# 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:** 8
**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:** [December 1, 2015, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/141 "2015-12-01T03:46:50Z")
> [@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. I take my admittedly wide-eyed meme of “president as Healer-In-Chief” over your Bronze Age Middle Eastern fairytales any day of the week and twice on Sunday. ---
**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:** [December 1, 2015, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/142 "2015-12-01T03:50:58Z")
> [@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? Carter or Mondale might have diverted the resources necessary to combat this disease. Yes, there still is no cure, but there are treatments. HIV-positive people used to the virtual walking dead - they can now live years, maybe decades, longer than back in the 80s. Imagine if the resources to develop these treatment protocols had been diverted in 1983 - **TWO FULL YEARS** before Reagan even uttered the word AIDS in public. Thousands might have been saved. So, no, I’m not kidding. :mad: ---
**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:** [December 1, 2015, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/143 "2015-12-01T06:31:48Z")
> [@CaptMurdock](#): > > So, no, I’m not kidding. :mad: Or are you just just selfish? I was the first to post that accusations of Reagans dementia were probably true. And I posted that he had his faults. But I was an adult in November of 1980, albeit a young adult. Were you? Did you even exist then? I was an adult with a family 1984. Were you an adult then? There were more serious problems at those times then things a handful of what were considered perverts had been inflicted with by their own actions. And those things affected far, far more people than AIDS. Either way, had Carter won 4 more years and then Mondale 8, there is little evidence that they would have done anything on that one minute’ issue that would have changed your opinion of Reagan. Especially when talking about a “God” fearing man like Jimmy Carter. WTF makes you think what he’d have done for AIDS 1981-1985???😕 ---
**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:** [December 1, 2015, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/144 "2015-12-01T16:46:41Z")
Snipping the borderline personal attacks: > [@pkbites](#): > > There were more serious problems at those times then things a handful of what were considered perverts had been inflicted with by their own actions. And those things affected far, far more people than AIDS. Yeah, those selfish people getting blood transfusions…what were they thinking. So you think letting the CDC actually get the funding to research this new disease would have harmed Our Brave Boys as they invaded Greneda? The horror…the horror. > [@](#): > > Either way, had Carter won 4 more years and then Mondale 8, there is little evidence that they would have done anything on that one minute’ issue that would have changed your opinion of Reagan. Especially when talking about a “God” fearing man like Jimmy Carter. WTF makes you think what he’d have done for AIDS 1981-1985???😕 “One minute issue”, huh? Whatever. And given Carter’s post-Presidency work, I’m pretty confident he wouldn’t have sat on his hands as thousands died. BTW, seven questions marks don’t give your argument validity. They just make you look shrill. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2015, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/145 "2015-12-01T19:03:38Z")
> [@CaptMurdock](#): > > Yeah, those selfish people getting blood transfusions…what were they thinking. No doubt all fourteen of them were thinking “if only Reagan had uttered the word AIDS in public, I would never have been [infected by blood donated by someone who got fucked in the ass by strangers](http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5941a3.htm)”. Regards, Shodan ---
**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:** [December 1, 2015, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/146 "2015-12-01T19:03:52Z")
> [@CaptMurdock](#): > > And given Carter’s post-Presidency work, I’m pretty confident he wouldn’t have sat on his hands as thousands died. He hasn’t been bound by politics since January of 1981. That makes an overwhelmingly significant difference in ones actions and words. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/147 "2015-12-31T21:24:32Z")
[Behind the Ronald Reagan myth: “No one had ever entered the White House so grossly ill informed”.](http://www.salon.com/2015/12/28/behind_the_ronald_reagan_myth_no_one_had_ever_entered_the_white_house_so_grossly_ill_informed/) > [@](#): > > No one had ever entered the White House so grossly ill informed. At presidential news conferences, especially in his first year, Ronald Reagan embarrassed himself. On one occasion, asked why he advocated putting missiles in vulnerable places, he responded, his face registering bewilderment, “I don’t know but what maybe you haven’t gotten into the area that I’m going to turn over to the secretary of defense.” Frequently, he knew nothing about events that had been headlined in the morning newspaper. In 1984, when asked a question he should have fielded easily, Reagan looked befuddled, and his wife had to step in to rescue him. “Doing everything we can,” she whispered. “Doing everything we can,” the president echoed. To be sure, his detractors sometimes exaggerated his ignorance. The publication of his radio addresses of the 1950s revealed a considerable command of facts, though in a narrow range. But nothing suggested profundity. “You could walk through Ronald Reagan’s deepest thoughts,” a California legislator said, “and not get your ankles wet.” > > In all fields of public affairs—from diplomacy to the economy—the president stunned Washington policymakers by how little basic information he commanded. His mind, said the well-disposed Peggy Noonan, was “barren terrain.” Speaking of one far-ranging discussion on the MX missile, the Indiana congressman Lee Hamilton, an authority on national defense, reported, “Reagan’s only contribution throughout the entire hour and a half was to interrupt somewhere at midpoint to tell us he’d watched a movie the night before, and he gave us the plot from War Games.” The president “cut ribbons and made speeches. He did these things beautifully,” Congressman Jim Wright of Texas acknowledged. “But he never knew frijoles from pralines about the substantive facts of issues.” Some thought him to be not only ignorant but, in the word of a former CIA director, “stupid.” Clark Clifford called the president an “amiable dunce,” and the usually restrained columnist David Broder wrote, “The task of watering the arid desert between Reagan’s ears is a challenging one for his aides.” ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2016, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/148 "2016-01-01T03:13:29Z")
All true, but Reagan is the one example of idealism and backbone getting a President farther than a lot of very smart people before him who failed miserably. On the bad side, it told REpublican voters that intelligence didn’t matter, which gave us GWB. It does matter, a great deal. Especially when the candidates involved don’t have Reagan’s other qualities, which no one really does and probably no one ever will again. ---
