Hey Snow, didn't I see you in Cheesehead land not long ago?
I've heard this "Reagan ran up the deficit" stuff for years and find it highly misleading. We all know that Carter's deficits were much worse than Ford's, so the pattern of spiraling deficits was already in place before Reagan. The Carter dollar at the begining of his presidency was worth much more than at its end. The inflation of the Carter years spiked interest rates, and ran up the cost of government through inflation. Carter's own budget office projected some of the very deficits we blame Reagan for. Had Carter been reelected, we still would have had those Reagan deficits. Reagan began the process of bringing interest rates down, spurring the economy and making it cheaper for government to borrow to finance debt outstanding. This combination, after years unabated, allowed our present president to make the first claim of a budget surplus since Nixon.
Reagan did outspend the Russians on war preparation which many consider a catalyst for the collapse of the Iron Curtain. Just prior to Reagan's first term, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. A million people would die there and a third of the country's people would become refugees in other lands before the Russians would leave a decade later. A Chicago Tribune edition at the time ran with a headine story "Has W.W. III Already Begun?" Yet, we fought no major war under Reagan.
Still, I didn't support Reagan, nor was he my hero until he uttered the famous words, "The Soviet Union has just been abolished--the bombing begins in five minutes."
As for Reagan falling asleep in staff meetings, I once fell asleep in a literature class despite the professor opening by relating how appalled he was by a freshman who had the gall to fall asleep during his morning lecture. |
