Originally Posted By ecdc I know how I'll be celebrating: By cleaning my gun with my flag-covered Bible and praying to Reagan-Jesus to deliver me from homosexuals, Muslims, Mexicans, and Kenyans *cough*Obama!*cough!* Oh, and as a good patriot, it's my job to think of all the different things we should be naming after Ronald Reagan and places he ought to be. 1) Replace Teddy Roosevelt on Rushmore 2 Replace FDR on the dime 3) Rename Main Street, "Reagan Street" 4) Call it "Reagan, DC" 5) Ban sex on Reagan's birthday 6) Amend Pledge of Allegiance to include, "One nation, under God and Reagan..." 7) Replace Black History Month with Reagan History Month 8) Superbowl Sunday now "Gipper Celebration Day" 9) No longer eat turkey on Thanksgiving; we'll all dine on Bald Eagle 10) Mandatory 24-hour "Bedtime for Bonzo" marathon on the 4th of July
Originally Posted By RoadTrip OK. So the guy created a massive debt and sleep-walked through his second term. But he brought the country together and made Americans feel positive again. We could use a lot of that right now. I really think you are being a little unnecessarily harsh.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>I really think you are being a little unnecessarily harsh.<< Woosh! That sound is the joke flying clear over your head. I have issues with Reagan, but that's not the point of my post. It's to mock the hyperpatriotism of ultra-conservatives who use Reagan as a rallying point without knowing much about him or having a bit of selective amnesia. Reagan wanted to ban all nuclear weapons Reagan raised taxes Reagan wasn't all that religious He was a great speaker and an inspiring man whose policies, particularly on taxes and business, did severe damage to our economy that we're now only truly feeling and understanding.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox <<But he brought the country together and made Americans feel positive again. We could use a lot of that right now.>> Which is another way of stating, "Reagan conned most of the nation into focusing on their feel-good sentiments about patriotism while voting against their own self-interests as middle class citizens." We don't need anymore of that "feel good about America!" crap, RT. This country needs a massive wake-up call and hard slap of reality across the face. I was one of those citizens who voted for Reagan. Twice. Then I went back to college and got my wake-up call regarding what was happening to the middle class and our deficit. Reaganomics was the beginning of the end for the middle class, and the current crop of corporatist Republicans continue to deepen the wounds with tax cuts for the wealthy, tax protection for companies who offshore jobs, and now the slow dismantling of social programs for the most vulnerable. Americans are in a very deep quagmire. But rallying around the flag and "feeling positive" about our future is nothing but a misdirection perpetrated by the corporatist fueled tea party shucksters, who have a death grip on the GOP. Reagan was nothing more than a charlatan: "Pay no attention to the old white guy behind the curtain, while he continues to weaken your ability to earn a decent living and maintain safety nets for the future."
Originally Posted By mawnck >>he brought the country together << Yet another part of the myth that just ain't true. >>Reagan was nothing more than a charlatan:<< I remember reading a profile of the guy that described him as a man who would give you the shirt off his back, while simultaneously signing legislation that would result in hundreds of thousands of Americans losing theirs.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip Where Reagan succeeded is that he was able to pursue his agenda without creating the deeply divided country that we have now. I'm not saying his agenda was the right one, but at least he did not demonize the other side as present day conservatives do.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>I remember reading a profile of the guy that described him as a man who would give you the shirt off his back, while simultaneously signing legislation that would result in hundreds of thousands of Americans losing theirs.<< What a great line - is the profile still available?
Originally Posted By mawnck >>What a great line - is the profile still available?<< Although I'm still pretty sure I originally read it while Reagan was still in office, here's Sam Donaldson saying it, during coverage of (I assume) Reagan's funeral: >>“I used to say I thought if you were down on your luck and you got through the Secret Service, got in the Oval Office and said, ‘Mr. President, I’m down on my luck,’ he would literally give you the shirt off his back. And then he’d sit down in his undershirt and he’d sign legislation throwing your kids off school lunch program, maybe your parents off Social Security, and of course the Welfare Queen off of welfare.” – ABC’s Sam Donaldson, who covered the White House during the 1980s, on Good Morning America, June 11, 2004.<< <a href="http://www.mrc.org/specialreports/2011/RewritingReagan/Man.aspx" target="_blank">http://www.mrc.org/specialrepo...Man.aspx</a> (With video!) Interestingly, my google search turned up several sites with the quote ... all of them conservative sites trying to demonstrate how much the liberal media sucks. Thanks, conservatives, for the links!
