Show us the calf! <<Poet
I never did like veal much... what a lousy thing to do to get a meal.
There is so much that can be said about RR that a full assessment would take weeks. In a forum like this, it'd be replete with lotsa potshots on both sides, since he's a polarizer.... not too many are lukewarm on RR, he's either the Second Coming or the Anti-Cripes, depending on ones' political bent.
He had charm a'plenty, an unerring sense of timing, knew how to delegate authority well, and was a natural at leadership.
As a Governor, his era was one that sided with agribiz against farmworkers and challenged generally peaceful UC Santa Barbara student antiwar protesters with statements such as "If it's a bloodbath they want, I'll give them a bloodbath." or "If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with!" (Depending on the internet source, it was one of these.... I recall the statement, but from 32 years ago, it's hard to recall which line is correct... I think it was the former).
There was also a 'to-do' over his not owing taxes on his income at the time. More than likely, it was legit, but in light of his anti-farmworker stance (and they were the poorest of the working poor), it was certainly controversial.
His sense of timing showed up in the primaries when he nailed Bush with his "I paid for this microphone" tirade. Good theater.
But the bottomline, to me, had to do with these:
--the manipulation with the Iran hostages. We'll probably never know the truth about what went on there, but it was too convenient and beneficial to his election, and in light of subsequent dealings with Iran that are known, there's at least good cause for suspicion.
--the Iran-Contra situation, where his folks broke the law to aid the Contras. Supporters maintain Congress had no right to make the law and that it was unconstitutional. I say the forum to establish that was the courts, not shady deals involving illegal drugs and Ayatollahs.
--the growing numbers of homeless. An outgrowth of several factors caused this. Mental patients were deinstitutionalized from hospitals that made Cuckoo's Nest look like Disneyland. The necessary intermediate care facilities (ICFs) that were known to be needed, never materialized. A significant number of ex-military guys dealing with PTSD also made up a significant chunk.
-- A failure to deal with a burgeoning epidemic of AIDS. His views were aligned with many on the Right at the time, that it was a 'gay' problem, with abstention as the solution.
-- Despite his image as a tax-cutter & spendthrift, the increase in FICA taxes was the single largest increase in taxes ever, at the time. This point must be weighed against other tax cuts he did make, however; my principal complaint here was simply the image vs. the reality.
-- As I noted, the principal area where I am a social liberal is the belief that some level of assistance to the poor is a good thing. In his rhetoric and in his policy decisions, he demonstrated a callousness towards the poor that was even exemplified in anecdotes he'd tell that were made up of whole cloth. There was truly a meanness of spirit in some of his welfare queen statements. That, when coupled with his unflinching support of tax breaks largely favoring the best off, and with his eye-popping spending, bothered me as much as the games played with lives... both with the Iran dealings, with the Contra support, with the Grenada invasion, to all the military lives lost in Lebanon and elsewhere, which he responded weakly to, because his focus was entirely on the USSR.
--As regards that spending, before any bring up the fact that Congress holds the purse-strings, Reagan's early budget proposals envisioned spending more than his predecessors - from Carter through George Washington - COMBINED! In fact, in four years, if he'd been given that blank check, he would have spent DOUBLE that cumulative amount.
-- His legions of fans attribute the fall of the Wall to Reagan, too. From what I can discern, the economic decay from within the USSR played a big role, and Gorby was an essential player in that, as well. RR did speed up the collapse by escalating the arms race to a fever pitch, but the multi-trillion dollar deficit remains for us and future generations to pay.
On the plus side, the rising markets period began on his watch, but back then, it was a relatively small percentage of Americans that traded on the markets. And future historians are likely to grant the major credit for that on the dawning Tech Revolution.
Simply put, Reagan had pluses and minuses. I saw more minuses.
I'll leave it at that, as I'm not trying to convince anyone that I'm right; I'm merely responding to your question. There's more that I haven't detailed here, in pursuit of brevity. |
