He surrounded himself with talent – in much the same way that a hole surrounds itself with doughnut.
Nope. Ed Begley, Jr.
Carter was pretty useless, but The Shrub was just plain evil and incompetent. His Dad was a decent prez.
Some aspects of Reagan’s’ legacy are pretty nasty, tho.
I find it fascinating that in the parallel threads, the top choice for best and for worst is around two thirds of those voting. Equally, each hovers near the bottom of the other poll, with zero votes for Buch as best and only 2 of 180+ for Clinton as worst, (one of which was explicitly an error, so really only one).
I love how GWB’s detractors will call him a bumbling fool and an evil mastermind all in the same breath! Such are the wonders of Derangement Syndrome.
Huh? Are you saying Reagan’s support for apartheid SA was fine?
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Pushing the Soviet Union towards a total collapse rather than gradual economic and political liberalization. Things in the Soviet Union and its satellites needed to change, but the collapse of the Soviet Union (as it happened) was an enormous humanitarian disaster in terms of economics, health care, education, nutrition, inequality, life expectancy, you name it.
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Undermining the FSLN government in Nicaragua, largely through proxies that engaged in terrorism and sabotage.
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Supporting death-squad regimes in Guatemala and El Salvador.
That’s enough for a start, I think. But I think we can credit rising economic inequality here at home in part to Reagan, as well.
Where does it say mastermind in that quote? Do you think stupid people can’t be evil?
I think this gives Reagan WAY too much credit. There is no evidence that the USSR attempted to match the US in its runaway defense spending under Reagan and it’s much more likely that it would have collapsed in roughly the same time frame no matter who was president.
I agree. His leadership strengths increased the damage he did. He was terribly effective at pursuing his agenda (or whatever agenda Cheney talked him into.)
Nice summary.
LOL. Good point!
Problems he didn’t create. Furthermore, he did the best possible thing regarding the economy (though admittedly, late in his administration), which was to appoint Volcker as Chairman of the Fed, knowing that it would cause short-term economic hardship for a long term gain. He says they knew it worked against his re-election but they thought they could overcome it. I give him extra credit for doing what was right rather than what would improve his chances in the next election.
However, I do think that Carter showed us that it’s nearly impossible to be a decent thoughtful person and an effective President. He pursued the course of moderation and reason with Iran, which IMHO was a mistake. I shudder to think of the alternative, though.
This is a warning for you. You know not to use phrases like these to other posters by now.
As you say.
Liberals have always lost their bearings when it comes to South Africa. All of a sudden, all the normal ways liberals handle bad regimes goes out the window and they start going all neocon.
So let’s be clear here: as a general rule, if the US fails to sanction a regime, is the US responsible for extending its life? Are sanctions generally a good tool to change the behavior of regimes the world doesn’t approve of? And if so, why the opposition to sanctions against some of the world’s bad actors, like Cuba?
Carter’s decency has always been overrated. He had a nasty streak which came out in the 1980 campaign and he could be remarkably callous towards our allies while trying to improve relations with our enemies. Daniel Patrick Moynihan said about Carter:
“Unable to distinguish between our friends and our enemies, he has essentially adopted our enemies’ view of the world.”
Of course, he first increased the number of people in poverty by 3.5 million, before eventually getting that number back down to just 300,000 under where it had been in March 1981.
Compared to an alternate universe where the number of people in poverty remained constant, Reagan was responsible for an additional 9.7 person-years of people in poverty.
OTOH, Clinton reduced the number of people in poverty by 6.4 million, and against our hypothetical of a constant number of people in poverty, Clinton was responsible for 35.5 million fewer person-years of people in poverty.
So did Clinton and Obama.
That was Clinton.
He’s hardly the only President to negotiate an arms reduction treaty with Russia.
How, exactly?
Only after taking teh unemployment rate up to 10.8%. Again, measured in person-months of unemployment over his Administration, compared with a constant unemployment rate, this is basically a break-even.
They were on their way out of Iran while Carter was still President. But that’s never stopped conservatives from taking credit.
Through union-busting and tax policy, Reagan laid the foundation for the tremendous inequality of wealth we have today. He was all for defense buildups beyond what we could possibly use, but tried to redefine ketchup as a vegetable to save money on school lunches for poor kids. (What a guy!) He sold arms to Iran. His idea of how to fight the Cold War was to prop up thugs like Roberto D’Aubisson and Jonas Savimbi. Every last one of Obama’s supposed excesses of exercising power pales by comparison with Reagan’s violation of the Boland Amendment that was supposed to keep us out of Nicaragua. And how about our hundreds of dead troops in Lebanon, and our cut-and-run after that?
Reagan’s record isn’t perfect, but he did something not seen since FDR: he fundamentally changed the debate. We’ve had two Democratic Presidents win two terms each since Reagan, and both have had to govern as centrists to eke out victories, or at least promise to be centrists. Thanks to Reagan, we live in a center-right country and there is no prospect of that changing on the horizon. FDR’s vision of America was dominant for 48 years. So I figure the Reagan Revolution still has another 14.
We don’t live in a center-right country – that’s a meaningless punditry phrase. By definition, the “average” political position of Americans is the center. On social issues, the center has moved way to the left since Reagan’s time – and economic issues have stayed about the same in the long run.
Reagan did change the debate, and he changed a lot of things – but not in a good way (in my opinion), for the most part. He’s responsible for the “tax cuts” policy focus… the idea that pretty much everything can be solved by tax cuts, and taxes should always be cut. Somehow, according to this philosophy, tax cuts always increase revenue, and there are never any consequences.
To the extent that this is accurate, that’s the problem. We need to be a center-left country, and Reagan fucked that up.
It’s not accurate; it’s just silly pundit speak.