Ronald Reagan -- America's Greatest President?

I never said Clinton was completely innocent. I said, what he did wasn’t nearly as bad as what Reagan had done.

Ronald Reagan - The Bonzo Years
1985

Bill Clinton and everyone who was ever associated with him are scum/satanic/antichrist/worse than Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and the Rev. Jim Jones, etc. Let’s never forget the moral uprightness and integrity of President Reagan and his administration. Consider the year of 1985, for example:

1/2/85
Secretary of the Interior William Clark resigns.

1/28/85
Lawyers for Ed Meese, who has been renominated for Attorney General, reveal that the Office of Government Ethics found him in violation of federal ethical standards.

1/30/85
UN ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick informs President Reagan that she is leaving.

2/4/85
Sen. William Cohen and Sen. William Roth reveal that the Navy has been paying $640 each for toilet seats that sell to consumers for $25.

2/28/85
Defending the President’s decision to abolish the Small Business Administration, David Stockman is shown a two-year old tape of Reagan praising the agency. “We at the White House,” says Stockman, “have come to enjoy watching old films of the President.”

3/1/85
In an effort to win contra aid, President Reagan says the Nicaraguan rebels are “the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.” Historical novelist Howard Fast calls this “an explosion of such incredible ignorance that…he is not fit for public office of any kind.”

3/15/85
Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan resigns after being ordered to stand trial on fraud and larceny charges.

3/21/85
At his 29th press conference, President Reagan explains that he has no intention of visiting a concentration camp site during his upcoming visit to West Germany. To do so, he explains, would impose an unpleasant guilt trip on a nation where there are “very few alive that remember even the war, and certainly none of them who were adults and participating in any way.” A soldier who was twenty in 1940 would only be 65 at the time this was said.

4/11/85
The White House announces that President Reagan will lay a wreath at the Bitburg, West Germany, military cemetery housing the graves of both American and Nazi soldiers. It is quickly noted that there are, in fact, no Americans buried there.

4/16/85
As the contra aid vote approaches, President Reagan claims he “just had a verbal message delivered to me from Pope John Paul, urging us to continue our efforts in Central America.” The Vatican quickly issues a denial.

4/18/85
While Michael Deaver is in West Germany searching for an “appropriate” concentration camp for the President to visit, President Reagan defends his visit to Bitburg by claiming the German soldiers “were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps.”

4/29/85
President Reagan defends the Bitburg visit as “morally right,” adding, “I know all the bad things that happened in that war. I was in uniform for four years myself.” President Reagan spent his time during World War Two in Hollywood, making training films.

5/5/85
After having visited the Bergen-Gelsen death camp, President Reagan makes an eight minute stop at Bitburg. During the ceremony, he cites a letter from 13-year-old Beth Flom who, he claims, “urged me to lay the wreath at Bitburg cemetery in honor of the future of Germany.” In fact, she urged him not to go at all.

5/8/85
Opponents of President Reagan’s Nicaraguan policies heckle him at the European Parliament. “They haven’t been there,” he says. “I have.” In actuality, he had not been there.

5/10/85
Micheal Deaver resigns.

6/5/85
David Stockman observes that if the Securities and Exchange Commission had jurisdiction over the way the executive and legislative branches of government have handled the deficit, “many of us would be in jail.”

7/9/85
David Stockman resigns as Budget Director to take a job on Wall Street and write his White House memoir.

8/24/85
President Reagan tells an interviewer that the “reformist administration” of South African president P.W. Botha has made significant progress on the racial front. “They have eliminated the segregation that we once had in our own country,” says the President, “the type of thing where hotels and restaurants and places of entertainment and so forth were segregated - that has all been eliminated.”

8/25/85
The White House confirms reports that during his days as head of the Screen Actors Guild, President Reagan doubled as an FBI informant (T-10) whose area of expertise was Communist influence in post-World War II Hollywood.

8/26/85
In response to questions as to whether President Reagan actually thinks racial segregation has been eliminated in South Africa, Larry Speakes said “Not totally, no.”

10/6/85
The New York Times Magazine runs a cover story on “The Mind of the President”, in which it is pointed out that though Reagan “likes to say…that he is a ‘voracious reader’ and ‘history buff’…neither he nor his friends, when asked, could think of particular history books he had read or historians he liked.” Says a White House aide, “You have to treat him as if you were the director and he was the actor, and you tell him what to say and what not to say, and only then does he say the right thing.”

