Was Ronald Reagan an Even Worse President Than George W. Bush?

[G_j]

http://www.alternet.org/politics/140438/was_ronald_reagan_an_even_worse_president_than_george_w._bush/

Was Ronald Reagan an Even Worse President Than George W. Bush?
By Robert Parry, Consortium News. Posted June 5, 2009.

The starting point for many of the catastrophes confronting the United States today can be traced to Reagan's presidency.

There's been talk that George W. Bush was so inept that he should trademark the phrase "Worst President Ever," though some historians would bestow that title on pre-Civil War President James Buchanan. Still, a case could be made for putting Ronald Reagan in the competition.

Granted, the very idea of rating Reagan as one of the worst presidents ever will infuriate his many right-wing acolytes and offend Washington insiders who have made a cottage industry out of buying some protection from Republicans by lauding the 40th President.

But there's a growing realization that the starting point for many of the catastrophes confronting the United States today can be traced to Reagan's presidency. There's also a grudging reassessment that the "failed" presidents of the 1970s – Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter – may deserve more credit for trying to grapple with the problems that now beset the country.

Nixon, Ford and Carter won scant praise for addressing the systemic challenges of America's oil dependence, environmental degradation, the arms race, and nuclear proliferation – all issues that Reagan essentially ignored and that now threaten America's future

<snip>

Cruelty with a Smile

With his superficially sunny disposition – and a ruthless political strategy of exploiting white-male resentments – Reagan convinced millions of Americans that the threats they faced were: African-American welfare queens, Central American leftists, a rapidly expanding Evil Empire based in Moscow, and the do-good federal government.
..more..

[ck4829]

1. Reagan/Poppy along with their own crimes, also made Dubya possible, so yes

[HopeHoops]

2. Reagan is a close second for "worst".

It is hard to imagine anything being worse than the shrub, but if it is out there, the GOP will find it.

[secondwind]

3. Reagan declared ketchup a vegetable!!!!!!!! To cut school lunch costs!!!

[dorkulon]

8. Bush put food on my family!!!!!!!!!

[winston61]

4. I agree with what Thom Hartmann said yesterday--

Reagan was easily the worst president of the 20th century and the honor for the 21st century has already been claimed by the shrub.

[jgraz]

28. Well, if the 21st century honors haven't been claimed by Shrub...

we are well and truly fucked.

[mascarax]

35. I'll go along with that

Reagan should not get off the hook because Dubya is 'worse'.
Reagan made Dubya possible.

And, yes, I'll never get over "ketchup as a vegetable" to decrease school lunch funding. Among other things.

[baldguy]

5. Who's responsible for a disaster of generations? The one who starts it? Or the one who finishes it?

[patriotvoice]

6. The people who allow it. EOM

[baldguy]

7. Us?

[patriotvoice]

12. Yes, though i will add that "we" are in addition to the list of "those" who start and promulgate...

the disaster. Reagan, like both Bushes, ignored important warning signs as mentioned in the article. Reagan, like G. W. Bush, had the additional distinction of promoting lifestyles that worsened those situations, specifically oil dependency and environmental degradation. Clinton was a magician -- he addressed some with his right hand (Safe Drinking Act, stricter smog and smoke standards) while worsened others with his left (NAFTA, marginal minimum wage increases).

But "We the People" did the work of consuming more oil and goods -- how easily we do it when gas comes so cheap.
We bought guzzling vehicles and drove for sport -- wind in our hair is more noticeable than gunk in our lungs.
We forgot the hysteria of the 1950s and didn't demand a stronger international presence in the control of nuclear arms.
We caught a case of affluenza, and bought more on credit and less on wages -- money for nothing and guilt for free.

The list goes on. If our parents are culpable for today, then we are culpable for tomorrow and will answer to our children. It is mistaken to say that our leaders are to blame; they share the blame, and ultimately the guilt, with us.

[HughBeaumont]

14. The one who finishes it.

King Dope Addict the Second had the choice to correct the Shite-anic's doomed path and instead led us straight into the iceberg.

Reagone willingly went along with the MIC/Corporate-America/Big Oil power polygamy as their "aw shucks" spokesman because he was a genuine believer of "survival of the fattest". Funny, as much as he hated anything remotely "RED MENACE", I sure didn't see him refusing his taxpayer-funded all-encompassing health care that he got.

[FSogol]

9. Too close to call. n/t

[dorkulon]

10. Reagan started it -- Bush perfected it.

Bush was Reagan on steroids.

[corpseratemedia]

11. he certainly had a very strong following among the white middle and working class

I think they were Nixon's bigoted "silent majority"

they chose seeing a commie everywhere and Willy Horton over reason, while their whole American way of life and economic stability was sold out from under their noses

[Octafish]

13. He stole office, too.

Casey and Poppy ran the October Surprise and got their front-man into the White House.

