Why? It’s not like winning 49 states guarantees a wonderful presidency. In fact, the only other president who won 49 states was so bad at his job that he was run out of town halfway through his second term.
[quote=“nevadaexile, post:14, topic:681695”]
[li]Healthcare - Reagan ignored AIDS at a time when the US could have gotten it under control. Had he shown an iota of leadership concerning the disease then it’s likely that hundreds of thousands of Americans would now still be alive.[/li][/QUOTE]
The problem with this claim is that there is not a shred of evidence any other country in the world had it under control. No other national leader anywhere was leading the pack on the AIDS epidemic before January 20, 1989, nor for that matter were the Democrats making AIDS research a policy platform of any significance. You simply cannot present a rational, fact-based argument that it made any difference at all who the President was from 1981 to 1989 in terms of what happened to AIDS research.
Thoroughly trashed? I guess it depends on what you read. In the mainstream media, it is relatively uncommon to hear anyone duly revile Reagan, he tends to get treated with at least nominal respect. And there are plenty of non-elite thinking people who see his reputation as overstated. You cannot make this into “oh, the salt-o-the-earth-common-man recognizes how great he was whilst those commie leftist snobs sneer at him like thugs”, it is not nearly as clear-cut as that. There are adulators and detestors on the extremes, the vast middle is kind of a fog.
The answer is no, it it is not possible to look into a question like this without “descending into a polemic froth”. The question of Regan’s legacy is highly contested, because it is still deeply relevant to and entangled with current political conflicts. There is no objective answer to whether his presidency was good or bad for the USA or the world (or, even, whether various aspects of it had good or bad effects). In another century or so, when the question no longer matters much to anybody, some broad historical consensus may (or may not) have emerged, but right now it is far too soon to say. (This, by the way, is going to be true of just about any significant political figure. The more important and divisive they were, the longer the nature and value of their legacy is going to be hotly contested.)
No doubt one can obtain relatively unbiased, objective information about how US economy and US society has changed and developed since Regan’s time, but the extent to which Regan was responsible for any of those changes (for good or ill), and, indeed, the question of whether those changes have been for the better or the worse, is controversial, and is going to remain so for a long time.
The further we get from having directly experienced his personal charisma, which even an opponent like me has to acknowledge, the harsher history will judge him, too. His winning 49 states will be seen, rightfully, as how willfully inept the American electorate can be.
I wouldn’t say his legacy has been trashed. Among Republicans, it has been elevated to mythic status. During each Republican primary season, Republican candidates invoke his name at every opportunity. This despite the fact that Saint Ronald raised taxes (gasp) and granted amnesty to millions of aliens in 1986 (double gasp). According to the GOP catechism, Reagan single handedly defeated the Soviet Union, despite no supporting evidence. He said “tear down this wall” and the wall came down. Magical stuff.
Against this fawning adoration, reality tells a much different story. This is a man who busted a union, invaded small countries, sold arms to terrorist nations, and thought trees caused pollution. His voodoo economics was discredited by his own running mate and ultimately his own budget director. He has given rise to a generation of stooges who think that government is the enemy and must be made utterly powerless. His legacy is GOP obstructionism and the Tea Party.
To be fair he was running against Walter Mondale, who charisma-wise makes John Kerry look like Bill Clinton. Let’s not forget the Democrats’ failure to nominate someone worth voting for.
Winning 49 states didn’t mean he was universally loved or supported. Go back and look at the news, commentary, and pop culture of the time – people were saying the same things about him then that they are now.
“The electorate was wrong” is how you lose elections.
If history is a better judge of Reagan’s performance than contemporary observation, logically you cannot blame people in November 1984 for lacking historical perspective. They had access only to such information on Reagan’s presidency as was commonly available from 1981 to late 1984. That information was substantially more positive than the information available today; not only is it easier to find stuff out now, but the worst parts of Reagan’s presidency mostly happened in his second term. To an observer in November 1984, the Reagan administration could have been very reasonably argued to be doing a good job, VERY reasonably argued to be doing a better job than the previous Democratic resident, and the statement “are you better off than you were four years ago?” would have been answered by most Americans with a “yes.” And as has been pointed out, Walter Mondale was not exactly a superstar alternative.
Calling the electorate of 1984 “wilfully inept” is just silly. You are ascribing to them powers of observation that were not possible at the time.
I’m amazed that no one so far has mentioned the Greenspan comission and the subsequent reform of Social Security. The net result: An increase in payroll taxes (taken mostly from the middle class) to build up the SS “trust fund” for the future retirement of the Baby Boomers.
Simultaneously (though not directly related to SS reform), Reagan cut income taxes (paid mostly by the wealthy). Put these two together, and you have the makings of an implicit deal between group M (the middle class) and group W (the wealthy): Group M pays more in tax (building up the trust fund), group W pays less for the 30-odd years. When boomer retirement starts to hit, group M gets cash back (from the trust fund) and group W pays more in taxes (to pay off the debt in the trust fund). Funny how the second half of that deal now has group W (in the guise of front groups like Fix the Debt) screaming for new SS “reform”.
“Are you better off than you were four years ago?” hurled around as a debate point pretty much illustrates how easily the electorate was taken in by Mr. 20-Mule-Team Borax with something brand new to pitch.
I don’t necessarily believe that the electorate of 1980 and 1984 was any dumber than the one of 2016, though.
After all, the the 2016 electorate allowed itself to be distracted by a phony ‘war on women’ and other nonsense issues in the middle of the worst recovery from a recession in the modern era. At a time of record low workforce participation, skyrocketing debt, sluggish growth and high unemployment, it became a big deal that a wealthy New York lawyer couldn’t get free birth control. How silly can you get?
