# Reagan good or bad POTUS? The Will-O'Reilly feud resurrects the question of his legacy **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 13, 2015, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495 "2015-11-13T20:04:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/121 "2015-11-24T16:33:01Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > No, it just shows that in eight years a President is going to have many successes and failures. Judging whether a President was a success or failure overall depends on what the country needed most at the time. When Reagan took office the US was suffering a crisis of confidence and Reagan brought it back. I think it shows the distinction between style and substance. Everything you tout about Reagan boils down to jingoist sophistry, “it’s morning in America,” “restoring confidence.” All sizzle and no steak. ---
**Author:** ![Donald\_Rump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Donald\_Rump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donald_Rump)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/122 "2015-11-24T16:34:17Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > What if the next president invades, defeats ISIS (at the cost of hundreds or thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars), with decades more of occupation and soldiers dying every month for a generation? What if there’s no occupation, but after the withdrawal, ISIS 2.0 (by another name) rises and begins more bloodletting? Then it’s Obama’s fault because The Surge ™ worked! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/123 "2015-11-24T16:49:00Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Even in the Cold War, not **everything** that weakened the USSR was necessarily the right policy. Reagan could never understand that. That was the right policy. Prior to that, the soviet Union had been able to arm those fighting us without any cost whatsoever. Reagan changed that policy so that now we were doing the same to them and their allies. It broke them. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/124 "2015-11-24T16:53:07Z")
> [@CaptMurdock](#): > > I think it shows the distinction between style and substance. Everything you tout about Reagan boils down to jingoist sophistry, “it’s morning in America,” “restoring confidence.” All sizzle and no steak. Yet the fact that Americans regained confidence in America, and our allies confidence in America, and our enemies, better respect for America, was a very real phenomenon. I do agree that there was very little substance to Reagan’s governance, but he sorta got bailed out by the next two President. Bush 41 and Bill Clinton cleaned up after him and consolidated a lot of his accomplishments. When Bill Clinton declared “the era of Big Government is over” he essentially completed the Reagan legacy. If Reagan had been succeeded by two poor Presidents then his legacy would probably not look as good in hindsight. I guess sometimes when really smart people mess things up, you need a dreamer for a brief time to question everyone’s assumptions, then you can put the adults back in charge to make the new reality work. ---
**Author:** ![Donald\_Rump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Donald\_Rump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donald_Rump)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/125 "2015-11-24T17:08:13Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Yet the fact that Americans regained confidence in America, **and our allies confidence in America** , and our enemies, better respect for America, was a very real phenomenon. [bolding added] I don’t think this is true without qualification. For an interesting if lengthy contemporary lay of the land, [“A European Perspective on the Reagan Years:”](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/europe/1988-02-01/european-perspective-reagan-years) > [@](#): > > The style of the Reagan Administration, with its reassertion of American self-confidence, its buildup of American armed forces and its tough confronting of Soviet adventurism, has commanded more sympathy in Western Europe than would have been conceivable twenty years earlier. In spite of this, the year 1987 saw relations between the governments of the United States and its European allies reach a nadir for which it would be difficult to find an equal—the Suez crisis of 1956 excepted—during the whole of the postwar period. > > For this one can identify three distinct causes: Reykjavik, the Iran-contra scandal and the budgetary deficit. All can be traced not so much to the policy as to the style of policymaking in the White House, and the personal qualities of the president himself. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/126 "2015-11-24T17:25:24Z")
Reagan was a terrible president. He obliterated the postwar, bipartisan, fiscal discipline of relatively balanced budgets. He tripled the debt and added superfluous bureaucracy to the executive branch. He did not cut overall taxation, merely shuffling it around. He was a protectionist. His interventions, while not as bad as the three postwar horsemen of the apocalypse (LBJ,GWB,BHO), were silly and/or disastrous. His posture towards a faltering Soviet Union was pure theater and inconsequential. Conservatives seem to think central planning only works when our enemies try it. His appointment of Greenspan ushered in the era of sheer lunacy at the Fed. Reagan also christened the bailout state. Deregulation occurred mostly under Carter, Reagan did mostly nothing in 8 years to deregulate. My chief complaint is that he co-opted the libertarian/anti-state mood of the 1970s and did the exact opposite of his decent rhetoric. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/127 "2015-11-24T19:36:34Z")
> [@Lobohan](#): > > Reagan’s administration did push the vapidly stupid economic policy, and distrust of government that has hung around the GOP’s necks for the last few decades. > > He promoted dumb idea, and it lives on beyond him, making lives worse, increasing human misery. Conservatives believe the government is out to get them, that historically low taxes are tyranny, and that regulating smog is a communist plot. > > I’d say he’s a failure as a president, at least at that level. > > He’s not an outright failure, he did good things, but he did a lot of damage. Reaganomics was not vapidly stupid. It was cynical and slightly sinister. Reagan wanted to reduce taxes while increasing discretionary spending on the military but after years of whining about Democratic fiscal irresponsibility (remember tax and spend Democrats?), how could he justify lowering tax rates while increasing military spending (the largest part of the discretionary budget (more than all other categories of discretionary spending combined)? His economics folks came up with Reaganomics. He convinced us that if we lower tax rates and tax receipts will actually increase as the lower tax rates will spur more economic activity. And it might have even been true when he dropped top marginal rates from 70% to 50% but it was never by enough to cover the historically high levels of peacetime military spending. The argument was even tougher to make when he dropped if from 50% to 38.5% and almost indefensible when he dropped it to 28%. By the time he reduced rate to 28%, it was clear that Reaganomics was not working as advertised but the deficit spending had a huge Keynesian stimulative effect and the economy was doing great so people loved it. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2015, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/128 "2015-11-24T21:31:45Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > My chief complaint is that he co-opted the libertarian/anti-state mood of the 1970s and did the exact opposite of his decent rhetoric. What, do you think there was a “Libertarian Moment” there and RR/the GOP hijacked it? Doubtful – that is, doubtful anything else could have happened to or been done with that “mood.” ---