They were just doing their job, in service of the Reich.

[madokie]

20. I'll always believe that raygun

and company stole the election from President Carter

[Octafish]

21. Parry did a lot of the heavy lifting re: October Surprise

Archive: The October Surprise Mystery

Barbara Honegger, Capt. Gary Sick, USN (ret.), Abolhassan Bani Sadr, Abbie Hoffman and more all carried loads regarding the October Surprise and the resulting stolen election of 1980.

PS: Four, my Friend.

[G_j]

44. surprise, surprise!

& of course there was the previous torpedoing of the Vietnamese peace talks surprise, to give them confidence.

[Thothmes]

33. Right

Electorail Vote: 44 states vs 6 states plus DC. Popular vote: 44 million votes vs. 35 million votes. Sounds like they stole the election all right. They won because we sat around with our thumbs up our asses and our minds in neutral.

[Octafish]

38. They won because they own the media.

The media harped 24/7 about the hostage crisis. "Day 222..."

The moment Pruneface is sworn in, the jet leave Tehran. Meanwhile, the Israelis are sending Iran the Hawks and whatever sprares and parts needed for their F-4s.

Do you see that covered in The New York Times? Today, Corporate McPravda's talking heads yap about Carter's "failed presidency."

[Thothmes]

41. So, we Democrats were to stupid to realize

the political reality of the times. We gave them the election. Always excuses as to why we loose. Its always someone elses fault we loose, but it is never our fault. We never accept any responsibility for lost elections. All we do is blame someone else.

[lynne]

43. No theft involved. Carter received only 49 electoral votes.

Like it or not, we handed the White House to Reagan & Company.

[Vidar]

15. Close, but no.

[Cresent City Kid]

16. Bush was worse by a nose

Reagan was at least able to keep the middle class afloat while he devastated the poor and enriched the rich. He made the occasional mid-course correction to his tax policy which mitigted some of the damage, unlike Bush who never revisited a single decision. They had the same bad policies and philosophy, but Reagan at least held back a little.

Reagan was no angel of course, he set the middle class against the poor while the rich robbed them both. His only saving grace is that he spared us from the full brunt of trickle-down, Bush unleashed it full force.

[anaxarchos]

17. "growing realization..." Hah. n/t

[WI_DEM]

18. no.

[madokie]

19. There is no doubt in my mind he was

because of him w happened

[mitchum]

22. Yes

[EFerrari]

23. Yes, he was. He paved the way for the torture president. n/t

[cornermouse]

24. No.

Dubya owns that title (Worst President of all time) by himself.

[Aristus]

Reagan certainly set the standard that a creepy media-created cult of personality

could be an effective substitute for intelligence and know-how.

Sure worked for Dubyah. Nothing else could have gotten that loser close enough to Gore to steal the election...

[roamer65]

25. Reagan was definitely bad, but not the worst of the 20th century.

Harding, Coolidge and Hoover were really bad. Much worse I think.

Dimwit has them all beat. All of them.

[Wednesdays]

26. K&R

:kick:

[reflection]

27. Not even close. n/t

[Beam Me Up]

32. +1 n/t

[ColbertWatcher]

29. What people need to realize is that Dumbass was Reagan 2.0.

The next version of the GOP plan to dismantle the progress made by FDR.

So, it's really difficult to rate one above the other and a worthless exercise in distraction from the real problem: the GOP Party itself.

We need to stop falling for the GOP's framing. By focusing on who is the worst president, we lose track of the GOP's next release.

Forget the names, keep an eye on the criminal organization.

[Toucano]

36. As is so remarkably often the case...

I agree with you 100%

[ColbertWatcher]

47. Thank you.

I wish liberals would stop criticizing the individual GOPers and concentrate instead on Das Party.

[DearAbby]

30. I know I will get my ass kicked for this

But Terry Schiavo is beating Ronnie at scrabble, and taking the pot of jelly beans. Terry uses the same word over and over again, Ol' Ronnie hasn't caught on yet. When Ol Dubbya joins the game, its not going to be so easy.

[nichomachus]

31. It's almost an impossible comparison to make

unless you're very specific about what you're comparing. They were different times with different things going on in the country.

And, most important, Reagan set the table for Dubya. Reagan started the "government is the problem" "you don't need to pay any taxes" cult of personality mentality that led inexorably to Dubya. Without Reagan, we may never have had Dubya at all -- mostly because we wouldn't have had Poppy. Saddam Hussein would be just another tinpot dictator. There would have been no Gulf War I. So many things depended on Reagan paving the way -- and Dubya built on them.

So, it's very hard to answer -- kind of like "We're the 1928 Yankees better than the 1965 Cubs?" Ok -- bad example. Everybody is better than the Cubs.

