True or False: Ronald Reagan was a great president

Great Debates
61

piffle

Your own cited site can, at best, claim that the U.S.S.R. “would have had” to have pursued an expensive catch-up race if it had looked as though star wars would have worked (and that only because Meese claims a Russian said it).

The U.S.S.R. was on the ropes, financially, already. Reagan being a hard-nose did not need the star wars boondoggle. Your own site points out, not only that it did not meet its actual objectives, but it reinforces my earlier point about “flashy feel-good demonstrations” when it notes that there had to be immediate results (that were not deliverable).

What project did the Soviets ever fund as a counter to star wars? The Soviet expenses were the drain of Afghanistan (their Vietnam) in property and morale and the toughening of the NATO forces. Neither star wars nor the tripling of the debt were needed to bankrupt the U.S.S.R. They were simply symptoms of monomaniacal, unimaginative thinking.

62

quote:


Were you disagreeing with me here or agreeing? It has all the grammar of a sarcastic remark, yet this seems to be just what I was saying. Perhaps I am just paranoid.
63

Hmm… the biggest anti-Reagan sentiment seems to boil down to “It was just a matter of time, anyway.”

Compared to guys like George Washington or FDR, Reagan was a total fop. An absolute and dismal bore. Worth mentioning only for his sorry attempts at an impossible dream.

But compare him to Bush, Clinton, Carter, or Ford. Bush was a bad talker and barely passed as a tolerable politician. Clinton is a liar and divisive, and has brought shame to the President’s office and damaged the image of the American people. Carter was truly incompetent, a REAL political sock puppet. And Ford’s career hilight was being made fun of on “The Simpsons”.

64

Arguing against a cause and effect relationship is probably not provable, unless you can demonstrate that the U.S.S.R. would have collapsed at the same time had, say, Jimmy Carter been President rather than Reagan. Failing that, you are simply relegated to holding Reagan accountable for whatever you may interpret as negative, while withholding credit for whatever you may interpret as beneficial.

65

“Political sock puppet.” You can’t possibly believe this statement. Wait, I’ll amend that; no person who was of voting age at the time and even slightly observant could possibly believe that.

I’m in no way defending Carter as one of the greatest presidents; he wasn’t. (He’s arguably the greatest ex-president ever, but that’s another story.) But to say that the man was either incompetent or controlled by others is just derisive.

His biggest debacle, in the mind of the public, is the failed Iranian hostage rescue attempt, which (despite some statements on this thread) was neither poorly conceived nor poorly planned. It fell victim to equipment failure, period. It’s impossible to know how it would’ve ended otherwise.

On the other hand, Carter pulled off the Camp David Accords, was a genuine expert on “MAD” (having been a nuclear submarine C.O.), left a more stable global platform of strategic arms control (SALT II) despite serious post-Watergate distrust of Executive power, and had the most aggressive domestic reform program of any president before or since.

This was decidedly not an incompetent sock puppet of a President.

66

Big WHOOPS!

I must apologize to everyone; my indignation got the better of me. I actually don’t think Carter ever commanded a vessel. However, he did serve on the Sea Wolf, one of the most important espionage tools of the Cold War, and was indeed an expert on strategic arms policy.

67

I hold you accountable for failing to read my posts. There is no way that anything I have said can be construed as blaming him for all the bad while refusing to credit him for any good. On this thread I have argued fairly narrowly that star wars was a boondoggle. One statement I made in support of that is that he was sufficiently hard-nosed in his general dealings with the U.S.S.R. that he did not need the silly notion of his pipe-dream.

At this point, you are beginning to look like one of those people who simply believes in Reagan.

You’re welcome to your brand of idolatry, but you are not welcome to put words in my mouth.

68

Little Nemo wrote:

Carter’s grain embargo in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, however, may indeed have played a role in the eventual collapse of the USSR.

69

No, wait … it wasn’t the invasion of Afghanistan that triggered the U.S. grain embargo, was it? It was something else that triggered it. Darn it, I can’t remember what, though.

