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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (58175)	10/9/1999 11:33:00 AM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

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..."

To: jlallen who wrote (58175)	10/9/1999 7:13:00 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

RR was our greatest President in the modern era and the history books will so reflect. I don't see any ground for that assessment. It is easy enough to blame Reagan's failure to implement his domestic program on Congress, but all Presidents have to deal with Congress, and great ones find ways to get their programs through the mill. The general idea of reducing the size and scope of Government was an idea whose time had come, but it was a reaction to excesses of the recent past; Reagan may have been chosen to represent the pendulum on its swing back, but he didn't start the idea. Some of his domestic notions, such as those on the environment, will be remembered as naive to the point of comedy, and some of his appointments - Mr. Watt, for example - will be remembered as among the more preposterous individuals to have held positions of power. The notion that Reagan brought down the Soviet Empire will not, I believe, stand up to historical scrutiny. It's a nice bit of wishful thinking - it happened, therefore we caused it - but I haven't seen any evidence to support the assumption of causation, and I expect that as more history emerges from within Russia, the premise will look weaker and weaker. Relations with the developing world were horrible, not that it matters to you, but it may matter to historians of the future. And so on. On what do you base the presumption of greatness?