True or False: Ronald Reagan was a great president

Great Debates
1

Answer: True

He lifted the USA from the doldrums and self-doubt (?self-hate) of the early post-Vietnam era and continued to carry it all the way until victory in the cold war was imminent (a victory that he engineered). That set of accomplishments is rivaled only by his planting of the seeds for the economic bonanza that is still being enjoyed today.

I also submit that his good natured, all-American persona, as well as his poise under fire (literally) did more to reinvigorate and restore America then most anything else in the eighties.

2

Okay. I submit that it is still to early to have an unbiased opinion on this very broad question.
When will the proper time come for an unbiased opinion?
When a couple more generations who did not directly live under his rule and influence rise up and look at the big picture and what happened during and after it (right now we’re still living that second part).
As long as we have a large part of the population with an emotional knee-jerk reaction to the man we cannot be truely unbiased.
And, yes, for this same reason I think it’s still too early to have an unbiased opinion of Mr. Nixon.

3

Answer: False.

Ronald Reagan was a big stupid-head. In fact, he was perhaps the least intelligent U.S. president ever to be elected. From what I’ve heard, he squeaked by 2 I.Q. points above the minimum I.Q. necessary for entry into ROTC, and in one interview you could hear Nancy Reagan whispering “No comment” in his ear every time a reporter asked him a question (each time after she whispered, he repeated “No comment” aloud). As was pointed out in Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort-Of History of the United States, at one point in the Iran-Contra hearings, Reagan claimed he could not remember what he was doing on some particular night in question – if it had been any other president, the American public would’ve gotten suspicious, but with Ronald Reagan, you really believed he couldn’t remember.

This was the president who tried to get ketchup to count as the “vegetable” portion of a school lunch, for crying out loud.

4

Answer: True

The creation of America’s longest economic boom, the end of the cold war, and the huge morale boost he inspired in the country: it’s tough to find another recent president with such a legacy.

tracer, please. Noone gets to be the most powerful person in the world if they’re an idiot. Your cite of Dave Barry as a serious political source makes your assertions even sillier.

Bummer about Reagan’s current personal condition.

5

Even if Reagan was an idiot (which I don’t think he was), the only way to measure the greatness of a President is by looking at what he accomplished. The simplest look at the Reagan era would say that he was a success. Before Reagan took office, the US was in the midst of a major recession, the military could not get the hostages out of Iran, etc. After Reagan was President for eight years, the economy was doing well, the US military was capable of doing anything (well, except for that Grenada thing), etc.

A more complex look would have to take a huge number of other factors into account. I’ll let those who care take up this argument. The results of an IQ test that Reagan may (I don’t recall Reagan being an ROTC student, and ROTC isn’t known for taking idiots, anyways) have taken many years before is not a legitimate way of measuring greatness. The fact that he currently has alzheimers is not at all relevant to the debate.

From what I’ve seen, Reagan was unusually willing and able to field policy questions from reporters in an intelligent manner. And if I remember correctly, the ketchup thing was started by some congressman, not Reagan. You provide these sorts of assertions, but are probably one of those who is first to shoot down the quote about Gore inventing the internet.

6

“No one gets to be the most powerful person in the world if theyre an idiot”. Well, not necessarily.
First off, Nancy DID feed him his lines, which was well documented in the book The Clothes Have No Emperor.
Secondly, if he didn’t know what was going out of his office regarding the Iran deal, then he was imcompetent. If he Did know, he was derelict of duty.
Third, The October SUrprise.
And I believe Dave Barry Would’ve made a better president!

7

My answer: True, especially when you compare him to some other leaders of the past forty years.

He was generally doing things to promote the national good, not to advance his own self. Defense initiatives, for example, were meant to ensure the continued survival of the American people.

I think that the reason he’s disliked a lot is because of this dedication more to the country than to individual people. “Mutually assured destruction?!? That’s HORRIBLE!” “Trillion dollar defense plan?!? This man’s nuts!” And the like.

