Gallup poll: Reagan greatest president ever

[Jaskalas]

You don't know what starve the beast is. It's piling on the debt so that the government becomes unable to pay for programs the political proces wouldn't cur otherwise.

So that's what the current President is doing.

 

[bamacre]

Reagan spoke of the US as a special place, the shining city on the hill, a beacon of freedom and an example to the world despite our warts. Reagan spoke of the US as a nation whose best days were ahead of us.

Unfortunately it's just not true, at least today. We've been living beyond our means, ironically, starting about when Reagan took control of things. It's only natural we have to live beneath our means tomorrow. As for setting a good example for the rest of the world, well, that is in the past as well.

 

[CitizenKain]

People like you are part of the problem, it's a self fulfilling prophesy. You don't feel this is (or should be) a special place.... and when enough people feel the same way, it will be true, it will cease to be a special place.

We are a country that sponsored terrorism for political gain. We have sponsored the destabilization of legitimate governments for corporations. How exactly are we special now? Wouldn't we be special if we didn't do that?

 

[Drako]

No love for Polk?

He took us from sea to shining sea!

 

[CallMeJoe]

I see no small irony in our "Conservatives" constantly railing about worship of "the Obamessiah" even as they themselves lie prostrate before the Altar of the Great Prevaricator.

 

[Muse]

I have hated Ronald Reagan ever since he appealed to the baser instincts of the California electorate in trying to ensure they had negative attitudes toward student protesters at U.C. Berkeley. This was when he was governor of California. That he was elected president (twice) boggled my mind. The OP is IMO a jerk. Show some respect (I know, that's unlikely to happen. A jerk is a jerk).

 

[Muse]

Clinton single-handedly turned Red China into the world dominating force it is today.

Uh, over a billion Chinese had nothing to do with it? 🙄

 

[werepossum]

Uh, over a billion Chinese had nothing to do with it? 🙄

Point taken.

Clinton single-handedly paved the way for Red China to become the world dominating force it is today. To give credit where credit is due, removing all restrictions from, say, Pakistan or North Korea would have not had similar effects. The hard work ethic and native intelligence of the Chinese, and smart actions by the Communist government in adopting capitalism, and the sheer massive size of China all played major parts.

Of course, you may not have noticed the line in my post that read "Clinton's actions and China's embrace of capitalism - and the Chinese' great work ethic and native intelligence - are the "secrets" of its explosive growth." S'kay, reading's hard. 😉

 

[Phokus]

People like you are part of the problem, it's a self fulfilling prophesy. You don't feel this is (or should be) a special place.... and when enough people feel the same way, it will be true, it will cease to be a special place.

Oh, we feel America SHOULD be a special place, but only a flipping moron would think it currently is (or has been for decades).

Just because we have the highest GDP and the most bloated military in the world, that does not make us 'special', yet conservatives keep pointing those 2 things out when trash talking other countries, as if those two measures are the most important thing (or the only thing) to measure a country by.

 

[JockoJohnson]

We are a country that sponsored terrorism for political gain. We have sponsored the destabilization of legitimate governments for corporations. How exactly are we special now? Wouldn't we be special if we didn't do that?

Bah, the ends justify the means. Isn't that what a lot of people believe on either side?

 

[Craig234]

Isn't it doing that through lowering taxes though?
The amount of revenue coming into the government increased almost every year. So how is it starving exactly?

If starving the beast is just running up high deficits I guess Obama is starving the beast.

No. People on the right need to get a clue there's a difference in the reason.

Raising the debt for the reason of bankrupting the country to force money out of the public is not the same as debt for dealing with the worst recession since the great depression.

Obama's debt is short term and he's planning a return to shrinking the deficit, like Clinton.

It's like you are saying FDR's debt is the same as Reagan's without mention of WWII or the great depression.

 

[BigDH01]

Yeah, we all remember what a paradise the USSR was prior to the 70s. What Reagan did was not to damage the Soviet economy; what Reagan did was to put the USSR on notice that the USA would not restrict arms to a level that allowed the USSR's creaky economy to remain ahead. That did not damage the Soviet economy, it merely forced the Soviets to admit that they could not match Western productivity and technology. Without Carter-style appeasement, the Soviets had no hope of retaining parity with, much less superiority over, the West.

Remain ahead? The best the Soviets ever did was about 50% of US GDP with a per capita GDP that royally sucked. By the time Reagan took office, the Soviets were already far behind and stagnating. Reagan didn't force the Soviets to do anything, the damage had already been done. There were already severe shortages of consumer goods, especially housing, in the USSR before Reagan took office. The war in Afghanistan didn't help, but that was 1979.

I guess I don't understand your argument. How did Reagan force the Soviets to admit defeat? How would you even measure that? It is clear that the SU was in sharp decline before Reagan took office. If his sole accomplishment was to "act tough" on Communism, then why don't you credit the presidents that committed troops in Korea or Vietnam? Weren't they tougher on Communism?

