Those who write the history books to which you refer, historians, are already beginning the assessment!:
From William E. Pemberton's Exit With Honor, 1997
"Reagan's puzzling legacy will be hotly debated by historians and other analysts. In a recent survey, historians ranked Reagan as a below-average president...."
"Most journalists and political contemporaries... believed that Reagan was a major president in terms of his impact on history. Historians, however did not seem to agree. A major study of historians found that an overwhelming majority of them blamed Reagan for the economic problems of the 80's and gave him little credit for gains... A sizeable majority, 62%, ranked Reagan in the 'below average' category, between Zachary Taylor and John Tyler."
(There is no question that there will be a consensus among historians that Ronald Reagan was a skilled communicator, though.)
Your assessment differs from that of some other conservatives, according to Pemberton:
"... as budget deficits grew... the Reagan era seemed less revolutionary than it did initially. Conservatives did not achieve most of their major goals, not even a reduction in the size of government. The number of government employees grew at a faster rate than under Jimmy Carter, and spending as a percentage of gross domestic product averaged 23 percent in Reagan's first term and 21.8 percent in his second term, compared with 21.1 percent under Bill Clinton...
The Reagan years disappointed some conservatives... who were horrified by mounting deficits..." |