11/13/85
“He’s just so programmed. We tried to tell him what was in the bill but he doesn’t understand. Everyone, including Republicans, were just shaking their heads.” - Rep. Mary Rose Oskar (D-OH) on President Reagan’s reaction to the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings balanced budget bill.

12/4/85
John Poindexter becomes President Reagan’s fourth National Security Adviser when Robert McFarlane resigns.

link
http://www.sfbg.com/nader/142.html

Not if you’re accurately representing both situations. The above-listed allegations against Clinton proved to have no meaningful basis in fact at all - they were not just “not proven in court”, they were fundamentally either fantasies or outright lies. Most of us down here have understood that for years.

By comparison, the Iran-Contra affair DID happen, it WAS at least as bad as you admit earlier in that post (I’d go much further, but your own words are enough), and it happened under Reagan’s command. The Commander-in-Chief, Leader of the Free World, etc. either knew about it or should have known about such a significant thing. There’s an old truism that one can delegate authority but not responsibility. Reagan was responsible, even if you try to let him off the hook by saying he was merely clueless. Neither is a qualification for a monument on the Mall.

First of all, it’s a fallacy to assume that a president can and should know EVERYTHING going on in his administration. A smart President will delegate authority to people he trusts and let them do their damned job. Perhaps Reagan was let down by one or more of those people, but if deals were done outside of channels and behind his back, just HOW was he supposed to know about it? Clairvoyance?

As a minor hijack, I’m getting awful sick of all the criticism Reagan (and now Bush) took for delegating responsibility. It’s like the U.S. demands an omniscient super-being as their president. Do you have any idea how big the U.S. government is? Or just the executive branch? Or even the White House staff?

Why is it that we are capable of recognizing good management skills in private industry, but when those same techniques are taken to the White House the pundits and opposition start screaming that the president isn’t ‘hands-on’ enough. It’s ridiculous. The President’s job is to push the country in the general direction that he campaigns on. But to expect him to be personally involved in even 1/10 of the daily decision made in Washington is a fantasy. The presidents that tried it generally made a mess of things. Managers that try it in private companies rapidly become known as bottlenecks and bureaucrats.

Being able to effectively delegate is one of the most important skills a president can have, and so far Bush looks like he’s very, very good at it.

While Ronald Reagan campaigned against Jimmy Carter’s $50 billion deficits in 1980, Ronald Reagan ended up giving this country $250 billion deficits. Of course, any high school student could have surmised that if you decrease taxes on the rich, while increasing defense spending, you’ll get a deficit. Of course, the whole Reaganomics crew promised that the economic growth generated by the tax cuts would erase the deficit. Well, they were dead wrong.

Many also try to place the blame on Congress instead of Reagan. The only problem with this theory is that the President proposes the budget, Congress passes it and the President can veto it in the end. Plus, Reagan NEVER sent Congress a balanced budget. In fact, in 1982, 84, 86 and 87, Reagan’s proposed budgets (from OMB) had BIGGER DEFICITS than what Congress passed. So in those years, Congress actually lowered the deficits from what Reagan asked for. Therefore, anyone who objectively examines the facts cannot honestly say that Reagan was a defender of fiscal responsibility.

Furthermore, if Reagan does not get the blame for the budget deficits, then he cannot take the credit for the supposed economic growth (which went almost entirely to the top quintile of most wealthy households) in the 1980s. You can’t have it both ways.

Reagan’s legacy is one of incompetence, failure, and lack of moral courage. Reagan aided murderous right-wing dictators, visited a Nazi cemetary and intimated that the Nazi soldiers were “victims”, started his 1980 campaign in a Mississippi town where civil rights workers were murdered by KKK thugs, praised the South African regime of P.W. Botha for their record of racial progress, ignored the AIDS epidemic for several years, sent weapons to terrorists, supported segregationist schools in their effort to keep tax exempt status, conjured up all sorts of imaginary anecdotes about “welfare queens” and other low-income ne’er-do-wells who were driving around in luxury cars and drinking vodka they bought with food stamps…while looking the other way when the American people were being defrauded to the tune of billions by corporate welfare. (In 1980, the year Reagan was elected, GE paid $340 million/year in corporate taxes. In 1983 they paid $0, nada, zip! In addition they received $90 million in corporate welfare, which is really taxpayer’s money to advertize military and other products overseas.) After all, why go after the armed bank robber when we can really nail the guy who stole a candy bar from the 7-11?