While a good public image is good, a certain unnamed recent president has seemed to put more effort in a massive PR campaign that actually giving a crap about the country. The reason Bush didn’t go over too well was because he had similar designs that Reagan did, but Reagan was able to come off as a warmer image (the Great Communicator). Reagan’s goal was this: Make country better.

8

Oh my! Talk about revisionist history. Reagan please, I also remember the video footage of Nancy whispering in his ear and Reagan parroting her answers to the reporters. What would Rush do if Hillary did that? Reagan as a military genius, remember Beirut 240 Marines blown to bits because of Reagan’s dim witted peace-keeping policies. They crucified Clinton for Somalia with 19 dead but Reagan gets a pass. Iran-Contra, selling weapons to a terrorist state a sworn enemy to the U.S. for
hostages then getting on TV and telling the American people “we did not trade arms for hostages.” Hey Clinton lied about sex with Monica, Reagan lied about selling weapons to our enemies, which is worse? Remember all those war stories he told reporters about feats of daring do that turned out to be fictional events in movies, like John Wayne, Reagan never left Hollywood during the war. He was once referred to as an “amiable dunce” and I think that sounds about right.

9

I love how Republicans claim the credit for the role others play in national and world affairs.

1.) Fall of the Iron Curtain. Yeah this was ALL Reagan. I do not dismiss that the pressure put on the Soviet Union by the US played a role in the fall of Russian communism, but let us not forget the role our ally nations played, the Mujaheeden in Afganistan, the crucial role that the Pope played in all of this, as well as the simple truth that COMMUNISM DOES NOT WORK. The Iron Curtain was destined to fall at some point, it just happened to do so on Reagan’s watch.

2.) Economic boon? Which economic boon was that. We are in a good economic point now because of CLINTON’s policies, not REagan (and don’t get my wrong I am not wild about Clinton). All I remember from the Reagan-Bush years is recession. “Trickle down economics”–bah! This was a typical REpublican idea by which the rich get richer and the poor stay poor. It’s good that Reagan can take credit for an economic upswing that took place some four to five years after he left office (Bush’s presidency was marked completely by recession). Any president could claim to have “planted the seeds” without anyone ever being able to contradict that. Hey I think we actually owe the current economic boon to the seeds planted by Tom Jefferson.

3.) Military greatness: Yes, Reagan did improve the military, at the cost of a huge national debt, and at the detriment of other important concerns, including crime, education and the environment. And I do think others have mentioned the debacles in Grenada (we almost got defeated by a tourist island) and Beriut.

I don’t personally know if Reagan was an “idiot”. I certainly suspect it often enough. This was, after all, the president who used a psychic to help him dictate national policy, if I recall.

10

How can we know if he was “great” , if we do not know if he was even awake when the “great” decisions were made?

Reagan was everybody’s puppet. Advisors, his wife,his wife’s astrologer, his aides, his party & random contributors to his campaign. Everybody could jerk on his strings & get results.

The lights were on, but nobody was at home

11

I have to say “true,” for many of the same reasons cited in the OP.

Not everyone shared in the Reagan Revolution’s prosperity equally, and we did drive the debt up. But many economists much smarter than me seem to think the national debt is overrated, that the present strength of the economy at any given time is more important. No one can dispute that, under Reagan’s watch, the country came out of the economic doldrums of the mid-to-late 1970s.

In hindsight, I also admire the fact that Reagan, in many ways, is the anti-Clinton. He recognized that the leadership and prestige aura of the presidency is important. And like or dislike his positions, you could at least say he believed in them. It wasn’t leadership-by-opinion-poll, at least not to the ridiculous extent that it is today.

I have to disagree with avalongod on, well, most of his points:

1. The fall of the Iron Curtain. You do, indeed, seem to want to understate the role Reagan played in causing the Soviet Union’s crumble. More than any other influence, be it Europe, the Pope, Afghanistan, it was the U.S. and Reagan’s unwavering opposition to Soviet Communism that led to the Iron Curtain’s downfall. Both in word and in deed (keeping the weapons race pressure on the USSR to a point where its flawed economy couldn’t keep up), Reagan was instrumental.

