:eek:
Consider my ignorance fought. And thanks for the link. Being old enough to remember both the Carter and Reagan presidencies, I remember the push for the space program during the Reagan years and the push against it during Carter.
Which is why treis’ claim that the space program is a waste of money holds a grain of truth & irritates me so damn much; it could be an important, productive program if it weren’t being used as a PR platform. Some important discoveries have been made that need to be taken advantage of.
Hubble has nothing to do with the Space Station; they are in entirely different orbits, such that it is impossible for personnel on the ISS to service Hubble.
It’s true that the only launch vehicle in the US inventory that was capable of launching Hubble is the Shuttle, but that is because the US made a deliberate decision to restrict the development of other launch systems with payloads similar to the STS in order to justify Shuttle launch costs and alleged reusability. It is true that the Hubble service missions which corrected the original optics and have kept Hubble running past its planned operating lifespan were made possible because of the Shuttle (and possibly could not have been done by an Apollo-type system), but for the cost of the STS verses a disposable heavy boost system we could literally have built and launched a dozen Hubbles. It’s not opposition to space exploration to object to waste; indeed, if we’d not been wasting time and money on the “restricted budget” programs like the ISS, and instead spent more on developing the next generation of launch vehicles, long term hab technology, and interplanetary propulsion systems, we’d have far more to show than an orbiting white elephant with a Russian taxi service.
This is getting off-topic, I suppose; we should probably break this off onto another thread, though [thread=327854]it[/thread] [thread=310684]has[/thread] [thread=336459]been[/thread] [thread=335335]done[/thread] [thread=335821]before[/thread].
If Bill Clinton had presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union without a shot being fired, you Democrats would be proclaiming him the greatest statesman in history. But because it was Reagan, suddenly he’s at best just a cog in the old machine.
Sure, the U.S. was ‘winning’ the cold war for a long time, and many people deserve credit for that. No doubt about it. But Reagan was the one who brought it to a close, largely through the employment of a broad, long-term strategy. One which was a marked shift from ‘detainment’ and ‘detente’ to actual moves to end the Soviet Union. Reagan heated up the cold war dramatically. He started opposing the Soviets wherever they were, in South America, Central America, and the Middle East. He stepped up the rhetoric, calling them an evil empire and stirring up populations in Eastern Europe. And when a moderate finally emerged, Reagan knew when to back off and start working with the Soviets rather than opposing them. He and Gorbechev became friends. Reagan deserves a lot of credit for helping to engineer the soft landing of the Soviet Union so that war was averted.
And there were many ways the war could have been lost. Mostly by listening to Democrats. Right at the point where the Soviet Union was most vulnerable, Reagan hit them economically and militarily. The left wanted appeasement, a freeze, and economic aid to the Soviet Union. They wanted the U.S. out of the Americas. Rewarding Soviet aggression or looking the other way could have emboldened them into pressuring the U.S. harder. That would have been much more dangerous in the long run.
When the history of the cold war is written, the names that are going to stand out in the end are Reagan, Thatcher, Gorbachev, Walesa, Pope John Paul II, and others like John Kennedy and Vaclav Havel. A handful of people changed the world, largely by deciding they’d had enough. We should not forget that an awful lot of people disagreed with them back then.
Pray tell, what would Clinton have done in your pretend world that Democrats would have hung their hat on?
What? The policy of the United States since day one was containment of the Soviet Union and to oppose the Soviet Union at every point. What do you think the driving force behind such events as the Berlin Airlift, Checkpoint Charlie, The Korean War, The Bay of Pigs, The Cuban Missle Crisis, The Vietnam War and the support of countless dictators, strong men and corrupt government around the world?
Well, Clinton gets his undeserved praise for “bringing about the greatest peacetime economic expansion in the history of this country.” Reagan’s foreign policy, such as it was, was based on bombast but short on consistancy, and many aspects of it–the promotion of what was then called “insurgency” but what the talking heads on the t.v. now universally refer to as “terrorism” seeing as how the guns are pointed at us–have come 'round to bite us in the ass.
Ronnie was in the right place at the right time, and he managed to make some pretty memorable statements. But he wasn’t the guy facing down tanks or being held in house arrest while Party leaders discussed whether the report should read “committed suicide” or “shot while escaping”. While players like Gorbechev and Walesa were making reforms and hoping they didn’t slip on the tightrope and splatter on the pavement below, Reagan made jingoistic speeches in his faux-bomber jacket and quoted Bruce Springsteen out of context.
To say that Reagan “won the Cold War” (with the implication that his efforts primarily or exclusively were responsible for the demise of the Soviet system) goes beyond being short-sighted and self-indulgent; it’s actually offensive to people around the rest of the world who were, quite literally, on the front lines of the Cold War. Reagan is an example of great marketing trumping a mediocre product. And I’d say the exact same thing, in his own way, about Mr. Clinton.
Although Reagan had a role in this, Gorbachev’s soft touch towards dealing with the people had a bigger role than anything as that allowed the endless revolutions of the 80s. So did the Afghanistan war. Reagan was a part of it, but to say he ended communism is faulty. Had the USSR not had Gorbachev in charge it would’ve survived just fine the same way tons of other communist countries survived under Reagain (North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, China, Laos).
I think the Reagan presidency was a tremendous success, and I didn’t even vote for him the first time.