Reagan blamed pollution on trees and handed over the reigns at EPA and Interior to people who were the puppets of real estate developers and mining and timber companies. (i.e. Watt and Gorsuch) During press conferences, Reagan would frequently respond to specific policy questions with irrelevant or tangentially relevant anecdotes. In meetings with staff and with world leaders, Reagan fell asleep on numerous occasions.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Both our nations had enough nukes to destroy the world many times over. We both had enough early warning systems to launch our nukes if we saw the other launch first. When you are talking about mortals wielding the bolts of Zeus, as it were, what does it matter if one flings ten times as many as the other? Dead is still dead. Gorbachev was attempting to find a peaceful way out of the untenable situation we were in, but Raygun was too busy denouncing the Evil Empire to cooperate.

I won’t argue that the premieres had dictatorial powers. But Gorbachev was trying to bring peace, trying to bring democracy to his nation. I would think you would be in favor of that. (Nevermind that Russian style democracy is a shambles; that’s another issue. They seem to have never had a decent government.) As for sending the army to prevent secession, so what? Lincoln did the same thing.

Perhaps the Republicans in Congress were unmotivated to perform a large scale investigation of their Republican President. The matter certainly could have been taken further, if Congress weren’t under Reagan’s spell of charisma. Contrast this with the great vigor shown by the Republicans against Clinton, because they didn’t like him.

Recovering from the Civil War was not a short and easy process. The death toll was huge, and the South’s political and economic power was wrecked for decades afterwards. One might even say that we have not yet fully recovered. The political climate in the South is very different from that in the West Coast or New England (i.e., Yankee territory).

Let me see if I understand you. You “have not been debating the propiety of the Iran-Contra affair”, which implies you think it was “improper”, yet you have been defending Reagan’s support of the Contras? Does this mean that you think Reagan broke the law, but it was for good reason? Do you think his conduct was “improper” or don’t you? You seem to be dodging Sofa King’s statement, yet also subtly disagreeing at the same time. Please correct me if I misrepresent you.

LEt’s see, Gorbachev was a dictator. Okay, I’ll buy that.

YET…so was Somoza, Pinochet, Noriega, etc etc. All people supported by Reagan.

And yes, Allende was overthrown prior to Reagan-because the US worked behind the scenes to do that. When Pinochet came to power, Carter cut aid to them, because Pinochet’s human rights record was hideous. After Reagan came in, he reinstated aid to Pinochet.

Pinochet was WORSE than Gorbachev. And since when is dictator always the same as tyrant? There have been a few who weren’t-Tito, Gorbachev, King Aleksandar, etc etc.

I agree with Guinastasia observations about Pinochet’s murderous regime, though I believe that he came to power in 1973, during the Nixon administration.

When it comes to murderous dictators, we shouldn’t make apologies for anyone who commits horrible violations of human rights–Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Mao, Marcos, Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomeini…they didn’t all represent the same ideological extremes, but they were all criminals. Pinochet didn’t deserve U.S. aid (i.e. taxpayer money) any more than Charlie Manson, Timothy McVeigh, or Ted Bundy would deserve a taxpayer subsidized room at a four star luxury hotel.

The sad thing about Chile was that Pinochet’s dictatorship resulted from the violent overthrow of a democratically elected regime. It seems as though most major dictators usurp power from other dictators, except in a few unique cases like Weimar Germany, where there was a weak democracy even for a little while after NSDAP took a plurality.

D’oh! THat’s right, it was in during the Nixon administration-Henry Kissenger wrote an article triumping about the overthrow of the “communist”, Salvador Allende (who, coincidentally, was very much for democratic principles and REFUSED to declare marshal law, or flee or anything like that. Just because he was a communist.)

Huh. Imagine THAT.

Nobody said he had to know everything, just the important things. If you don’t think Iran-Contra was important enough for the President to know about, what DOES qualify as something he should have known about, in your opinion? Fer cryin’ out loud, it had been very widely reported for a year or more before he even asked his own people about whether or not they had traded arms for hostages.