Originally Posted By davewasbaloo I remember he was the cause of my first protest march, and he was the main embarrassment when I moved to the UK. Add in the fact the guy had to read on cue cards that Disneyland was busy on opening day, when nearly twice as many people were there than had been invited (forged tickets - proof that borish behaviour at DL is nothing new).
Originally Posted By vbdad55 . It's to mock the hyperpatriotism of ultra-conservatives who use Reagan as a rallying point without knowing much about him or having a bit of selective amnesia. ----- most of the FAR right rhetoric I have seen ( and I don't see/read that much I acknowledge because itmakes me want to puke)- is critical of Reagan and would not support him if he was running today. The Reagan bashing I see mainly comes from those trying to take a shot at the far right nut jobs.. Reagan in totality was about as far right of center as Bill CLinton was left of center-- namely not all that far
Originally Posted By ecdc >>most of the FAR right rhetoric I have seen ( and I don't see/read that much I acknowledge because itmakes me want to puke)- is critical of Reagan and would not support him if he was running today.<< We are clearly not reading the same stuff The disconnect is these people champion Reagan while trashing policies he supported or most likely would have supported that are today proposed under Democrats. For example, Sarah Palin, Teabagger Extraordinaire, spoke at the Reagan library last night trashing Obama and insisting that Reagan would be appalled at our nation today. But some of the things Reagan supported or did, Palin attacks Obama for doing. >>Reagan in totality was about as far right of center as Bill CLinton was left of center-- namely not all that far<< On social issues, I largely agree. Reagan was a master at using the right-wing - especially conservative Christians - without really being one of them. But on the economy and business, he undid years of regulation and tax rates that have crippled our economy today and have contributed to our deficit more than any other President since. Reagan is directly responsible for the kicking and screaming of people who say raising the tax rate on millionaires 2% is socialism. Then those same people complain about the deficit.
Originally Posted By mawnck From a leading moderate newspaper ;-) >>Reagan's average approval rating during the eight years that he was in office was nothing spectacular - 52.8 percent, according to Gallup. That places the 40th president not just behind Kennedy, Clinton and Dwight Eisenhower, but also Lyndon Johnson and George H.W. Bush, neither of whom are talked up as candidates for Mount Rushmore. << >>In 1982, as the national unemployment rate spiked above 10 percent, Reagan's approval rating fell to 35 percent. At the height of the Iran-Contra scandal, nearly one-third of Americans wanted him to resign. In the early 1990s, shortly after Reagan left office, several polls found even the much-maligned Jimmy Carter to be more popular. Only since Reagan's 1994 disclosure that he had Alzheimer's disease - along with lobbying efforts by conservatives, such as Grover Norquist's Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, which pushed to rename Washington's National Airport for the president - has his popularity steadily climbed. << Much more debunking at the link: <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2011/02/04/ST2011020403674.html" target="_blank">http://www.washingtonpost.com/...674.html</a>
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <But he brought the country together and made Americans feel positive again.> He didn't make me feel positive. I remember well at the time - he made me feel distinctly uneasy. This was compounded by the all the magazines and pundits proclaiming he "made us feel good again." I felt like "What do you mean 'us,' kemo sabe?" to quote the old joke. And the fact that there seemed to be this sort of effort to force a consensus that "he made us feel good again" just made me feel more uneasy. I could see the gap between rich and poor growing (which it did under Reagan - the numbers don't lie). That made me uneasy. I can see the beginnings of the unraveling of the New Deal. That made me uneasy. I could see deficits like we'd never seen before. That made me uneasy. I could see the beginnings of the offshoring and "greed is good"'ism that accelerated in the last decade, but had their start then. (The original "Wall Street," remember, came out in 1986). That made me uneasy. I could see deregulation that led to the S&L crisis (that came to fruition under Bush I, but Reagan planted the seeds), and the theoretical groundwork that eventually led to the recent crash and the worst economy since the Depression. That made me uneasy. But I guess I was supposed to feel good again because Reagan was "optimistic" and had a camera-ready smile. It's fine to be optimistic. But not when your policies are hurting people and the economy in general. There is a concerted effort among conservatives, which has been going on for some time now, to lionize Reagan and assume his policies and basic assumptions are accepted by all somehow. It's an attempt to control the present by controlling the past. Hence the drive to name everything for him (because anyone who has things named for him must have been great, right?) or in some cases literally set them in stone, on Mt. Rushmore or even on his own mountain (yes, there are people looking to do that.) I'm not buying it. I think a lot of moderates and even liberals are looking back less critically than they might due to a). the passage of time, b). the sympathy factor due to his eventual suffering with Alzheimer's, and c). the fact that Bush II made him look moderate by comparison. To my mind, the bottom line is that he just wasn't a very good president, and he