But that was one of Reagan’s, wasn’t it? 
No, it was not.
The Carter team was working behind the scenes to get the hostages released up to the day of the inauguration. The hostages were released shortly thereafter
Reagan certainly took credit for it. But then, he though that he actually served in combat in his later years, so….
No, no, he effected lots of things: thirty years (and counting) of poverty, misery, hatred, oppression, and tyranny.
It’s not.
It was really Gorbachev’s doing.
One thing he effected was a disastrous farm policy.
Of all the politicians in the world in the past fifty years, Gorbachev might be the most deserving of our reverence. It would be hard to overstate just how important he was in 90 and 91, and how much cataclysmically worse things could have been if a man of weaker principle or courage were in his position.
That is, please name the powers as well as the administrations.
How do they rank him on policies?
What would Ronald Reagan do
If he were here right now?
He’d hear a plan
And he’d claim it, too,
That’s what Ronald Reagan’d do!
When Ronald Reagan was in the Army
Fighting World War II,
He never left the States, but said
He was there and freed the Jews!
When Ronald Reagan was in Hollywood,
Heading up the SAG,
He turned the names of Comsymps in
To the fucking HUAC scumbags!
When Ronald Reagan was in the White House
Putting down the lewd,
The air controllers stood up proud,
And Reagan said, “You’re screwed!”
So what would Ronald Reagan do
If he were here today?
I’m sure he’d stab a back or two,
That’s what Ronald Reagan’d do!
That’s what Ronald Reagan’d do!
(With apologies to Stone & Parker, and Brian Boitano.)
Ranking in each of 20 categories is shown at the link I provided (click 7 in the Contents). Reagan’s highest rank (#3, behind only Washington and Teddy Roosevelt) is for … Luck!
I am a fan of Michael Hart’s List of History’s 100 Most Influential Persons. The list includes four Russians: Stalin, Lenin, Peter the Great, and Mikhail Gorbachev.
The list includes 5 American inventors: the Wright brothers jointly, Edison, Fermi (if he’s considered American), Gregory Pincus and Henry Ford; and three American Presidents: Washington, Jefferson (though not for his Presidency) and Kennedy. (JFK makes the list because of his importance to future generations on the assumption that a Moon landing would not have been attempted without JFK.)
It was already in the works. Henry Kissinger, the man whom Carter had traduced in the 1976 elections, is the one who got it rolling. Carter was good in that he didn’t screw it up, as usual.
Reagan *might *have sold people on what you think he sold them on, but in practice he was simply a supply-side keynesian. If in fact he did *adequately *sell people on what you think he sold them on, the U.S. would be in better fiscal shape.
The real legacy of Reagan is his ability to sell true fiscal conservatism down the river by embracing supply-side keynesianism. Dick Cheney bridged the gap from the birth of right wing keynesianism during the Reagan era to its apotheosis in the GWB era, the rest is history.
Read the whole thing.
Based on those ideas abandoned in the 1930s? Not likely.
Reagan’s 1986 amnesty for illegal aliens set off a baby boom. Ironically, a large proportion of which are likely to vote Democrat 
Laura E. Hill & Hans P. Johnson “Understanding the Future of Californians’ Fertility: The Role of Immigrants:” Public Policy Institute of California
Rumsfeld, Bush Sr and Cheney.
They were the power behind Reagan’s throne, reigned in the open under Bush Sr and used a stooge again with Bush Jr.
With secret sealed orders from the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy!
Right, yes, if you call it a conspiracy you can just handwave away the obvious.
Have a chuckle and move along. Nothing to see here.
I didn’t live during his presidency, but I’m amazed at how a man who won 49 states in his re-election bid has been so thoroughly trashed by historical revisionism.
Makes me really believe in liberal bias among the so-called intellectual elite.
Some things look better in hindsight than they did at the time, and some things look worse, and hindsight is usually right.