What's so great about Ronald Reagan?

Great Debates
21

bungie_us writes;

Actually, the statement is correct.

Reagan’s first budget took effect in 1982, when the poverty rate was 13.6%. In 1989, it was 11.5%.
http://www.cache.census.gov/income/histpov/hstpov02.txt Facts are so inconvenient, aren’t they?

Isn’t it interesting how inevitable the fall of the Soviet Union is, now that it has been brought about? Toss in a little revisionist history, ignore what the Russians say, and hey presto! The Ministry of Truth triumphs again.

Also:

By “sorta”, do you mean “here is another inconvenient fact that liberals will ignore as soon as there is no one around to rub their noses in it”, or “sorta” as in “Reagan was the only President to achieve this, and every liberal in America was wrong in saying that he could never do it”?

Oh yes, Iran-Contra. Will it help to point out that two Congressional investigations, both at least as rabidly partisan as any that caused Clinton to perjure himself, and aided and abetted by a press that assumed without question that Reagan MUST have been guilty, both found that Reagan did not know about the activities of Poindexter and North?
That is to say, both found Reagan not guilty of any civil or criminal actions. How long will that particular fact stick?

To say the least, it is damning with faint praise to say that Reagan was a better President than Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush, or Clinton. Was he better than Kennedy? Obviously in his personal life. Not as pretty, clearly, but when Marines died in Lebanon, Reagan pulled out. Would that the same had been done in Viet Nam.

The rest of your points have been refuted too thoroughly elsewhere to be interesting.

I was awake during the 80s as well as the 90s. To say that the successes of America from 1981 - 1989 were not because of Reagan requires far too much dust blowing to be worthwhile.

Regards,
Shodan

22

FDR has two memorials. The first is the one that accurately follows his own wish, a small, simple marble monolith, placed in 1965 just outside of the National Archives and which quietly states, “In Memory of.” It is, I think, my favorite memorial in DC.

And the new name of that goddamned airport is just about the stupidest f*cking thing I’ve ever seen vomited forth from our nitwit Congress. Just to rub it in, the damned planes from that place are roaring straight over my apartment right now.

23

Oh, yeah.

“Reagan knew everything.” – Oliver North, after being pardoned by George Bush.

24

Oops. My apologies. North was never pardoned. He got his conviction overturned on an appeal.

25

I’ll limit myself to a couple points, in response to:

At what cost ? His great war on drugs - Iran-Contra hypocrisies aside - led to the complete erosion of civil rights as we knew them: hog-wild asset forfeiture; enforcement techniques and intelligence gathering borrowed from the military and exempted for civilian purposes; these started on his watch.

The genius, I suppose, was in taking the mistrust of the gubbiment engendered by Nixon [and by the sharp social divisions of the Vietnam era], and channelling them towards his created image of a parasitic government of subhuman bureaucrats, enemies of all good Americans. Code for: any government effort to mediate/arbitrate between competing interests should be shut down and replaced by market forces. Getting the “gov’t off our backs” didn’t publicly mean gut the FDA, or whatever - but that was the intended result. He created an even more cynical disconnect between his word and his deed - at least Nixon just clammed up, or hid behind the veil of secrecy. (Heck, Nixon set up a broader political spectrum of government responses to domestic issues than anyone.) Put another way, I find Roger Ailes more evil than, say Ehrlichman.

If you’re for all that, than he’s quite the artisan, and worthy of a monument; preferably airbrushed & polished, warts removed. Whatever good or bad - IMHO mostly bad - that came out of his administration had little if anything to do with him at all. Go watch the Wizard of Oz again, or that Star Trek episode… he was a complete figurehead, more than any president before - or since, a happy Jimmy Dean face to put on the front of the ugly sausage factory that the government has become, at a time when less and less people want to know the details.

26

I’ll just say one thing about inconvenient facts. The Raygun administration lowered the poverty line. Of course fewer people lived in poverty after that.

27

The unemployment rate went down after Reagan’s Labor Department stopped counting as unemployed those people who were so discouraged they didn’t even look anymore, as well as part-time workers who were looking for full-time work.

“Facts are stupid things.” - Saint Ronald

28

Sorry, bungie_us, wrong again!

http://www.cache.census.gov/hhes/poverty/threshld.html - have a quick peek at the figures for 1982 and 1989.

The poverty threshhold went up, not down.

Oops! More inconvenience!

And Elvislives -

The actual quote is “Facts are stupid things, when not fitted into some general framework.” Actually a quote from Sherlock Holmes.

Another possible source is “Facts are stubborn things.” Reagan said that, too.

Yours in opposition to revisionist history,
Shodan

29

"What’s so great about Ronald Reagan?"

Let’s see, Timmy – he gave all the rich Republicans (and their corporations) big ol’ tax cuts, and slashed all those mean ol’ nasty laws that required them to keep the air clean and the forests uncut. So since Ronnie Reagan made it so much easier for them to get richer and richer without worrying about anything other than money, they keep using him as an example of what a “great president” should be like.

"Does that work?"

Well, not only is “President” George Bush a rich Republican, but he’s already promising another a big ol’ tax cut for all his rich Republican friends (and their corporations). And just last week, he and all his buddies in Congress passed a law that would allow those corporations to ignore some mean ol’ nasty laws about worker safety and protection.

So yeah, it seems to be working so far… Just make sure you don’t have to breathe or get a job where you might actually hurt yourself, okay?

30

Gee, rjung, unless you’re using a Ouija-board interface to type your messages, you seem to be breathing just fine…

Maybe you’re exaggerating just a tad?