As already pointed out, one can only delegate authority, but never responsibility. Sorry, pal, Reagan either lied through his teeth, and got a lot of people to believe him through his acting skills, or else he was a befuddled, manipulated, ineffective figurehead (which is basically my view of him, in case I haven’t been clear). If that constitutes “leadership” to you, then go ahead and think so.

Or, he was actively kept out of the loop by people trying to protect him. Or, he was given advice to stay out of it to maintain deniability. Or, he was just the victim of a couple of rogue officials who took matters into their own hands.

His original vehement denials have been attributed to his sense of trust in the people around him. When the accusations first came up, Reagan got visibly angry at the suggestion that his closest people would do something like that without his knowledge. He flatly denied it. Later, when the evidence became incontrovertible, Reagan went on nationwide TV and apologized for what happened, and pledged to cease all operations immediately, which he did.

The fact is, when you delegate responsibility to others, you have to trust them. And that means they can burn you badly. That’s one reason why so many presidents have tried to inappropriately micro-manage the government by themselves.

Presidents have been getting stabbed in the back by their closest people since there were presidents.

sturmhauke:

Because when you talk about freezing and then reducing, the one who has more ends up with more after reducing.

In addition, there is the matter of nuclear proliferation. The more you have, the more chaos you can cause.

That’s the exact kind of attitude I was questioning. Why do you buy the “straightforward” appearance of Gorbachev as a peacemaker (even though he was anything but peaceful toward his own people), when you refuse to accept such things about Reagan? I can dispute your beliefs about Reagan elsewhere, but why is no corresponding cynicysm re: Gorbachev warranted in your opinion?

You’re out of your mind. First of all, Congress was controlled by Democrats during Reagan’s presidency. Second of all, Iran-Contra was very, very thoroughly investiagted.

And yet, the republic still stands.

I’m merely asking him to clarify what he’s referring to as unjustifiable evils. If I don’t know exactly what he’s referring to, I don’t know what points I’d like to respond to.

Guinastasia:

So? I’m not referring to support, I’m referring to your attitude regarding believing/disbeliving their intentions and motivations.

Chaim Mattis Keller

I’m simply stating that, not all dictators were evil. Why was it okay for Reagan to support Pinochet and Somoza, but not Gorbachev?

Guinastasia:

That’s not my point. Certainly if it would have served U.S. interests, it would have been okay for Reagan to support Gorbachev.

My point was that you and some others in this thread seem extremely eager to find evil in anything said or done by Reagan, but unwilling to apply a similar standard in things said and done by Gorbachev. Gorbachev claims he wants to make peace and suggests a nuclear freeze…while maintaining a larger nuclear arsenal. But you hold up Reagan’s refusal to agree to this as an example of what a crazy warmonger Reagan was, giving Gorbachev the benefit of the doubt that you refuse to give Reagan…a benefit that he, as a dictator, certainly deserves less than a democratically-elected leader.

Chaim Mattis Keller

I never said that. The point is, I don’t believe Reagan was very honest, or dedicated to democracy-I think the man was an actor and a sham politician.

Guinastasia:

Sounded to me like you did when you wrote this:

But if I was misunderstanding you, I apologize.

I’ll agree with this one. I don’t think he was as pathologically dishonest as Clinton, but he was definitely capable of lying when it served its purpose.

That, I disagree with.

I don’t think there’s much dispute about that, except amongst the more refined film critics… :slight_smile:

What’s that? He certainly played politics as much as anyone else did.

Chaim Mattis Keller

I’m not about to go into Russian culture and history, but, suffice to say, by Soviet and Russian standards, Gorbachev was indeed much more liberal than most Russian leaders. Russia has a history of ruthless statesmen, since their begining. However, at least Gorbachev tried to open the regime to the future, and to try reform. He may have been a dictator. However, for the Soviet Union, he WAS a liberal.

Reagan lied about a lot of things. He lied about having “spent four years in uniform.” He claimed trees caused pollution. His support of fascists in Central America IS disgusting, because what THEY stood for was totally the opposite of what the US is supposed to stand for.

I cannot see how lying about a BLOW JOB is worse than lying about murder and treasonous acts. The only difference is that Reagan wasn’t under oath. Although, truly Oliver North was even worse.