**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:** [January 1, 2016, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/149 "2016-01-01T14:27:32Z")
:rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![JBGUSA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/258eb7/32.png) [@JBGUSA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JBGUSA)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2016, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/150 "2016-01-02T03:05:50Z")
…without firing a shot. I think that and the Tax Reform Act of 1986 alone make him a great President. Now I did not vote for him in 1980. I thought he was a scary buffoon. What turned out to be the case was he had a limited number of objectives that were dear to his heart, that he took seriously. Shrinking government wasn’t one of them. His priorities were winning the Cold War and lowering and simplifying taxes. He did both. ---
**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:** [January 2, 2016, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/151 "2016-01-02T05:13:39Z")
You mean regardless of the buffoon’s Tax Reform Act’s not really reforming anything. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2016, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/152 "2016-01-02T05:31:09Z")
It fixed a system that had very high tax rates yet still had people making six figures and paying no taxes. ---
**Author:** ![JBGUSA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/258eb7/32.png) [@JBGUSA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JBGUSA)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2016, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/153 "2016-01-02T06:22:33Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > You mean regardless of the buffoon’s Tax Reform Act’s not really reforming anything. You obviously are misinformed. One my client’s tax shelters literally burned down the day it became clear that the “passive/active” distinction was to be erased. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2016, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/154 "2016-01-04T19:58:35Z")
> [@JBGUSA](#): > > …without firing a shot. The end of the Cold War had a lot more to do with depressed oil prices than anything Reagan did. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2016, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/155 "2016-01-05T04:40:56Z")
Reagan changed the US’ policy since Truman of containment to rollback by beating the Soviets at their own game and supporting anti-communist guerrilla groups. Now sure, it’s possible that policies other than Reagans’ brought down the Soviet Union, but you know what they say about luck. It’s not like oil prices had never gone down before, or the Soviet Union had never had economic problems before. But those problems combined with a President who was ratcheting up the pressure on them where his last few predecessors had dialed it down, assuming the Soviet Union was permanent(and those were our “really smart guys”), was too much for them to handle. ---
**Author:** ![JBGUSA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/258eb7/32.png) [@JBGUSA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JBGUSA)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2016, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/156 "2016-01-05T05:04:07Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > You mean regardless of the buffoon’s Tax Reform Act’s not really reforming anything. OK. Reagan decontrolled oil prices in 1981 and through early 1985 pursued a strong dollar policy. Didn’t that have something to do with lowering oil prices? > [@adaher](#): > > Reagan changed the US’ policy since Truman of containment to rollback by beating the Soviets at their own game and supporting anti-communist guerrilla groups. > > Now sure, it’s possible that policies other than Reagans’ brought down the Soviet Union, but you know what they say about luck. It’s not like oil prices had never gone down before, or the Soviet Union had never had economic problems before. But those problems combined with a President who was ratcheting up the pressure on them where his last few predecessors had dialed it down, assuming the Soviet Union was permanent(and those were our “really smart guys”), was too much for them to handle. 100% agree. Eisenhower, with the start of the Test Ban negotiations (finished by JFK), Johnson with the “Spirit of Marlboro (NJ),” Nixon with the surrenders, err, trips to Peking and Moscow, and Carter with G-d only knows what, including formal diplomatic ties with China and SALT II, (Ford actually was good in terms of refusing to recognize Soviet domination of Eastern Europe) appeased and helped the Soviets and the Chinese. Reagan, not so much. ---
**Author:** ![Dajn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c2a13f/32.png) [@Dajn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dajn)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2016, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/157 "2016-01-05T05:06:28Z")
I will read this thread thoroughly tomorrow when I am sober but there is no question that reagen was dumber than a box of rocks. He just knew how to talk and nothing else. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2016, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/158 "2016-01-05T05:14:42Z")
> [@JBGUSA](#): > > OK. > > Reagan decontrolled oil prices in 1981 and through early 1985 pursued a strong dollar policy. Didn’t that have something to do with lowering oil prices?100% agree. Eisenhower, with the start of the Test Ban negotiations (finished by JFK), Johnson with the “Spirit of Marlboro (NJ),” Nixon with the surrenders, err, trips to Peking and Moscow, and Carter with G-d only knows what, including formal diplomatic ties with China and SALT II, (Ford actually was good in terms of refusing to recognize Soviet domination of Eastern Europe) appeased and helped the Soviets and the Chinese. Reagan, not so much. Actually it was simply that under the “detente” policy, the US ratcheted tensions down while the Soviets just kept doing what they had always been doing. That allowed the Communist bloc to advance during that period. ---
**Author:** ![Dajn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c2a13f/32.png) [@Dajn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dajn)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2016, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/159 "2016-01-05T05:28:14Z")
It’s important that people remember who put the united states national debt on the map. It was Ronald Reagan. That’s when we hit the trillion dollar mark. Thanks to that senile old man. And it’s all camouflaged because of the ussr. That’s bullshit. It was just a way to spend money. We were never in a million years going to war with the ussr. It was all about spending money. Reagen also killed the small farmer. That has a huge problem. The small farm was one of the great things of the United States. Now it’s gone. ---
**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:** [January 5, 2016, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reagan-good-or-bad-potus-the-will-oreilly-feud-resurrects-the-question-of-his-legacy/737495/160 "2016-01-05T14:24:34Z")
> [@JBGUSA](#): > > …without firing a shot. I think that and the Tax Reform Act of 1986 alone make him a great President. He didn’t do jack shit about ending the Cold War. The USSR collapsed because Gorbachev allowed it to. Had Putin been in charge then, the USSR would still be there and the Berlin Wall still in place. [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=7) [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=9)