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2015, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/129 "2015-11-27T02:00:20Z")
> [@CaptMurdock](#): > > Ask someone whose relative or close friend died of one of the nastiest diseases in the last half-century, a disease that Your Esteemed Idol more or less actively hamstrung the CDC in their efforts to combat it, a disease that Your Conservative Messiah would not even mention in public until Rock Hudson succumbed to it…ask one of these friends or relatives if **they** can imagine an alternative. You are kidding, right? WHAT, exactly, would have Carter or Mondale have done at the time to prevent those deaths? There isn`t a cure now. What exactly are you saying would have been different? ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2015, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/130 "2015-11-27T05:06:13Z")
> [@pkbites](#): > > You are kidding, right? WHAT, exactly, would have Carter or Mondale have done at the time to prevent those deaths? There isn`t a cure now. What exactly are you saying would have been different? What could they have done to prevent the deaths _at the time_? Nothing, of course. Finding a cure for something like HIV takes years - if not decades - of research, and a shitload of money. Whoever was president at the time that the AIDS epidemic hit the US couldn’t have done anything about the time frame directly, they could have done more about directing federal funds to help research the disease. Reagan avoided addressing the issue for as long as he could. It’s entirely possible that, had he tackled the issue head on, it still wouldn’t have changed anything. It’s also possible that, with better funding, we would already have a cure right now. We can’t know the effect of active leadership on the issue from the office of the president might have been, but we do know that Reagan didn’t even try, and that lack of care - even with the acknowledgement that it might not have had a practical difference - is still a blot on his record. That being said, Reagan’s history with the gay rights movement does not begin and end with the AIDS crisis. We should also remember his opposition to [the Briggs Initiative.](http://concurringopinions.com/archives/2010/10/ronald-reagan-and-gay-rights.html) If Reagan’s lack of action on the AIDS crisis is indicative of a failure of leadership, his stance against this bit of hateful bigotry shows what successful leadership can accomplish. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2015, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/131 "2015-11-27T05:16:44Z")
> [@pkbites](#): > > You are kidding, right? WHAT, exactly, would have Carter or Mondale have done at the time to prevent those deaths? There isn`t a cure now. What exactly are you saying would have been different? There’s not a cure now, but there are treatments, HIV infection is no longer the death sentence it was in Reagan’s day – and, he could have **changed** that, in his day, but, he couldn’t be bothered, may he have AIDS lesions in Hell. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2015, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/132 "2015-11-27T22:46:49Z")
We all know modern progressives are descendants of pietist fanatics who sought to empower the state to perform God’s work, but president as Jesus-Healer-in-Chief is frankly disturbing and perverted. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2015, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/133 "2015-11-27T23:53:25Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > We all know modern progressives are descendants of pietist fanatics who sought to empower the state to perform God’s work, but president as Jesus-Healer-in-Chief is frankly disturbing and perverted. No, it’s a long-standing and legitimate beef against Reagan among the public health community. He didn’t give a damn about Aids sufferers and was not about to start appearing soft on gays. Fuck the worthless bastard. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/134 "2015-11-28T02:28:40Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > We all know modern progressives are descendants of pietist fanatics who sought to empower the state to perform God’s work . . . And I always thought we were descended from Godless atheistic Marxists and Jacobins! Ya learn somethin’ new every day . . . ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/135 "2015-11-28T05:00:53Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > And I always thought we were descended from Godless atheistic Marxists and Jacobins! Ya learn somethin’ new every day . . . Marxism and Jacobinism are but the celery and carrot to the religious fundamentalist base of American leftism. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/136 "2015-11-28T05:06:56Z")
Wow. The wrong is strong today. “Religious fundamentalist base of American leftism?” I guess that explains the hard-core atheist base of the American right. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/137 "2015-11-28T15:02:28Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Wow. The wrong is strong today. > > “Religious fundamentalist base of American leftism?” > > I guess that explains the hard-core atheist base of the American right. No. Actually I didn’t say the right was atheistic. The right is obviously influenced by a perverted religious ideology. The left is less obviously so. Nice knee-jerk partisanship. Do you dispute the fanatical religious origins of progressivism? ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2015, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/138 "2015-11-29T04:39:58Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Do you dispute the fanatical religious origins of progressivism? Dispute? Not exactly. But request citations to that effect? Most definitely. What I’ve read on the subject does not say anything about any religious origin of progressivism. It just cites the ideas. Yes, I will admit that some religious ideas were mixed in with early progresivism, but that’s not the same thing. It’s not as if modern progressivism appeals to those religious aspects. The ideals of progressivism require the constant reexamining of older ideals. The religious ideals that are still acceptable are the ones that we’ve fully secularized. So do you have a cite that progressivism has religious origins? And that said religious people were fanatics–people heavily devoted to religion and out of step with the majority? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2015, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/139 "2015-11-30T17:33:15Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > I think that’s totally wrong. Greenspan is the best fed chairman we ever had. There’s a reason why four Presidents kept on renominating him. Just what do you see [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Greenspan#Chairman_of_the_Federal_Reserve) or [here](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Alan_Greenspan#Career) that makes Greenspan the best Fed Chairman we ever had? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2015, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/140 "2015-11-30T17:36:43Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Marxism and Jacobinism are but the celery and carrot to the religious fundamentalist base of American leftism. Cite? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495.md?page=8)