70

The attempt to rescue the hostages was poorly planned. Watching a description of it on the History Channel, as they were describing the plans, it seemed as if at every opportunity they tried to make it more complex. Simple plans are far less dependant on functional equipment. The plans involved three separate invasions of Iran, with numerous elements expected to rendezvous within enemy territory. This is the sort of plan that looks great on paper, but leaves innumerable opportunities to get royally fucked up on the ground.

According to Air Force magazine: “The plan was staggering in its scope and complexity, bringing together scores of aircraft and thousands of men from all four services and from units scattered from Arizona to Okinawa, Japan.”

There was very little information available as to the layout of the embassy, and where the hostages were being held. In order to account for this uncertainty, the task force had to be large, requiring at least six helicopters. Eight were provided, allowing for at most two to be unusable at any point. The pilots had to fly these helicopters over flat terrain at night without accurate weather information.

By the time they rendezvoused with the C-130’s at Desert One, two had turned back, and one was unoperational. Their arrival time was also inaccurately calculated, causing the C-130’s to spend an extra 55 minutes waiting for them, wasting fuel. When it was decided to abort the mission, one of the reasons for the ensuing crash was the haste in which it was necessary to get the C-130’s into the air. Another factor was the lack of any specific plan for the scenario af aborting.

Had there been six helicopters still available to leave Desert One, they still would have to have flown to a hideout outside Tehran, successfully rendezvoused with agents with vehicles, drive to Tehran, and actually rescue the hostages, without knowing exactly which building they were in. Then the helicopters would have to have then picked up the hostages and their rescuers, flown to Manzireh Air Base, rendezvoused with C-141’s coming from Turkey, and use those to escape the country.

To blame the failure of the mission on equipment failure is like trying to blame the fact that you couldn’t make a cross-country trek in your mid-sixties VW Bug on it breaking down along the way. In both cases, an unrealistic expectation of the reliability of the equipment was made.

Other problems with the mission were mentioned in the official report of the Holloway Commission which investigated it: “the rescue mission was a high-risk operation. … People and equipment were called upon to perform at the upper limits of human capacity and equipment capability. There was little margin to compensate for mistakes or plain bad luck.”

Much of the information I used is here. Certainly it was not solely Carter who was to blame for the debacle, but he should not be held entirely unaccountable for it.

Back to the OP, what I meant as to the relevance of Reagan’s intelligence is that the only way I can see to measure how great a President was is through the results of their actions. If, say, Dan Quayle were to become President and somehow cause world peace, he would be a great President, regardless of his inability to spell at an elementary school level. The success Reagan had with dealing with the USSR was due in large part to allowing many decisions to be made by people who were far better at it than he.

Giving the rich tax breaks is far different than giving them money, unless you believe that the primary purpose of taxation is to redistribute the wealth. Even after the Reagan tax cuts, the rich were still paying a higher tax rate than the poor and middle class. Since the bulk of the tax revenue comes from the rich (from what I recall), an evenly distributed tax cut would still be “giving” the rich more money.

The main failure of this plan was that the tax breaks and increase in military spending were not offset by cuts in social programs. In fact, the spending on social programs increased over the Reagan years. (By failure, I mean where the plan failed to be implemented, not failure of the plan itself, which would be another debate.) Thus, the necessary money was borrowed, resulting in all sorts of nasty side effects.

71

Carter suspended grain shipments and decided to withhold the SALT II treaty from ratification as a result of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

72

Avalongod, I owe you an apology. I felt you had greatly understated the importance of Gorbachev’s role in the collapse of the Soviet Union by simply including him as one of the people responsible. But there was certainly nothing in your post which deserved the sarcasm of my reply.

73

tracer:“I can’t remember what though.”
Huh, now you sound like your Quoting Reagan!:slight_smile:

74

elucidator said:

The economy falters specifically because so much production is turned towards trying to figure out how to produce dilithium crystals.

