Try reading my actual words. Do you think Reagan deserves any credit for the release of the Iranian hostages?
How many times does he have to say no before you believe him?
This whole line of discussion seems to be a pedantic way to avoid dealing with the general point made, which seems to be very well delineated.
Once would be nice.
affect
No, of course not since they were released before he had a chance to do anything about it as President.
Some on the right have claimed that the hostages were released on his inauguration day because the Iranians were scared of his ‘cowboy warmonger’ image, while they felt free to play hostage games with Carter because they saw him as weak and ineffectual. But there’s really no way to prove that, and it wouldn’t be to Reagan’s credit anyway since he would have had absolutely nothing to do with that. It’s an unprovable assertion.
On the other side of the coin, there’s no question that the Carter administration was working hard to get the hostages released through multiple channels, and that negotiation was bearing enough fruit that some Reagan advisers were terrified that Carter was going to have an ‘October surprise’ of his own and get the hostages released just before the election.
That, by the way, is the biggest reason why it makes no sense to claim that fear of Reagan was the reason the hostages were released - if the Iranians were really afraid of him they would have released the hostages before the election in an attempt to get Carter re-elected.
So… No. Reagan deserves no credit for the hostage release at all. Why I had to go about proving my bona fides on this is beyond me, since I never claimed that he did. But if it makes you happy, there you go.
Pure boilerplate yammer. More and more, your posts in this thread are looking like talking-points, which is not at all what I asked for, and straying this far off topic, they begin to resemble inane shillery.
Right. Because any post not automatically denouncing Reagan is just shillery. And I`m not the one who brought Benghazi into the debate.
“He started it!” Yeah, you do not have to swallow the hook.
But as I said, you have been addressing what appears to be the results of Reagan Administration policy in the 1980s, which is minimally useful. No comment or analysis on long-term effects of their policies?
Because, like you, I’ve seen plenty of people try to credit it as part of Reagan’s tough-talking, no-nonsense legacy. I like to nip that sort of ignorance in the bud when it looks like it might be raising its head.
Seriously? After a quarter of a century of repeating this tired conspiracy theory which has never been substantiated by any credible evidence, deathbed confessions, or even a consistent story, pulling this out of your back pocket is akin to claiming that Bill Clinton personally took Vince Foster out to get some cannoli. There are plenty of perfectly legitimate and readily substantiated reasons to critique Reagan’s legacy as President, plagiarizer of Bruce Springsteen, and ostensible “Leader of the Free World”. Relying on this rotted stump as some kind of valid point just undermines any credibility.
Stranger
The same people brought you Iran-Contra. Just sayin’.
Oh, you mean the amateur hour “Triangle Trade” guns-for-hostages-for-aid-to-terrorists scheme that blew up in everyone’s face? This is not a solid argument for establishing that the Reagan Administration was capable of successfully planning and carrying out a covert conspiratorial operation. And that notwithstanding, revealing that Reagan or his supporters had cooperated with or encouraged the kidnappers to not release the hostage would have been great fodder in both unseating the Bahonar/Rajai government and catching the US leadership with their pants about their ankles. And yet, no one has ever provided any substantial evidence of this conspiracy.
Basically, nothing about this theory makes any sense whatsoever. What really happened was that the Shah died, Iran was getting increasing negative pressure for keeping the hostages, and with the Iran-Iraq war (in which the Carter Administration provided funding and support to Iraq) it just wasn’t worth the trouble to keep the hostages. With the Algeirs Accords, Iran got essentially everything they wanted from the US, in addition to inflaming anti-American sentiments among Iranians.
Please do try and learn something about the actual history of the events before thoughtlessly promulgating a baseless conspiracy with no credible evidence or logic behind it.
Stranger
In 1980, Reagan did promise dem American Peoples that he’d do to dem dirtbag bastard commie Soviets what he did done to dem filthy long-haired hippies when he were Governor of California.
The voters saw him as a Western gun-slinger, who wasn’t about to let the world’s punks push the USA around. It’s not hard to see this today.
I do admire the man for taking the full blame for the Iran/Contra weapons scandal … right away, and on national TV.
I might give him credit for taking blame if there had been any consequences for doing so. Even so, it was more like “I didn’t think we did this. But we did. Oopsies!”
Actually, that is a pretty terrible summation of the dynamics of the 1980 Presidential election and campaign.
The primary driving forces behind Reagan’s defeat of Carter in 1980 were:
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The economy was in a long period of dreary performance,
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Carter was seen by many as an ineffectual President, which was magnified by the prolonged hostage crisis and spectacularly failed rescue attempt, and
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The debate, which took place just days before the election and which Carter blew in the most epic fashion. While it is not commonly remembered, the polls indicated a very close race until the debate, at which point the race blew open.
The truth is that Carter lost the election as much as Reagan won it; Reagan’s campaign centred around Carter’s alleged incompetence, the shittiness of the economy and his plans to fix it the “end of inflation” was a major plank of his campaign - and a portrayal of Reagan not as a “gun-slinger” but as a figure of optimism.
Carter’s campaign was curiously defensive; he spent a lot of time attacking Reagan rather than noting his own achievements, which is a loser’s strategy, and, as any source on the campaign will note, his campaign made basically no promises of any kind. It would have been very difficult for a voter in 1980 to ascertain exactly what Carter’s formal platform was beyond “why not try four years of more of the same?” and in 1980 four years of more of the same wasn’t a terribly enticing prospect. The unemployment rate has skyrocketed amidst a frightening recession that had no end in sight, and inflation rates were at levels that would today be unimaginable; I believe they peaked out at 13%. If you wanted to buy a house your mortgage was 20% or thereabouts. Carter’s administration had brought in a wave of banking deregulation and the results were, well, about as bad as they usually are. And Carter had no coherent plan for what to do next.
Not giving the voters an affirmative reason to vote for you is probably the #1 reason otherwise electable politicians lose elections. Reagan didn’t have to tote guns; all he had to do, really, was present an optimistic platform that focused on the economy. Which is precisely what he did. When he strayed off that message, as he did in his infamous “state’s rights” speech, he got ripped apart.
Yeah, watchwolf49 has it exactly backwards. It was the Democrats who were trying to portray Reagan as a gunslinging cowboy who was going to cause WWIII. They saw that image as an electoral liability for Reagan. One of the reasons the debate worked so well for Reagan is that his personal demeanor was engaging and non-threatening, and did much to defuse the perception of him as an angry warmonger.
Too many people look at past politicians and elections through the lens of today’s politics. It was a different time, and people cared about different things. The coalitions were different, the economy was different, the geopolitical scene was different. If you want to really understand Reagan’s presidency (or any other historical presidency, for that matter), you really have to do so through the context of the times they lived in.
“My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”
One wonders how the voter of 1980 would have known Reagan was going to crack that joke in 1984.
The point is what kind of person, and public servant Reagan was, and how that differed from the image **Sam **would obviously prefer to hold. It wasn’t the *Democrats *who (by Sam’s implication, falsely) portrayed him that way so much as he had portrayed *himself *that way, over the course of a public career long prior to the Presidency.
So you can keep your snark to yourself, eh?