You are correct about the Sept 1983 cite. I should have pointed out Reagan’s general jobs record rather than pick his “best” monthly figure. Still, his jobs creation/unemployment record is as good as just about any President, and at a time when the employment participation rate was going up not down.
Thanks, Robot Arm was probably correct in doubting my inflation claim after doubts concerning Reagan’s Sept 83 jobs numbers were brought up. However, frequent calls for cites are kinda frustrating. I really shouldn’t have to. Reagan’s inflation record, just like his jobs creation record, are fairly well documented. Here is a link just in case anyone has forgotten the most basics of modern economic history:
Of course, it is important to bear in mind that when Volcker retired in 1987, Reagan appointed Alan Greenspan to replace him. One of the worst and most destructive decisions of his presidency.
One thing that Reagan (almost) did that seems radically out of keeping with his hawkish image is (almost) come to an agreement with Gorbachev to ban nuclear weapons at the Reykjavik Summit. According to Richard Rhodes, it was Richard Perle who basically sabotaged the agreement. I wonder if any other American president would have come so close.
Says who? you? Who are you? I don’t see the word mod after your user name.
Deciding whether someone is a a decent President means considering all factors. How much weight each factor is given is up to the individual. Reagan could only do so much good or harm with the Congress he had to deal with. To credit or blame a President 100% without factoring in his Congress is childish.
Another factor is the alternatives. I cannot imagine 4 more years of Jimmy Carter or 4-8 years of Walter Mondale being better than the 8 years we had under Reagan.
And History agrees with me. Reagan is held in high regard as one of the better Presidents even with his flaws.
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.
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. He also had exactly the right instincts on foreign policy, with exactly the right amount of optimism vs. reality when it came to the Soviet Union. Most Presidents had either been all hardcore or all soft-headed when it came to the Cold War. Reagan was hardcore when the Soviet Union was led by Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko, but recognized change when he saw it in Gorbachev, when many of the old Cold Warriors like Nixon said, “Don’t trust him!”
Reagan also proved that a tough, hawkish foreign policy need not lead to major wars. Liberals whined for years before and during the Reagan administration that his policies would lead to nuclear war, but we never came close to the brink under his leadership, whereas we did come close under two believers in detente, JFK and Nixon. “Peace through strength” is a policy that has proven it’s worth throughout the 20th century, and it’s opposite, “Peace through navel gazing and preemptive concessions” has proven to lead directly to wars.
So all in all, I’ll forgive Reagan his faults. What’s harder to forgive is Republicans thinking that details don’t matter because Reagan proved that moral clarity is enough. No, he didn’t. Reagan was a gifted man with outstanding instincts. His ability to speak clearly and eloquently about what he believed didn’t come just from his acting background, it came from him being able to see clearly what he believed in and articulate it. Modern Republican politicians try to ape Reagan rather than truly understand what made Reagan a success.
This also ignores the Russians placed missiles in Cuba in an attempt to lessen the huge strategic advantage America had over them in warhead numbers and launch capability, including America placing missiles in Turkey. Or Kennedy’s aggressive stance towards Cuba, e.g. Bay of Pigs invasion, Operation Mongoose.
Actually, what he showed is that a foreign policy of at least occasional restraint–if shrouded in a tough, hawkish PR effort–can avoid incurring accusations of weakness and fecklessness.
There’s no way that Obama could have pulled off withdrawing from Beirut in 1983 after multiple attacks and hundreds of dead Americans, even if it was the right policy (for which I give Reagan credit). Given political reality, it’s simply much easier to sell military restraint if you’re viewed as a tough hawk than if you’re perceived to be an effete community organizer.
Able Archer was not a close call, unless you are in the habit of driving down two lane highways and observing that every single car coming the other way almost hits you. The soviets readied their forces because they thought it might be a ruse. It wasn’t a ruse, so everything was okay. The only threat existed in their minds.
The Soviets thought they could win that staredown with the young President. They miscalculated, but made that initial miscalculation because JFK came into office talking peace and reconciliation. One of the interesting aspects of the Cold War is that for the vast majority of the Cold War US Presidents talked about the Cold War as if it was in the past, only be rudely jerked back every time by Soviet aggression. Reagan didn’t make that mistake. He came into office recognizing the evil of the Soviet Union and calling it as it was and aggressively defending US interests around the world against Soviet expansion. There was no way the Soviets were going to test that man.
I think that’s a fair take on it too. Reagan’s policy on terrorism was incredibly weak. But that goes back to Reagan’s trouble with nuance. Reagan was not the type of man to be able to fully grasp the terrorist threat, but he did understand state actors.
It’s also easier if you can put the incident behind you quickly. Obama is stuck with an ongoing conflict. Which is why “restraint” really isn’t an appropriate term. He’s a wartime President, he’ll be judged on success or failure.
Success and failure can be judged by many metrics – but chief among them will be cost in lives lost and dollars spent – in my view this is far more important, in this case, then whether stated objectives are met in the short term, especially because trying to meet those objectives in the short term could cost so many lives.
Well, that all depends on the long term consequences. if ISIS is defeated by local forces, then the policy will be a success. If that fails and ISIS becomes much stronger and more Westerners die as a result, then it will be considered a failure. And if the next President escalates the war and defeats ISIS, then Obama’s policy will be considered a failure. What worked in 2017 would have worked even better in 2014.
One reason that Reagan’s terrorism policies are considered to be such failures is that they led to increased terrorism. Terrorists found that they could get what they wanted from the US because even our toughest President is weak and confused when faced with non-state actors. Bin Laden absorbed that lesson well.
WRT to terrorism, I don’t think Obama will be judged in black and white terms like “success” or “failure.” History will recognize that terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy, and that the so-called war on terror is just a poll-tested misnomer that Bush unfortunately settled on to package and sell his policies.
Instead, Obama will be judged on whether he pursued the best policy options available to him to deal with the threat to our safety posed by (mainly Muslim, these days) terrorists. Did he actively pursue policies that made matters worse? Did he neglect to pursue policies that could have made things better? Were the direct, indirect, and opportunity costs of his policies commensurate with the public safety problem at hand? Were the good consequences of his policies overwhelmed by prohibitively bad unintended consequences?
Maybe this is for another thread, but I think history will answer these questions largely favorably to him. That said, if Republicans take the White House, literally every single terrorist attack that occurs anywhere in the world in the next 4-8 years will be Obama’s fault. But that’s just the way of things.
I’m dubious on this statement. It’s like if someone said in 1992, “And if a future President comes back to Iraq to finish the job and depose Saddam Hussein, then George H.W. Bush’s policy will be considered a failure.” It will all depend on how things play out. If President Rubio leads a US ground invasion and occupation of ISIS territory and it turns into an enormous disaster for us and/or the region, then Obama could look like the wise leader who showed due restraint in the face of a manageable problem.
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?