**2. economic boon. ** Give the credit to Clinton? Puh-leeze. Clinton had the good fortune to ride into office on the wave of the technology explosion and its monumental impact on our economy. And that revolution had become pretty much inevitable by the time of his arrival.

If anything, I think recent years have proven law-enforcing (the executive and judicial branches) and law-making (Congress) seem to have a smaller-than-ever role in how the U.S. economy works.

3. Military greatness. Again, you seem to want to dismiss the importance of this. It helped lead to the end of the Cold War. And while our military may have better technology today, few would argue it’s as sound as it was under Reagan.

And ask someone who lives in a city where a military base has closed whether a sound military has a positive domestic impact.

I don’t buy the (typically Democratic) argument that pne aspect of policy is to blame for deficiencies in other, unrelated aspects. I don’t think education declined because our military was properly funded. I think it had more to do with the education profession itself losing its focus.

But that’s another debate for another day.

12

It might be more relevant than you think. Reagan was in his seventies when he took office. He was probably suffering from Alzheimer’s in it’s earliest stages when he took the oath, and the people that worked under him more than likely knew it.

He claimed to be unaware of a lot of things, particularly duing Iran-Contra. My guess? He really was unaware. Or he knew at one time, then forgot, due to Alzheimer’s. His staffers may not have told him key things because a)they knew he’d forget later, so it was pointless, or b)they knew they could snow him later.

I was a teenager when Reagan was in office. Teens are notoriously liberal, being able to see things in absolute black-and-white. I didn’t much care for him then. Now, looking back, I realize a few things. Our greatest president? No. A bad president? Not really. if he had been operating at 100 percent, no doubt he would have been much greater. I don’t think he’ll go down in history as one of the all-time greats, but he did do wonders for the American morale, and that’s not a bad thing.

13

avalongod wrote:

Any ditto-heads reading this may remember Rush Limbaugh saying that the Federal deficit went down while Reagan was in office. While this is true, the Historical Federal Deficit Summary lists the following deficits for the following years:

1977… 53.7 billion 1978... 59.2 billion
1979… 40.7 billion 1980... 73.8 billion
1981… $ 79.0 billion
1982… $128.0 billion <— the first budget year Reagan had veto power over
1983… $207.8 billion
1984… $185.4 billion
1985… $212.3 billion
1986… $221.2 billion
1987… $149.8 billion
1988… $155.2 billion
1989… $152.5 billion <— the last budget year Reagan had veto power over

… so, yes, the deficit went down from $200+ billion before 1986 to around $150 billion from 1987 onward – BUT, before Reagan took office, it was less than $80 billion.

Praising Reagan for reducing the deficit in 1987 is like praising Pol Pot for only slaughtering half as many civilians as he did last year.

14

A number of posters have cited Grenada as if it were a debacle. My recollection is that after Vietnam, and what was a true debacle in the Iranian desert (under Jimmy Carter’s watch), the US military was seen as impotent and government policymakers paralysed. Grenada was the first step in changing all that. It provided a chance for the US and its military to reassert and prove themselves. It was, therefore, the first step on the final road leading to the end of the Cold War.

15

Funny, I don’t remember any upswell of national or military pride following Grenada – I only remember jokes on The Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live.

16

YEah Grenada was won by sheer numbers alone. It was probably a bigger matter of pride for a small island police force and a bunch of Cuban construction workers to keep the full might of the US military at bay for as long as they did.

17

Milossarian wrote:

True, but we can dispute whether Reagan had anything to do with it.

Any honest macroeconomist will tell you that the economy is pretty much like the weather: some aspects of it go in cycles that can be predicted but which outside forces have little or no impact on, and other aspects of it are completely chaotic and cannot be predicted (let alone controlled). Attempting to “stimulate” the economy with a government program is roughly akin to changing the weather by setting off a solar flare – yes, your efforts might do something to effect a change, but it’ll take a while for any effects to be felt and a lot of the changes that will happen have nothing to do with your efforts.