People love Reagan for what he did, not for what he spent and only partially for what happened to the Soviets as a result of his refusal to play the Soviets' game by their rules.

What game and what rules? The game of economic decline which started before Reagan took office? I have news for you, that would've continued regardless of who was in office.

Also, people love Reagan for what he said, not what he did. Most have very little idea of what he actually did. If anything, he's more like Obama than anything else. An excellent orator who delivered horribly the policies that he preached.

Carter had established the idea that the United States was not special or unique or even a particularly good nation, that we were a declining empire that had to get used to lowering expectations and making do with less.

A man before his time then perhaps. What he said then is true to this day, even if we are only now feeling the pain.

Reagan reversed this. Reagan spoke of the US as a special place, the shining city on the hill, a beacon of freedom and an example to the world despite our warts. Reagan spoke of the US as a nation whose best days were ahead of us. People either get that or they don't, agree with it or not, value it or deride it. For most of the left, it's not something they understand, agree with, or value. Oddly enough, Obama seems to get it, or at least has someone savvy enough to understand it and use it.

Obama and Reagan are a lot alike, and they both fail miserably at implementing good policy. But in the end, some people only remember what they said and not what they did. It would be nice if the US was the shining beacon on the hill, but I live in reality and we have actual problems to address. Plugging your ears and crying "American Exceptionalism" solves nothing and is to a large degree why we are where we are. You call it hope and devotion, I call it ignorance and blindness. It has nothing to do with being left or right.

 

[BigDH01]

If you don't think Gorbachev played a MAJOR role in the cold war ending peacefully and the soviet union ending peacefully, you're deluded. Reagan's ability to work with Gorbachev was key in allowing that to happen.

The Soviet people played the role in toppling the Soviet Union. People in charge, like Gorbachev just like to take credit. You're not so quick to credit the church or Solidarity or any Soviet that stood up to their government and forced Perestroika.

It's not solely the military buildup, the "no appeasement" policy, etc, it's the combination of everything that made it happen. And Reagan was a key to much of it. You can fault Reagan for a lot of things, and that's certainly fair, but to say "it woulda happened anyway" and not crediting Reagan is just not giving credit where it is due -- especially considering what those on the inside (those who knew what was going on behind the scenes) themselves have said over the years (Gerasimov, Shultz, Weinberger etc).

I don't understand this mindset. "Reagan helped bring an end to the Cold War because he didn't appease the Soviets." Oh yeah? If that's all that was required, why don't we credit JFK, Truman. or Johnson for the fall of the Soviet Union? They arguably made a "tougher" stand. The only thing special about what Reagan is that he was president during a period where the SU was in decline.

Gorby himself:

Yes, but any American president would've done the same. The important paradigm shift that had occurred was not the election of Reagan, it was the fall of the conservatives in the Soviet Union.

Also, from Gorby:

But if he had warm, appreciative words for Reagan, Gorbachev brusquely dismissed the suggestion that Reagan had intimidated either him or the Soviet Union, or forced them to make concessions. Was it accurate to say that Reagan won the Cold War? "That's not serious," Gorbachev said, using the same words several times. "I think we all lost the Cold War, particularly the Soviet Union. We each lost $10 trillion," he said, referring to the money Russians and Americans spent on an arms race that lasted more than four decades. "We only won when the Cold War ended."

 

[Double Trouble]

I must say I'm pleasantly surprised that there's actually some interesting discussion in this thread rather than the usual immediate descent into partisan hackery and stupidity.

Personally I'm not a big fan of Reagan because while he said all the right thing to appear conservative, he betrayed a lot of conservative ideals. I'd still have him in the top 10 presidents, certainly over idiots like Carter. I also think GWB was a pretty lousy president, but only time and the perspective of history will tell how lousy. For example, what if (not likely, I know, but lets pretend) Iraq turns into a prosperous democracy in 10 years and becomes a beacon of stability and civility in the middle east. That would put GWB's legacy in a whole other light.

Obviously the jury is still out on Obama, though I'm certainly not fond of what I've seen thus far.

 

[Jhhnn]

I'll grant that Reagan did right by the country in accepting Gorbachev's initiatives. He really had little choice, as Gorbachev threatened to make those cuts unilaterally and even deeper than what was finally agreed upon. It would have been a world PR disaster for the US, and Reagan understood PR. He did so over the objections of his advisors, however, guys like Cheney and Rumsfeld, who had no trouble at all getting GWB to see it their way.

 

[Jhhnn]

For example, what if (not likely, I know, but lets pretend) Iraq turns into a prosperous democracy in 10 years and becomes a beacon of stability and civility in the middle east. That would put GWB's legacy in a whole other light.

Heh. If you think that's what the GWB team actually intended, you're delusional.

 

[Double Trouble]

Heh. If you think that's what the GWB team actually intended, you're delusional.

Irrelevant. We can all speculate about what the intent was, but history's judgment will be a lot different depending on the outcome.