When he took office, an air of pessimism and gloom permeated the country. People were depressed, and it seemed like this would be our future from that point on. I borrowed business operating money at 18% interest.
Eight years later, the country in general was feeling good about things. Interest rates were down from previous highs, stocks were up, the future looked so bright we had to wear shades.
GD threads that shout the popular opinion of this board to the contrary, I believe Reagan played a significant role in bringing about the fall of the Soviet Union.
Wish he’d hurry up and get reincarnated so I could vote for him again!
Well, there are front lines, and there are support networks who keep those front lines going.
Solidarity would have been stopped dead in its tracks had it not been for large quantities of aid sent their way by a coalition of sympathetic allies. They were a diverse and disparate bunch, ranging from the CIA, the Vatican, the AFL-CIO, and Western European trade unions.
Ronald Reagan was instrumental in getting this group working together. Lane Kirkland, who was an outspoken administration foe, was an enthusiastic supporter of the project and was glad to be on board.
So yes, in many ways Reagan was a key figure in ending the Cold War. This is just one example.
…and you Republicans would still have been talking about a blowjob, and would have opposed every move Clinton made to end the Soviet Union, and would have been trying to shut down the government while Clinton was involved in ending the Cold War. Also, you would have kicked puppies.
Hypotheticals with no basis in fact sure are fun!
Daniel
I won’t say Reagan won the Cold War, but he sure helped. A lot. The strategy seems to have been, pump up defense spending and force the USSR to play “keep up”. I was already out of the Army by then, so I don’t know how it filtered down to the enlisted ranks, but still, the idea was there. Star Wars, which eventually died was part of it, as were various new airplane designs and major upgrades to existing ones. It was like a big poker game - keep upping the ante until the opponents can’t afford to stay in.
Gorby helped too, with glasnost and detente, and Reagan was willing to work with him. Gorbachev was serious. He wanted to change his country and loosen it up. He wanted the USSR to be less repressive. One thing that may have been a big factor was the failed coup against Gorby. The hardline Communists wanted him out, and they got caught trying to overthrow him. It seems, people in the USSR liked Gorby and didn’t want to go back to the old Stalinist ways. So, in a way the hardliners take some “credit” too for ending the cold war.
One area where Reagan was wrong, was in his too friendly relationship with the “moral” majority. That was a bad move, as these people are still with us. It all started back then, and we still have the same hateful people with us today.
Another was in his flowdown or trickle down or Reaganomics (or voodoo) economics. The money did not flow down anywhere near as much as he promised. Most of it stayed at the top.
Another was in the “dumping” of mental patients - sometimes called “mainstreaming”?
There were a few things about Reagan though. He spoke plain. You didn’t need to get his talks translated, and it was harder for pundits to put their own “spin” on it. Agree or disagree, you at least knew where he stood. He had a gift for distilling things down to their essence and selling them to the people. That is an incredibly important ability. He was The Great Communicator.
“Disaster” might be defined as a crushingly expensive white elephant, two crash-and-burned orbiters, more than one dozen dead astronauts, the “dangerous” July launch of the new-and-improved Discovery, and NASA’s anticipateed admission last week of yet more foam problems–this after 3+ years of their best and brightest corrective surgery. Add to that the grudging admission by a respected, growing corps of Clinton- and Bush-era techies that the shuttle has been a political boondoggle from day one and instead of advancing manned exploration, managed to shove it to the back burner and off the stove. Somewhere on this Board, Stranger on a Train penned the definitive appraisal of both the Shuttle’s staggering failures and of the people who failed the Shuttle and America’s space program. Mega-dittoes to the Intl. Space Station, which informed pundits today equate to an orbiting Edsel. Sorry Maureen, but the US can no longer afford to shovel mountains of cash at NASA’s clueless administrators and hope that the smallest fraction results in meaningful space exploration.
I’m taking this thread with a grain of salt. The person who started it also said in another thread that Jimmy Carter’s presidency was a success. If someone rates Reagan as a failure and Carter as a success that person’s sense of history is automatically suspect in my mind.
As others have pointed out, just because you disagree with a president’s actions doesn’t make that president a failure. Hell, I disagree with most of FDR’s actions, but he was certainly no failure. Reagan, like him or not, had a very sucessful presidency. He achieved his goals of cutting taxes and strengthening the military. He countered Carter’s weak foreign policy with a robust foreign policy that resulted in the US being in a much stronger position in the world in 1989 than in 1981. Inflation was down, the stock market was up, and America felt good about itself. That is the formula for a sucessful presidency. Sure, there were notable failures during his term (savings and loan scandal, failure to rein in government spending, the Iran-Contra scandal), but on the whole it’s pretty clear he was a very sucessful president. You don’t have to agree with his politics to see this.
All true, but you can’t put all that on Reagan. The regrettable but undisputable fact is, Americans who agree with the MM’s POV are too numerous to remain politically marginal once they got organized.
Absolutely. Reagan courted them, but did not let them dictate. They thought they were getting more than they really were getting. It was a dangerous balancing act, but somehow he did it. As it stands, they still got more than I would prefer (you have to understand, I despise them).
Still, over all, even though I disagree with some Reagan policies, I sort of liked him on some level.
Let us not forget Reagan’s support of the Afghans, who destroyed the reputation of the Red Army.
Let us not forget Reagan’s support for Margaret Thatcher in the Falklands War, which turned around morale in the West. For the previous 30+ years, the West had been in decline, and Maggie turned it around.