When Gorbachev took power in '85, the Soviet economy was nearly in shambles. Lack of quality domestic goods, combined with a lack of incentives to perform quality services, had created a massive black market and dissatisfaction with the Communist system.

Gorbachev’s plan to rehabilitate the Soviet system was based upon two points- making reforms in economic and social policy in order to make the system more efficient, and making massive cuts in military spending in order to re-direct the resources and manpower into domestic production and goods. Keep in mind as well that this was to rehabilitate the system, not to change it into something else. Gorbachev was always a Communist, and was always interested in supporting Communist governments and insurgencies even as he was trying to cut down on direct Soviet spending.

What massive spending on defense- especially SDI- by the US did was to force Gorbachev to keep shoveling money into the Soviet’s military and research project. Thus, while the reforms Gorbachev enacted did bring some benefit, the great re-birth of the Soviet economy that Gorbachev hoped for never occured because the Soviets tried to keep up with American defense spending.

It is certainly possible to believe that had someone else been President, the change in spending rates wouldn’t have been enough to satisfy the average Soviet citizen. But I think it’s also certainly possible to believe that had America had a detente-minded American president who was interested in keeping American military expenditures as small as possible, the Soviet Union could have removed many of the Brezhnev era inefficiencies and then turned around and heated up the Cold War from a position of strength.

75

I do not agree with the last poster.

My impression was that the fall of the Soviet Empire began over difficulties certain communist leaders had with Gorbachev’s more liberal policies…remember this is the guy that peacefully let East Germany go. This sparked the coup in (I honestly forget the exact year 1990? 1991?) Moscow, where Gorbachev was kidnapped, and Yeltsin became a big hero not backing down to the Soviet military. Also for once, the soviet military decided not to fire on their own people. So the coup was crushed, but Gorbachev himself lost his power in the process. That allowed Yeltsin to step in and change everything. OF course economics was part of all of this, but again, most of the power movers in the process were Russians, not Americans, and certainly not Reagan.

76

And it is also possible to believe that, had a more detente-minded president been in office, the benefits to both sides of decreased military spending would’ve resulted in healthier economies and a more stable balance of power between USSR and USA.

There’s no question that Reagan’s brinksmanship (whether one characterizes it as masterful or simpleminded) kept Gorbachev from realizing his economic reforms. The main difference I have with those who cite this as a Reagan “accomplishment” is the bald assumption that the fragmentation of former Soviet members was a good thing. Coming as it did from an economic collapse, rather than an ideological reassessment, it has contributed to much more instability and uncertainty than a healthy Soviet economy would’ve done. “Evil Empire” or no, a strong Soviet Union was not in itself a bad thing for the US.

77

A good point Xenophon. It’s still too early to call the end result. If ten years from now the United States is fighting WWIII against a Russian neofascist empire, we’ll be wishing the good old peaceful Soviet Union was still around.

78

However, it WAS a bad thing for the Soviet people. Or don’t they count?

I have no doubt that the Soviet Union would have eventually collapsed. However, it could have been in 10 years or 100 years. Never underestimate the power of an authoritarian government to maintain rule even in the face of economic ruin.

The guy who said that Chernobyl was the downfall of the Soviet Union is nuts. You think the people are going to revolt because a few thousand died in an accident, when they didn’t revolt when tens of millions were being slaughtered by their own government?

The more reasonable chain of events is something like this: The Soviet Union comes under unprecented moral and military pressure due to a new breed of leaders in the west, including Reagan and Thatcher. In turn, this sparks unrest in satellite states like Czechoslovakia and Poland, aided greatly by people like Lech Walensa and Vaclav Havel.

The Soviets try to stem the tide by electing a moderate to power (they tried doing this before with Brezhnev, but he turned out to be one of the good old boys). Now they have a moderate in power, a modern man with an education, and he gets hammered on by Reagan and Thatcher, both of whom actually like Gorbachev as a person and establish pretty good relations with him. The result is even more openness, and the cat is now out of the bag. The rest was basically a domino effect. Couple this with the fact that SDI scares the Soviets silly, and that loosening control over the press allows citizens to see the outside world a little better, which increases their discontent. All this leads up to the final gasp of the old guard with the failed coup.