 

[Jhhnn]

Irrelevant. We can all speculate about what the intent was, but history's judgment will be a lot different depending on the outcome.

Heh. Herman Goering said something like that at Nuremberg.

 

[matt0611]

No. People on the right need to get a clue there's a difference in the reason.

Raising the debt for the reason of bankrupting the country to force money out of the public is not the same as debt for dealing with the worst recession since the great depression.

Obama's debt is short term and he's planning a return to shrinking the deficit, like Clinton.

It's like you are saying FDR's debt is the same as Reagan's without mention of WWII or the great depression.

Aren't the deficit projections expected to increase in the next decade? (after a few years of slightly decreasing) And thats on the rosy outlook of the economy and interest rates.

 

[werepossum]

Aren't the deficit projections expected to increase in the next decade? (after a few years of slightly decreasing) And thats on the rosy outlook of the economy and interest rates.

No, no! You just aren't smart enough to understand the Democrat plan.

Step 1: You raise taxes a lot - only you call them "contributions."
Step 2: You raise spending a lot more - only you call it "investments."
Step 3: . . .
Step 4: Big profits prosperity.

I'm not smart enough to understand it either. Is Step 3 "Underpants gnomes" or "A miracle happens"?

Also - if we're going to assume unrealistic growth numbers - numbers that the fed would squash like a bug to keep inflation down - why not just assume eternal 25% annual growth starting immediately after the Messiah's second term ends? Then he's not just lowered the deficit, he's paid off the debt!

If you're gonna be a bear, be a grizzly.

 

[Jhhnn]

Aren't the deficit projections expected to increase in the next decade? (after a few years of slightly decreasing) And thats on the rosy outlook of the economy and interest rates.

If you haven't figured out that deficits are a structural part of Reaganomics, a way to disguise the effects of income and wealth concentration enabled by top tier taxcuts and offshoring, then you can't see the forest for the trees.

 

[matt0611]

..

 

[PokerGuy]

The Soviet people played the role in toppling the Soviet Union. People in charge, like Gorbachev just like to take credit. You're not so quick to credit the church or Solidarity or any Soviet that stood up to their government and forced Perestroika.

Actually, I'd credit all those mentioned as well, but that doesn't mean Reagan doesn't get credit for his role.

I don't understand this mindset. "Reagan helped bring an end to the Cold War because he didn't appease the Soviets." Oh yeah? If that's all that was required, why don't we credit JFK, Truman. or Johnson for the fall of the Soviet Union? They arguably made a "tougher" stand. The only thing special about what Reagan is that he was president during a period where the SU was in decline.

As I said already, it was a combination of many things, there's no one single thing or person that made it happen. That doesn't mean someone can't get credit for taking the right steps at the right time. Carter was also in a position to do certain things, but his 'containment' and appeasement strategy was worthless.

Yes, but any American president would've done the same. The important paradigm shift that had occurred was not the election of Reagan, it was the fall of the conservatives in the Soviet Union.

Maybe so, maybe not - pure speculation. It's easy to say in hindsight that "any" American president would have done the same, but that seems unlikely considering that even in the Reagan white house there was deep division and discord about the course(s) of action. Reading Weinberg and Shultz's books / comments about that time it's not at all clear that anyone else would have done the same thing.

As for Gorby's comments you quoted, it just further illustrates why Reagan was instrumental in the process. Gorby makes is clear that the massive amount of money spent on the arms race was a 'loser' for everyone, especially for the SU. That was part of Reagan's plan, he put massive pressure on the SU to spend money, hastening the SU's demise because of economic inability to keep up.

 

[Craig234]

Aren't the deficit projections expected to increase in the next decade? (after a few years of slightly decreasing) And thats on the rosy outlook of the economy and interest rates.

No, they're not. From the Economist:

Obama's $3.729 trillion budget proposal for fiscal 2012 shows the deficit rising to a record $1.645 trillion in fiscal 2011, then falling sharply to $1.101 trillion in 2012.

This trend would trim the deficit as a share of the U.S. economy to 3.2 percent by 2015 from 10.9 percent this year and meet a pledge Obama made to his Group of 20 partners to halve the deficit by 2013 compared to its size when he entered the White House in January, 2009...

Two-thirds of the $1.1 trillion in savings come from spending cuts. The rest comes from higher revenues as U.S. growth steadily picks up pace and from tax increases. The president is seeking an additional $328 billion through a variety of measures, including ending tax breaks for big business on income earned abroad...

The budget shows the deficit steadying around 3 percent of gross domestic product from 2015 onward, slowing the rate at which the U.S. adds to its debt, although it will still climb to 77 percent of GDP by 2021, up from 72 percent in 2011.

 

[Craig234]

Heh. Herman Goering said something like that at Nuremberg.

I suggest we go to war in - wait, throwing dart at map - Sweden. Then if something good happens to come out of it, hey, it was a good idea!