And yes, Clinton hid things. But so did Reagan, who hid his own disastrous history of handling his own finances. TIME, July 7th, 1980. Accordingly, Reagan had a history of not paying his taxes…
Let’s see if I can’t get some more evidence from The Bonzo Years:
http://www.quickchange.com/reagan/

FDR is a fascist? Surely you jest.

In 1982:
“Claims he has received a letter from Pope John Paul II in which he “approves what we’ve done so far” regarding U.S.
Sanctions against the USSR, though the sanctions were not mentioned in the papal message.”
-if lying about the Pope supporting you isn’t wrong…

“Responds to a question about the 17% black unemployment rate by pointing out that “in this time of great unemployment,”
Sunday’s paper had “24 full pages of … employers looking for employees,” though most of the jobs available - computer
operator, or cellular immunologist - require special training, for which his administration has cut funds by over 30%.”
“We’ve got a $120 billion deficit coming,” says Packwood, “and the President says, ‘You know, a young man went into a
grocery store and he had an orange in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other, and he paid for the orange with food stamps and he took the change and paid for the vodka. That’s what’s wrong.’ And we just shake our heads.” (see 3/24/82)

"Agriculture official Mary C. Jarratt tells Congress her department has been unable to document President Reagan’s stories of food stamp abuse, pointing out that the change from a food stamp purchase is limited to 99 cents. “It’s not possible to buy a bottle of vodka with 99 cents” she says. Deputy White House press secretary Peter Roussel says Reagan wouldn’t tell those stories “unless he thought they were accurate.”
Ariela Gross, a 17-year old New Jersey student, meets with President Reagan to present him with a petition supporting a
nuclear freeze. She reports that the President “expressed the belief that there must be something wrong with the freeze if the Soviets want it.”

President Reagan suggests that one cause of the decline in public education is the schools’ efforts to comply with court-ordered desegregation.

The day after his administration announced it would not recognize the World Court’s jurisdiction over the U.S. mining of Nicaraguan harbors (which violated international law), President Reagan proclaims May 1 as “Law Day USA”. "Without law,"vsays the President, “there can be no freedom, only chaos and disorder.”

The White House releases the finding - signed by President Reagan on January 17, 1986 - authorizing the sale of arms to Iran and ordering the CIA not to tell Congress. Also released is the 2 1/2 page memo justifying the policy, which the President had not read.

HIs entire administration was more corrupt than anything Clinton did. I mean, yeah, Clinton was a sleazy politician.
But that pales in comparison to people like Ed Meese and Ollie North.

And don’t forget the death squad training manuals for The School of the Americas.

Face it-if Clinton can supposedly start bombing a country just to distract people from his sexual habits, I believe Reagan can be responsible for what went on during his watch.
HE was in a position of authority.
So you see, Reagan, like Clinton, also looked us in the eye and blatantly told lies. The only difference is, Clinton lied about his own personal life. (Which was, admittedly, pretty slimy). REAGAN, lied about US, the state of our country. THAT is pretty sick.

Actors should stay in Hollywood-NOT the White House. At least, not actors like Reagan.

Guinastasia:

That’s fine and good, but that hardly means that a hearty dose of skepticism isn’t warranted regarding his statements and actions. Even if he was better than his predecessors, that doesn’t mean he was good.

A distortion of his actual quote…something you seem to do yourself quite easily, as in…

A bit of a leap here, isn’t it? It doesn’t sound like he called FDR a fascist.

That’s the difference between a simple lie and a felony. Remember, no one wanted Clinton impeached merely for his infamous “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky” on TV. It was the lie (of the same nature) on the witness stand that he was being impeached for.

I can’t speak to the exact issue (i.e., the letter), but the Pope was one of the most staunch and outspoken anti-communists of the Cold War era. I seriously doubt that saying the Pope was behind the US Sanctions was untrue, although, as I said, I don’t know enough about the specific circumstances in which the comment was made to address your point.

Quite frankly, I’d agree with that statement. The Soviets were not our friends. They were our enemies, and they were seeking a peace that would leave them in a more advantageous position, not us in one.

Once it’s an issue in a court of law, it is more than just his personal life. It is an attempt to deny an American citizen her right to redress.

Most (not all, I’ll admit) of the other issues you brought up are matters of opinion, not actual lies.

Chaim Mattis Keller