79

I agree with some, but not all of what Sam had to say …

The USSR fed its amazing economic growth from the 1930’s on with huge, forced, and bloody reallocation of capital inputs, both human and material. It forced a large chunk of the rural population off the land and into urban, industrial jobs, in the process causing massive famine. This huge reallocation of people, combined with a massive opening of new sources of raw materials (note all the new cities in Siberia, etc. for purposes of mining), and the directing of these material resources into heavy industry, created amazing growth.

The problem with this type of economic development is that it is dependent on growth in both available workers and material resources. After you’ve shifted everyone you can into industry (and the Sov’s probably went too far, never figuring out how to feed themselves), and mined all the easily accessible resources, economic growth is limited by natural population growth and the expense of opening new mines, etc., in uneconomic locales. If your economic growth is limited by population increases, you are by definition, not improving the economic condition of the masses (any gains get swallowed up by the increase in population).

By the middle of Brezhnev’s reign, the USSR had reached the limits of growth by reallocation of human and material resources, and stagnated.

Given this background, I don’t think that the moral posture of Thatcher and Reagan aided in the fall of the U.S.S.R. I think Reagan’s massive increase in military expenditures did - the new arms race forced the Sov’s to spend more resources on their military at a time of economic stagnation, resulting in a net degradation of the economic conditions of the masses. Gorbachev’s attempted reforms were thus stillborn, as any economic benefits that were gained (anyone out there have stats on whether Gorby’s reforms actually caused any increase in the Sov’s GDP growth?) simply went to the military again, causing the reforms to look to the average Comrade as ineffective, 'cause his/her life didn’t get any better). SDI was more like icing on the cake, rather than the cause of the downfall - the same result would have occurred by Reagan’s increase in the size of the U.S. military, but might have taken a bit longer.

As for Reagan/Thatcher’s moral crusade, I think it is hyperbole to say, even by implication, that Dems such as Carter didn’t condemn, and loudly, Communism as a barbaric and inhumane system. Reagan was just louder.

V.

80

Sorry, but I was in the political trenches in the early 1980’s, and I can tell you that the various governments around the world were NOT condemning the Soviets. Carter issued a condemnation over the invasion of Afghanistan, but followed that up with nothing more than an Olympic Boycott, which most other western nations refused to follow. Popular movements of the time portrayed the Soviet Union as just another country with a form of government different than ours - no better, no worse. Popular songs portrayed the Soviet Leaders and American leaders as moral equals. I was in university at the time, and the faculty was very much pro-socialist or even pro-communist.

In hindsight now we all say that the collapse of the Soviet Union was inevitable, but as late as 1985 there were still leaders proclaiming that the Soviet style of government was the future. I can recall reading all kinds of editorials in major newspapers and magazines praising the Soviets for their health care, education, and equality.

And BTW, Reagan’s military buildup wasn’t a backbreaker for the Soviets, since the military budget didn’t increase all THAT much. As a percentage of GDP, the military budget in 1980 (the last non-Reagan year) was just over 22%. Reagan’s big increase over the next three years only increased the military budget to just over 24%, a measly 2% of GDP increase. And today, 10 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it’s still at 21.5%.

The Soviets could easily match that increase. But what changed was the RESOLVE of the west. Until Reagan came along, the Soviets could fool themselves into thinking that they were winning the battle for ‘hearts and minds’. In other words, they still believed in the inevitability of Soviet domination of the world. But along comes Reagan and Thatcher, and soon world opinion is turned against the Soviets, they are met with hard resistance when trying to expand (i.e. Grenada, Nicaragua, etc.), and faced with an opponent that is now making long-term plans to do an end-around play against their one major advantage - sheer number of weapons. The Soviets always held the edge here - they had the biggest bombs, the most missiles, the most men and tanks, etc. But SDI threatened to make all that irrelevant. The politburo in the 1980’s must have been in a continual state of panic.