[Chemisse]

34. You know how when tv commercials come on and suddenly the volume is blasting?

Reagan did that, graciously giving commercial makers the ability to follow you into the kitchen - or wherever you go - on commercial breaks.

Certainly there are worse things a president can do, like torture people and invade a country for no good reason. But every time I have to mute a blast of noise from the tv (why do you think they were invented at about that time?), I remember not-so-good ole Ronald Reagan.

[Raine]

37. If there had been no Raygun

there would've been no chimp. x(

[HCE SuiGeneris]

39. This country was forsaken in the 60's with 3 assassinations

orchestrated by the money grubbing smoky back room players.

[Blue_In_AK]

40. I think so.

He was the granddaddy, without whom the rest of these guys might not have come to power. I can't for the life of me figure out why people think he was a great president.

[Badgerman]

42. NO! the same people who pulled Reagans strings also pulled Papas and juniors. Cheney & Co n/t

[Kievan Rus]

45. Ronald was MUCH worse than Dubya

For one, Ronald Reagan's foriegn policy was atrocious. Lest we forget that he was very supportive of radical Islamic fighters in Afghanistan, ones who committed lots of atrocities in their own right...but they were the good guys simply because they were fighting the Russians. Some of those nutjobs went on to become members of the Taliban, and one of those anti-Soviet leaders was none other than Osama bin Laden. Reagan also liked Saddam Hussein for the same reason, except he was fighting those pesky Iranians. In the Third World, Ronnie supported lots of bad dictators, for example, Mobutu in Zaire...all anybody had to do in order to get Uncle Sam's support was to oppose Communism and those dreaded Russians, Cubans and East Germans that were peddling it.

Reagan's economics were a dog-eat-dog, selfish, materialistic system...completely epitomized by Oliver Stone in the 1987 movie "Wall Street" with "greed is good." He was unabashadely pro-corporate and destroyed worker's rights in America. Environmental regulation meant nothing to him so a few fat cats could afford to buy another LeerJet. Reagan escalated the stupid-ass "War on Drugs" which has turned into nothing more than Prohibition, Part II.

Ronnie was lucky that the Soviet Union was collapsing when he was in office, even though he had little to do with it IMHO. The Soviet empire had been crumbling for many years, and was drained by supporting Eastern European Communist governments, Soviet-backed movements in Africa and Latin America, and especially the war in Afghanistan. In many ways, the Soviet Union was a Potemkin village whose collapse was inevitable.

Reagan truly was the worst President in American history. Even Nixon wasn't as bad as him.

[G_j]

46. I was amazed at how many of the Iran/Contra players

found their way into the Bush admin.
... on steroids.

[Toasterlad]

48. Not Even Close

Clinton was able to repair much of the damage Reagan did to the country in two terms. The repercussions of what George Bush has done to the US will be felt for decades to come (not that Obama seems to be trying especially hard to fix them).

[area51]

49. Bush is worse.

Reagan "only" caused a recession; Bush, aka GW Hoover, caused the 2nd Great Depression.

[Douglas Carpenter]

50. I suppose I would have to agree that ultimately Reagan was worse, far worse

At least George W. Bush opened peoples eyes. Reagan blinded peoples eyes.

The entire direction society was heading up until Reagan, was clearly more progressive than anything we have seen since that dark, dark night in November of 1980 when evil triumphed.

Before Reagan it was still the American consensus that society had an obligation to the less fortunate. Even Republicans in those days had to accept that principle to some degree.

It was Reagan's cruelty with a smile that pulled out the heart of America and turned selfishness into a virtue.

[Douglas Carpenter]

51. Reagan's Shameful Legacy by Ted Rall

I remember when this article by Ted Rall came out immediately after Reagan's death - the right-wing went ballistic and some on the left felt the timing to be tasteless, but I think it so adequately addressed the issue of the real Ronald Reagan

Published on Wednesday, June 9, 2004 by TedRall.com

Reagan's Shameful Legacy:

Mourn for Us, Not the Proto-Bush
by Ted Rall

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0609-08.htm

http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/?uc_full_date=20040608

NEW YORK--For a few weeks, it became routine. I heard them dragging luggage down the hall. They paused in a little lounge near the dormitory elevator to bid farewell to people they'd met during their single semester. Those I knew knocked on my door. "What are you going to do?" I asked. "Where are you going to go?" A shrug. They were eighteen years old and their bright futures had evaporated. They had worked hard in junior and senior high school, harder than most, but none of that mattered now. President Reagan, explained the form letters from the Office of Financial Aid, had slashed the federal education budget.

Which is why the same grim tableau of shattered hopes and dreams was playing itself out across the country. Colleges and universities were evicting their best and brightest, straight A students, stripping them of scholarships. Some transferred to less-expensive community colleges; others dropped into the low-wage workforce. Now, nearly a quarter century later, they are still less financially secure and less educated than they should have been. Our nation is poorer for having denied them their potential.

