The Left Starts to Rethink Reagan

Member Comments

• • Reply
  • Report Abuse

  Posted By: Nedudgi @ 05/18/2008 11:41:53 PM

  Regan was lucky regarding the Sowjet Union, nevertheless he deserves credit for the dissolution of it. However in my book this is the only thing he did right. Among the many wrongheaded things he did the worst was to initiate the process of totally dismantling the oversight of greedy industry by government agencies, representing the interest of us, the people. This oversight is the essence of a functioning capitalist democracy. As we dismantled it, based on Reagan???s initiative and justifications, we came to the present sorry state of affairs where the drug industry, the banking/mortgage industry, the transportation industry, just to name a few, operate to the detriment of our society as a whole. And in the process we were made to believe that government is inherently ineffective and hence bad. Well, incompetent government, like the Bush government, is inherently ineffective and bad. But not government in general. Democrats who now ???re-examine??? and re-evaluate??? Reagan and forgetting the huge harm he caused to our democracy are either suffering terminal amnesia, or, like Obama, are pandering to a right of center crowd to get votes. We do not need another Reagan, or Reagan-like president. If Obama wants to be like Reagan he should run as a republican.

• • Reply
  • Report Abuse

  Posted By: einstein @ 05/16/2008 6:53:17 PM

  Dear cornsyrup123- You sound like a republican and it's obvious that you haven't bothered to read the posts in this discussion. If you are a registered democrat - you need to get your facts straight - Reagan or no Reagan the Soviet Union would have collapsed - he just knew how to take credit for it.

• • Reply
  • Report Abuse

  Posted By: cornsyrup123 @ 05/15/2008 2:53:34 PM

  To quote bushwacked: "wilentz is wrong, reagan was not a great president"
  As a democrat, I always feel awkward supporting Ronald Reagan, but here goes: Keeping in mind that through good governance (hopefully Democratic come November), though not overnight, we have the power to slowly but surely change all of the problems you mentioned about America. The bottom line is if it wasn't for Reagan, one of two worse things would have happened.
  1) Worst case scenario: mutually assured destruction, brought on by perpetuated tension with the former Soviet Union. That's an obvious one.
  2) More likely: ONGOING tension with the Soviet Union, in ADDITION to all of the domestic problems you mentioned, not to mention the unfortunate battle with Islamic fundamentalism.
  
  So, although he may have initiated some of the most tumultuous problems we as a nation have ever faced, as far as I'm concerned, his successful negotiations with the Soviets overpowered them all in the sense that we might not even be here to SEE those problems were it not for him.