The myth of Ronald Reagan

[Lionel Mandrake]

How did an amiable dimwit gain such an exalted reputation that his face is threatening to replace that of FDR on the dime?

Isn't it about time to debunk the myth of Ronald Reagan?

For a series of microscopic steps in the right direction, browse:

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/not-ready-for-mt-rushmore/

[aquart]

1. The Reagan legacy is beggars and infomercials.

[Lionel Mandrake]

4. Indeed.

Reaganomics made the rich richer and the poor poorer.

[Xipe Totec]

2. Some of us who survived Reagan think otherwise.

What an imbecile!

[SDuderstadt]

3. I could never ever understand some people's adulation of him...

I also suspect the onset of Alzheimer's began well before he left the WH.

[Lionel Mandrake]

5. Neither could I.

My contempt for the "Great Communicator" began with his attack on the University of California.

[timtom]

7. Thank you!

I was there then (as I suspect you were, too).

Tuition went from $85 per quarter to over $300 per quarter.

"Governor Reagan! We're losing tenured professors!"
"Ya need more money? Sell your rare books collection."

Schmuck!

[Lionel Mandrake]

19. I didn't go to UCB,

but I was around at that time. IMO Reagan was trying to destroy the University of California, and he managed to weaken it.

[Stellabella]

16. Oh, definitely. A psychiatrist friend said she could see it in 1983.

Circular logic is one of the early signs, and he had it in spades.

And besides, he was just a mean old man. Nothing to worship there at ALL.

[madrchsod]

20. my dad knew reagan when he was in high school

my dad knew that after ron was shot he was`t able to run the country. that is when bush and the boys took over the daily operations of the government

[zbdent]

6. one of the best debunkings of the Reagan myth

was Stockman's "The Triumph of Politics"

[FailureToCommunicate]

10. Not David Stockman. He was Reagan's hatchet man. Job killer.

[zbdent]

12. but in the book, he points out (and remember, this was in the 80s!!! when it was published)

that, had Reagan left Carter's budget alone, the deficit would have gone down ... all the stuff Reagan did totally f*cked things up ...

and that was after Stockman took it upon himself to prove to the world that Reagan's stuff made the world much better ... he tried his damnedest to prove that Reagan's was better, and no matter what Stockman did with the numbers, it came up looking much better under Carter.

Reagan was glazing over any time anybody went into details ...

[FailureToCommunicate]

13. So Stockman was just taking a stab at saving his scrawny behind from

the verdict of history?

[Auggie]

8. Al Franken once said reagan should be on all the money...

He would become known to kids as "the money guy... (paraphrasing) it's only appropriate for the huge deficits he ran up in office."

[CaliforniaPeggy]

9. Amiable dimwit is right...

Anyone who becomes a Republican after having been a Democrat fits in that category.

He's at the top of that list.

[Lionel Mandrake]

15. RR also went from running a union (SAG) to busting one (PATCO).

[FailureToCommunicate]

11. AND he restarted the Cold War that was cooling before he took office.

[Lionel Mandrake]

17. Yet his anticommunist ardor cooled eventually.

Matthew Dallek's article is nuanced on this topic.

[Hieronymus]

14. Reagan was a sock puppet for a bunch of right wingers, including

Walter Annenberg, Holmes Tuttle, Alfred Bloomingdale, William French Smith ... wealthy men from California.

[Lionel Mandrake]

18. They helped RR get his start in politics.

California has a tradition of transforming actors with no political experience into governors.