#): > > And I see a lot of people on this thread grasping pretty hard for any way to ignore the fact that Reagan was a great president. Actually, what we’re seeing is a lot of Reagan fans looking at the past with rose-colored glasses. I’m sorry, but he just _wasn’t_ the “greatest president ever”, as a lot of people are saying now. I think a lot of people are listening to news reports, and hearing all the glowing praise of Reagan, and assuming that he was universally considered to be a great president. Y’all are forgetting that people are _always_ praised when they die. When a public figure dies, the media isn’t going to start blasting him the week of his death. Of course they’re going to say nice things, because it’s respectful to do so. Sure, there’s always been a hardcore right-wing element who were rabid Reagan fans, but it was hardly a universal opinion. I don’t think anybody thought he wasn’t charming, or didn’t seem like a nice man, but that’s not really the same as being a “great” president, is it? > [@](#): > > RWR had an economic strategy that was excellent in theory, and awful in practice (not unlike Soviet Communism). … > > Of course, became involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, but scandals are par for the course of any presidency. … > > But most of the people who place Reagan on a pedestal don’t do so because he was perfect. The reason for his greatness lay in the fact that he was a powerfully charismatic leader. So he was a great cheerleader president? Yes, he was a good communicator, which is not surprising considering his Hollywood background. That alone doesn’t make him a “great” president. > [@](#): > > And at least he accepted responsibility when the scandal was blown open…in a prompt address directly to the American public. I don’t think any president since has had the balls to admit to their mistakes so openly. On the contrary, Reagan insisted that he had no knowledge of the Iran-Contra affair, which was deeply troubling to a lot of people. I don’t know which would be worse - knowingly letting it happen, or not having control over the people working under you who are making major policy decisions. > [@](#): > > You can look at the two decades since, and easily two decades prior, and see that most of us haven’t seen real leadership like that from a president in our lifetimes. Particularly apt is the example given far above in this thread about the differences in how RWR and GWB comforted the nation after the Space Shuttle tragedies. Try to think of how any president since Kennedy would have handled it, and it gets pretty hard to imagine. I guess we just have different takes on what it is that the president is responsible for. You think he’s just a p.r. guy who’s there to make pretty speeches for the public, and I think he’s the guy who’s in charge of the most powerful military in the world, and has his finger on the button that can change the lives of everyone on the planet at any time. And domestically, he has great influence on whether we try to help the underprivileged, or just allow the super-rich to make a naked grab for more wealth. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person, and I trust my own reaction to tragedies like the Space Shuttle, without needing someone else to tell me how to feel. Sure, that’s _part_ of the president’s job, but hardly the most important part. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/159 "2004-06-07T18:28:56Z")
I have a question: if Reagan supposedly made the Russians spend their way into collapse (though of course, this strategy wasn’t announced until it was hindsight, and most the same conservatives were still saying in 1990 that the Soviet Union would be with us forever and we needed to spend spend spend to keep our military strong), where is the evidence that they actually did so? Because I don’t see any large spending increases at all. SDI may have bothered them, but they launched no new iniatives to counter it. They put people on the job of researching it, but since there wasn’t anything to research, not much got done. By 1987, after waiting for something more to be said about it, the Soviets considered SDI as much of a joke as we did. Military spending in the Soviet Union leveled off in 1975 to a growth rate of 1.3 per year, and remained in that area until 1985, when it indeed rose by an not exactly stunning 3%, and even that in line with pre-scheduled procurements, not any new initiative to combat U.S. increases. Their military spending didn’t even rise at all in response to Afghanistan. As far as missles, the Soviets were able to keep pace with us without any spending increases at all. So I don’t see a lot of actual evidence that Reagan caused the Russians to spend themselves into the ground. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that the steam had run out of the Soviet machine before Reagan even took office. During the oil shocks of the 70s, the Russians had scrambled to take advantage of high prices by pouring money into their own oil production. This effort reaped initial gains, but it was so costly, so shoddily done, that when prices stabilized they got wiped out. At the same time, the regular economy just wasn’t working very well. It certainly wasn’t about to blow up, but the effort to create an efficient industrialized monster had essentially failed. Ironically, economic success actually hurt the system in many ways, because the system had no real way to capitalize on successes and so ended up pouring the money into wasteful projects that tied up energy and capital on nothing in particular. The reason no one predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union was because it was caused not by a forseeable running into an economic or military brick wall, but because it was largely the result of Gorbachev’s reforms and the demoralizing breaking away of the client states, which destabilized the whole system of controls that had kept everything in line, even if that line was fairly sluggish. Reagan certainly played a part in all this, but his most major role wasn’t in being a hardliner, it was in supporting Gorbachev’s reforms, defeating the Russians in the realm of rhetoric and morale, and giving him breathing room to essentially ruin his own system instead of fating him for a hardliner coup, which when it did come, came far too late and too weakly. ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2004, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850/160 "2004-06-07T19:23:48Z")
> [@jshore](#): > > The problem with this statistic is that it doesn’t account for the fact that the share of income tax revenues paid not only depends on the tax rate for that group but also depends on the share of the income earned by that group. Now having the book in front of me this is what is written: _“The policies of the Republican Reagan, continued for the most unaltered by Democrat Clinton, reduced rather than exacerbated the inequalities, particular in the area of taxes. […] In effect, as Erik Izraelewicz [editor of French financial paper] comments, taxation on low income was reduced and taxation on the highest incomes was increased. In 1979, those in the highest 20 percent income bracket gave the Internal Revenue Service, on average, 28.5 percent of their income; twenty years later they gave 30 percent. At the other end of the scale, the income tax burden on the lowest quintile fell from 8.4 percent in 1979 to 4.6 percent today[…]“_ Anti-Americanism, Jean-François Revel. And that’s even stronger that I had remembered. Since it poses that not only were the rich not made richer due to money taken from the poorer, the rich paid an increasing percentage of their income in tax. The point was not that the rich paid an increasing part of the taxes (as I think was the trust of your rebuttal), but that an increasing part of the income from the rich went to tax. > [@jshore](#): > > So, the short answer is that what you quoted is a good example of how one can lie with statistics and unfortunately your book sounds like it is doing more to spread ignorance on this particular subject than to dispel it. That’s a pretty strong statement considering how little I wrote on the subject and I haddn’t even told which book it was from. > [@jshore](#): > > If the share of income earned by the group grows due to growing inequality This line mostly makes sense if you believe it’s a zero-sum game, which Reagan, if any, disproved thoroughly. Anyway, I included the paragraph mostly as an afterthought, someone with more knowledge on economics and America will have to argue the case. My high regard for Reagan is mostly based on the fortunate effects he had on the world outside America. Europe and eastern Europe in particular. He showed the way out of the morass of appeasement created by Carter, and put American back to greatness. I’ll say with my Russian friend: Reagan was the best president Europe ever had (at least since the war). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-dies-lets-debate-his-legacy/248850.md?page=9)