They were by no means the hardest-hit victims of Reaganism. Reagan's quack economists trashed scholarships and turned welfare recipients into homeless people and refused to do anything about the AIDS epidemic, all so they could fund extravagant tax cuts for a tiny sliver of the ultra rich. Their supply-side sales pitch, that the rich would buy so much stuff from everybody else that the economy would boom and government coffers would fill up, never panned out. The Reagan boom lasted just three years and created only low-wage jobs. When the '80s were over, we were buried in the depths of recession and a trillion bucks in debt. Poverty grew, cities decayed, crime rose. It took over a decade to dig out.

Reagan's defenders, people who don't know the facts or choose to ignore them, claim that "everybody" admired Reagan's ebullient personality even if some disagreed with his politics. That, like the Gipper's tall tales about welfare queens and "homeless by choice" urban campers, is a lie. Millions of Americans cringed at Reagan's simplistic rhetoric, were terrified that his anti-Soviet "evil empire" posturing would provoke World War III, and thought that his appeal to selfishness and greed--a bastardized blend of Adam Smith and Ayn Rand--brought out the worst in us. We rolled our eyes when Reagan quipped "There you go again"; what the hell did that mean? Given that he made flying a living hell (by firing the air traffic controllers and regulating the airlines), I'm not the only one who refuses to call Washington National Airport by its new name. His clown-like dyed hair and rouged cheeks disgusted us. We hated him during the dark days he made so hideous, and, with all due respect, we hate him still.

Not everybody buys the myth that Reagan won the Cold War by demanding that Mikhail Gorbachev "tear down this wall" or bankrupting the Soviet Union via the arms race--Zbigniew Brezinski's plot to "draw the Russians into the Afghan trap" by funding the mujahedeen, Chernobyl and covert U.S. schemes to destabilize the ruble had more to do with the end of the USSR. Gangsterism replaced the ossified cult of the state, millions of Russians were reduced to paupers, revived radical Islamism in Central Asia and eliminated our sole major ideological and military rival. That increased our arrogance and insularity, left us in charge of the world and to blame for everything, paving the road to 9/11. (Reagan even armed the attacks' future perpetrators.) Anyway, the Cold War isn't over. In which direction do you think those old ICBMs point today?

The lionizers are correct about one thing: Reagan was one of our most influential presidents since FDR, whose New Deal safety net he carefully disassembled. He pioneered policies now being implemented by George W. Bush: trickle down economics, corporate deregulation, radicalizing the courts, slithering around inconvenient laws and international treaties. On the domestic front, he unraveled America's century-old social contract. What the poor needed was a kick in the ass, not a handout, said a president whose wealthy patrons bought him a house and put clothes on his wife Nancy. National parks were to be exploited for timber and oil, not protected. The federal tax code, originally conceived to redistribute wealth from top to bottom, was "reformed" to eradicate social justice.

Bush also models his approach to foreign policy on that of the original Teflon President. Reagan elevated unjustifiable military action to an art. In 1983, anxious to look tough after cutting and running from Lebanon, Reagan sent marines to topple the Marxist government of Grenada. His pretext for invading this Caribbean island was the urgent plight of 500 medical students supposedly besieged by rampaging mobs. But when they arrived at the airport in the United States, the quizzical young men and women told reporters they were confused, never having felt endangered or seen any unrest.

In a bizarre 1985 effort to free a few American hostages being held in Lebanon, Reagan authorized the sale of 107 tons of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to Iran, at the time one of our staunchest enemies, with the proceeds to be used to fund rightist death squads in Nicaragua--something Congress had expressly forbidden him to do. Evidence strongly suggests that Iran-Contra was at least his second dirty deal with Islamic Iran, the first being the October Surprise, which delayed the release of the Iranian embassy hostages until after the 1980 election was over. Ronald Reagan eventually admitted to "trading arms for hostages," yet avoided prosecution for treason and the death penalty.

Reagan, like Bush 43, technically served in the military yet studiously avoided combat. Both men were physically robust, intellectually inadequate, poorly traveled former governors renowned for stabbing friends on the back--Reagan when he named names during McCarthyism. Both appointed former generals as secretaries of state and enemies of the environment to head the Department of the Interior. Both refused to read detailed briefings, worked short hours, behaved erratically in public appearances, ducked questions about sordid pasts, and relied on Christianist (the radical right equivalent of Islamist) depictions of foes as "evil" and America, invariably as embodied by himself and the Republicans, as "good." Based on intelligence as phony as that floated to justify the war against Iraq, Reagan bombed Muslim Libya.

http://www.uexpress.com/tedrall/?uc_full_date=20040608

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0609-08.htm