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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (239873)	12/14/2013 12:10:29 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 542125

1) Reagan stayed too long and should have left after his first term (or been voted out). Agreed but should never have been voted in. Many of our current very difficult problems can be traced to the Reagan years, principle among them is the framing of public policy issues "government is the problem, not the solution." Carter almost won reelection and most likely would have done so without the Iranian issues. 2) During the Reagan first term SS was fixed - including ways to pay for it - taxes! Well, Reagan didn't fix it. Rather a bipartisan commission did so. And he and congress accepted their recommendations. I forget just how reluctant he was to do so but he shouldn't receive credit for "fixing it", only accepting the panel's recommendations. 3) Inflation was at a runaway pace at the beginning of Reagan's term. As Sam pointed out, "runaway" is definitely the wrong adjective. The solution was already in place and working its will. That's Volcker's work, a Carter appointee. Reagan lucked out on this one. 4) Reagan was instrumental in bringing down inflation (and yes Volker was a big part of that) If you are referring to Volcker's work, that wasn't Reagan. As I say above, Reagan just happened to be lucky enough to benefit from Volcker's work. If you are referring to the air traffic controllers' union, then I dispute the notion that their salaries were somehow cause of inflation. Only, again as Sam pointed out, just a part of the spiraling effect of inflation. Moreover, that union bashing contributed, in no small way, to the increasing inequality of Reagan's years and later years. 5) that the debt was not the same in Reagans first term because he - LIKE OBAMA - was dealing with a broken economy. The fix was in stopping runaway inflation which resulted - Like Obama - in a hard recession. Recessions bring on debt. Everyone agrees with that for gawds sake. I don't think this recession was even close in severity to the one Obama faced. But one of the reasons the country eased past that recession, the early 80s one, was the absence of such a severe anti government faction in the Republican party as we now have. I'm hard pressed to think of a single thing the first four years of Reagan's presidency brought that another four years of a Carter presidency would have been much better. Perhaps a sunnier personality in the WH. But sunny personalities only add so much to policy solutions. Something close to zero. Incidentally, I'm not a Carter fan. I was very hopeful Teddy Kennedy would defeat Carter for the Dem nomination in 1980. But in the comparison of Reagan to Carter, there really is no comparison.