It could very well have been that the national economy was “ready” to come out of its period of Stagflation at the time Reagan happened to be in office.

18

Oh puh-leeze. Reagan had the best PR of any president, but his actual accomplishments were far less impressive.

THE END OF THE COLD WAR. Guess what, the eastern bloc collapsed because A) its economic system was fundamentally flawed and doomed to self-destruct and B) for 40-some years, eight different presidents of both parties, along with their international allies, pursued a policy of containment. If you want to credit someone, credit the men who came up with NATO and the Marshall Plan, not Reagan. (Crediting Reagan is like saying the second-to-last guy to score for the winning side in a 130-60 point basketball blowout “won the game.”)

ECONOMIC BOOM. People here seem to have forgotten that Reagan’s first term saw the worst recession since the Great Depression. No one in 1982-83 was praising Reagan for an economic miracle, that’s for sure.

If the size and length of an economic boom are the criterion for picking a great president, then both LBJ and Clinton have Reagan beat handily. Of course,long-term economic booms should not be attributed to presidents. They don’t actually have that much direct control over the economy. Much of the credit for the 80s boom goes, not to Reagan, but to Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker. (In fairness, much of the blame for the 82 recession goes to Volker as well.) Volker was appointed by Carter, not Reagan.

MILITARY BUILDUP. Don’t forget that a large chunk of the spending here was on dubious PR stunts like bringing antiquated battleships out of mothballs, invading Grenada (Look, we can beat up a tiny defenceless nation! We baaaaaad!), and the didn’t-work-then-doesn’t-work-now Star Wars system.

YOU COULD BELIEVE IN HIM. Slick Willy has nothing on Teflon Ronnie. Reagan was just better at papering over his contradictions.

He claimed to stand for family values, while in fact he was the first divorced president and a distant and ineffective father. He claimed to be a religous man, but in fact he seldom went to church. He claimed to be in favor of a balanced budget, but in fact recommended policies that he and everyone else knew would lead to larger deficits. He claimed to have been in Europe during the war, but in fact never left Hollywood. He claimed to take a hard line with the Bad Guys, but in fact proved to be dangerously naive when dealing with them (Arms for Hostages-remember the cake?-peacekeepers in Beruit, and his wacky suggestion to share Star Wars with the Soviets.)

Of course, the guy was a professional actor, so all those contradictions melted away when he was in front of the camera. And that’s the scary difference between Slick Willie and Reagan. You can tell when Clinton is lying, but with Reagan you never knew whether he was acting, sincere, lying, or suffering one of his spells.

When the history books are written at the end of this century, I suspect Reagan will be well down on the list of Greatest 20th Century Presidents – certainly below Teddy Roosevelt, the man he desparately wanted to emulate. But of course Roosevelt was the real thing, and Reagan was just a B-movie imitation.

The Reagan Administration on the other hand, may go down as one of more better-run adminstrations of the era. James Baker in particular was an extremely effective behind-the-scenes politico.

19

Reagan also wanted to bring America back to its “glorious” pasts of the Roaring Twenties or the Eisenhower years. A lot of this feeling was achieved by greating a greater disparity between the very rich and the very poor.

Reagan did have some excellent Cabinet members and other advisers like James Baker and George Shultz. He also picked some real losers like James Watt, Anne Burford, and Samuel Pierce.

Obviously, his strength was in his ability to communicate his ideas (whether or not you agreed with them) to the public. And he got most people to agree with him, so he deserves some credit.

20

If you believe STAR WARS was a great motion picture, then you can believe that Reagan was a great President.

After over ten years of intelligent, mentally challenging movies, STAR WARS made Hollywood safe and profitable for morons (and made morons respectable there, instead of figures of fun). Reagan did the same for the Presidency.

Amiable dunces everywhere should be burning candles to Ronnie. He made it safe for them to emerge from their closets. George Dubya owes his political career to this phenomena.

The point of this message board is the fight against ignorance. I’m surprised to find that there are Reagan fans here, as the man was a champion and vindicator of the “I’m fucking stupid, and I’m OKAY with that” attitude.