skated on a lot. He didn't get the moniker "Teflon President" for nothing. He skated mostly because he was apparently a nice guy, and personally likable. And as mundane as that sounds, it actually counts for a lot in politics. It probably saved his butt during Iran-Contra. If you look at the big political scandals of the 70's/80's/90's (Watergate, Iran-Contra, Monica), Iran-Contra was the MOST serious constitutionally. It was the executive branch contradicting a specific directive and law from Congress that we would not aid the Contras. Congress, remember, is the branch that makes laws, and the executive is supposed to execute them. Yes, they set policy too, but they are NOT to directly break one of Congress's expressly written laws. If the executive could just break any law it didn't like, you wouldn't have a president, you'd have an emperor. And yet, that's what they did. And gave advanced weapons to the Ayatollah while they were at it! But Reagan skated on that. Even though it was really more serious than Watergate (let alone Monica). Why? Partly, I think it's because the Democrats of the 80's just didn't have the stomach to force another resignation or go for impeachment, just a dozen years after Nixon. The US would have started looking ridiculous. And tying in to that is the fact that most Democrats liked Reagan personally. Democrats of the 70's HATED Nixon. That's not too strong a word. Ditto for the Republicans of the 90's and Clinton. They went after each with anything but reluctance. But the 80's Democrats liked Reagan personally, and that saved him. (Well, that, and a certain credibility when he essentially claimed he didn't know what was going on in his own white house.) In short, Reagan was a disaster for the middle class (especially his policies in the long run, long after he left), probably should have been impeached... and the thing he gets the greatest credit for, he shouldn't even get credit for. Consider that he did nothing with the Soviets his whole first term. Didn't even so much as go to Russia, as his predecessors did. When they cracked down on Solidarity, he did what his predecessors had done after similar crackdowns in Eastern Europe - essentially nothing. Gorbachev was the difference-maker in the 80's, not Reagan. If Brezhnev had lived (or had been replaced with a Brezhnev-clone carrying on the same policies), the Soviet Union could have easily limped on into the 90's at least (as Cuba and North Korea have done) before perhaps finally collapsing of its own weight. Yes, the arms race cost them, but it did not bankrupt them. Dictatorships somehow find a way to build up their militaries even if their people suffer if they want to (see, again, North Korea). And then, I guess, Clinton would have been the one who "won the cold war." But saying this would have been the same mistake too many Americans make about Reagan - not everything is about us. Sometimes things happen quite apart from us. Its was Gorbachev who unilaterally instituted the policies that led to the Soviet collapse. If he hadn't done that - if we'd gotten a Brezhnev clone instead - the Soviet Union could have easily limped along for another 10 years or more. The one thing Reagan deserves some credit for is recognizing the opportunity Gorbachev represented (somewhat belatedly, after initially distrusting it), and eventually working with him. But no more than that. The "tear down this wall" quip was an easy thing to say by the time he said it - and for that, he's essentially given far more credit than he should be. Yes, he WAS more moderate on social issues than the image - but at the same time he brought the religious right into our public sphere, with all THAT attendant damage. And even though he basically just used them, they still revere him, because he SAID the "right" things. And said them well. One thing you have to give him props for is his ability before a camera. And charisma. And knowing charm can work wonders in politics. I still love Barbara Tuchman's (the eminent historian) take on Reagan when she said, referring to him, that "one of the most dangerous inventions of the 20th century is the teleprompter, because it allows a minor individual to appear to be a statesman." We're going to be seeing a lot of Reagan lionizing in the next few weeks. Don't believe the hype, folks.
Originally Posted By disneydad109 He's dead and God rest his soul. It's the ones still breathing that scare me.He beyond doing anyone good or ill.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip In my initial post I mentioned the massive debt Reagan created. But HE WAS one of our most popular presidents. He won re-election in 1984 with the highest electoral vote total of any president in U.S. history. As for business deregulation, probably the bill with the most impact and direct relationship to the investment banking collapse was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which was passed during Clinton's presidency. I’m not about to put Reagan on Mount Rushmore, but I’m not about to call him one of our worst presidents either.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Reagan's popularity, as mawnck pointed out, was pretty low in 82, again in 86, and on average was only fair to middling. It peaked in 84, in time for his re-election. It didn't really go up till he was diagnosed with Alzheimers. But at times, yes, he was popular. So was Alvin the Squeekual. It just wasn't a very good movie, and Reagan wasn't a very good president.
Originally Posted By planodisney You have to understand that most of you on here are far left of an average American. No disrespect whatsoever, but most Americans dont HATE anyone with an R beside their name like the majority on here. So, when people say " he made usa feel good again", obviously they arent referring to people on the far left who cant stand any Republican.