These Reagan threads on the SDMB are little more than an opportunity for the lefties to come out and shake their tailfeathers. No ignorance is fought - it’s reinforced. For example, I have posted in numerous threads on Reagan exactly how he helped bring down the Soviet Union. I have quoted praise for him along these lines from world leaders of the time, including Mikhail Gorbachev. I have linked to the source national security documents that described the strategy. It always falls on deaf ears, because no one here wants to believe it.
As an aside, if academic historians, who are about 80% liberal, place Reagan in the middle of the pack for Presidents that suggests to me he ranks quite highly indeed. Public polls put Reagan much higher - almost always in the top 5. A 2011 Gallup poll which asked "“Who do you regard as the greatest United States president?” had Reagan come in at #1. A 2012 Gallup poll which tried to dive deeper by assigning categories to the Presidents found that Reagan was ranked as outstanding or above average by 69% of respondents, vs only 12% that thought he was below average. Only 38% felt the same about Barack Obama, and the next closest president in the last 50 years was Bill Clinton, at 60%.
Reagan wasn’t perfect, but the fact remains that when he came into office the country was suffering from ‘malaise’, interest rates and inflation were in high double digits yet the economy wasn’t growing (something Keynesians of the time said was impossible), the Soviet Union was stepping up its aggression around the world, there were American hostages in Iran, and labor unrest was growing. The reason Reagan was re-elected with a 49 state landslide was because all of this was turned around.
In 1980, the annual inflation rate was 13.58%. In 1984, it was 4.3%. In 1980 the unemployment rate peaked at 7.8%. When Reagan left office it was 5.3%, despite the fact that the tight monetary policy required to break inflation caused unemployment to spike to almost 11% in Reagan’s first term. GDP growth during the 1984 election year was 7.3%. After the 1982 recession, GDP growth never fell below 3.5% during the rest of Reagan’s term.
If Barack Obama had anything like Reagan’s numbers after the recession, you all would be declaring him the greatest president in history.
In terms of foreign policy, When Reagan took office the United States was a political mess around the world, the threat from the Soviets looked like it was growing, Cuba was engaging in adventures in Central and South America, Iran was holding American hostages, and in general things looked pretty bleak. By the time Reagan left office the Soviet Union was crumbling, countries were turning away from communism and socialism around the world, NATO and NORAD were stronger, the American public was much more confident in the future, strategic arms reductions were underway between the Soviets and the Americans, and in general the world was a much better place.
Not all of it was due to Reagan, of course. But what impact he had on those events was generally positive, and in some cases his administration was the major factor.
As a girl, I really hate right-wing MEN saying the conservative war on women is phony. As long as Republicans chip away at Roe, they are waging a war on women’s rights.
It’s a tragedy for all of us that Reagan didn’t die in 1966.
He may have won the Electoral College but he only got 58% of the vote in 1984. That leaves plenty who were opposed to him.
Reagan deserves no credit for getting the Iranian hostages released. None. All the negotiations, all the dealing, all the arrangements were done during the Carter administration. That the hostage takers held off on the release until after Reagan was sworn in was their final “fuck you” to Carter, who they hated.
Should you mention it again in a future Reagan thread, we’ll see who has deaf ears.
If Barack Obama reacted to the Benghazi attack the way Reagan did to Beirut, you’d be declaring him unfit to be president.
Not as many as those who opposed the current POTUS in the last election.
Please read for context. I said nothing about Reagan being responsible for the release of the hostages. I was describing the state of the world before Reagan took office and after. I even said that he didn’t deserve credit for all the things that happened.
And as I recall, Reagan was quite magnanimous in sending Carter to be the emissary who first met the hostages overseas when they were released.
So he made an inept comparison because planned security upgrades hadn’t been finished when the bombing took place. Politically boneheaded to be sure, but there was no malice or disrespect intended as far as I can tell - he just came up with an analogy that seemed to make light of it. He also did not make that analogy in an attempt to hide the nature of the attack or as disinformation.
On the other hand, people in Benghazi were pleading for security upgrades, and were outright refused. When other embassies pulled their staffs citing a deteriorating security situation, the State Department did nothing. Then when the attack happened, someone countermanded orders for a rescue attempt. Then they immediately tried to spin it as a spontaneous attack due to a video, and threw the filmmaker in jail in a highly publicized arrest. Finally, when questioned about it, Hillary said, “what difference, at this point, does it make?” Which was at least as tone deaf as Reagan’s comment.
Many more lives were lost in the Beirut bombing. But the political malfeasance over Benghazi was much greater, because there was no malfeasance at all over Beirut - just typical bureaucratic foot dragging over security improvements.
This thread is about those things that Reagan did effect, and you list the hostage release among things which improved during his administration. That is the context in which I read it.
Otherwise, why did you include it? You said he didn’t deserve credit for all those things without specifically saying which. Will you now agree that Reagan deserves no credit for the release of the hostages from Iran.
Again, try reading for context. I was making a point about Reagan’s popularity, and why he was as popular as he was at the time. Like it or not, Presidents get credit for things that happen on their watch whether they are responsible for them or not.
For example, I will admit that Carter started some of the things that Reagan got credit for. Carter appointed Volcker to the fed (although he interfered with his tight money policy). Carter began the deregulation trend by beginning to deregulate trucking and airlines - both of which caused Reagan to reap significant credit for the economic turnaround of those industries. But that’s the way it goes.