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Is Ronald Reagan the best President all time?

Was Ronald Reagan the best President of the all times?

  • I'm a right leaning American, yes

    Votes: 2 2.2%

  • I'm a right leaning American, yes and the United Statss needs a President like him now

    Votes: 9 9.9%

  • I'm a left leaning American, yes

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • I'm a left leaning American, yes and the United States needs a President like him now

    Votes: 1 1.1%

  • I'm a right leaning American, no

    Votes: 23 25.3%

  • I'm a left leaning American, no

    Votes: 41 45.1%

  • I'm not from America, yes

    Votes: 1 1.1%

  • I'm not from America, no

    Votes: 14 15.4%
  • Total voters
    91
SlevinKelevra said:
McDonalds has sold the most hamburgers.


Sometimes sales has to do with price, access, etc.


Sometimes lowest common denominator moves sales; it certainly doesn't guarantee quality.
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So you only view one aspect of an issue as definitive when determining "best"?

So, if a hamburger costs $200 in some chi-chi restaurant elitists frequent, that must be the best, right?

Maybe the majority of the public likes a McDonalds hamburger because of its simplicity and it best serves their needs/desires at the time of purchase. Maybe the majority of the public doesn't want caviar or truffles adorning their hamburger, just because some elitists believe caviar and truffles on their burger makes them look superior to the plebes.

I'm not so arrogant as to believe that my likes and/or dislikes are superior to those of others or the majority. Your comments seem to indicate you think yours are. That's why they're arrogant and elitist. It's pretty simple.
 

An interesting observation from my perch, CJ, is the "opinions" offered by so many who weren't even world aware during Reagan's tenure, let alone alive. To fully appreciate the times, and the impact of Reagan's Administration and policies, a person would have to be in their 50's and older today. Otherwise, what they think they know is only from what they have been told, or taught. And that, we know, is generally not the truth.

You described the period of Reagans Presidency beautifully in your post #42. Well stated. :thumbs:
 
Reagan was not the best president by a long shot, but he sure did end up with the most coordinated effort by those who use him to further their agenda by way of his near deification.

He is already as much myth as he was real.
 
l
But I think not the Reaganomics were the problem, the problem was high spending in military.
 

LOL So Reagan was correct to withdraw from the M.E. when 241 of our servicemen were killed in the Beirut bombing? What text book lesson was that? Perhaps selling arms to Iran is what we need to do today also. You people have no comprehension of what Reagan did or was it just the people that surrounded Reagan and he read the script? He was just a b-movie Hollywood actor after all.

 
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I think you are wrong on both counts, though, as an economist I can really only speak for the economy with any certainty. But the strategy he employed was consistent with bringing down the Soviet and so.....
 

And it's very clear you people have no comprehension of what Reagan did. But I understand, most of you are just B-or less-students who have been fed a script.
 

To be clear, I'm expressing my opinion and I'm not drawing an equivalence between Khobar Towers and Benghazi. The truth is I don't know what we could have done differently in Lebanon other than not go there. Ambassador Stevens asked for more security in Bengazi and didn't get it. Although I have been critical of Obama, I can't recall being critical of him about Benghazi.

The American people are lied to every day by every administration. There is a difference though about lying for the good of the country and covering up dumb stuff. Iran Contra was lying for the good of the country in my estimation, unlike giving guns to Mexican drug cartels and not tracking them.
 

Perhaps war in Lebanon would have been more appropriate. What would you have done?
 
Actually with Reagan was fascinates me the most is how today's conservatives look at him as almost godlike, he's an idol to them. Even the TP people, hell Ted Cruz has a portrait of Reagan hanging on his wall.

But if we look at his time in office if he did these things today the Republicans, especially the TP people would want him impeached. He signed an assault weapon ban, he raised taxes on Corps by billion's of $'s, he gave amnesty to illegals. While governor he signed one of the early permissive state level abortion laws in Cali.

And most of all he compromised. He called the USSR an evil empire, but that didn't stop him from talking to them, and compromising with them. He had a good working relationship with the Dems in Congress.

This bunch running the GOP nowadays it's their way or the highway. They want nothing to do with compromise. If Reagan was alive today and running for dog catcher he couldn't get the backing of the fanatics running todays GOP.
 

and when you add in his elimination of the fairness doctrine which resulted in the 24/7 domination of the airwaves and his viciously anti-union policies which gutted the ability of working stiffs to a fair shake, I would go so far as to say that this class warfare was quite by design. It may have not been HIS idea, necessarily, as it was the result of Heritage think tank machinations, but it certainly had quite the destructive effect on the notion that America's greatness lied in it being a middle class country.

The great Teddy Roosevelt took on the robber barons. Reagan ushered in a new era for them.
 
LeoVlaming said:
This may come as a surprise to you but the rich (and talented) have the habit of making themselves richer. They don't need a President or a government for that.
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But it certainly helps.
 
sawdust said:
Perhaps war in Lebanon would have been more appropriate. What would you have done?
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I would not have sent such a limited force to begin with. It was a blunder that cost 241 American lives. It makes the fuss about Benghazi look even more foolish.
 
President "My heart wants to believe I didn't lie to the American people but that facts say otherwise" Reagan? The man who sat back and didn't lift a finger while AIDS grew into an epidemic? The man who cut all funding for mental health services and created, in large part, the homeless problem all across America? The man who saw the largest reduction in manufacturing jobs and outsourcing of jobs overseas in this country's history?Uh....not even close.
 
iguanaman said:
I would not have sent such a limited force to begin with. It was a blunder that cost 241 American lives. It makes the fuss about Benghazi look even more foolish.
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I asked you what an appropriate response would have been in your estimation.
 
Reagan: "“It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.”

And the proof continues today...
 
joG said:
I think you are wrong on both counts, though, as an economist I can really only speak for the economy with any certainty. But the strategy he employed was consistent with bringing down the Soviet and so.....
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First, the collapse of the Soviet Union didn't "win" anything. That we were ever having such a conflict in the first place means we lost. That's a game you don't win. Second, his "strategy" was to be in a country with solid industry, agriculture, and resources, and two centuries under a single government, instead of being a revolutionary state, with some of its founders still alive, without that infrastructure or resources. That's geography, not strategy. The Soviet Union was doomed the moment it tried to be a world power without being able to support such an endeavor. Who was sitting in the white house made zero difference.

LeoVlaming said:
Actually only a minority of the really very rich people inherited their wealth. That being said, unlike you I don't feel that being rich is in and of itself a sin.
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Oh good, propaganda. No point in continuing if you don't know or accept basic facts. We have some of the least economic mobility of any industrialized nation in the world. Almost everyone's economic class is inherited. And almost all the movement is down.

sawdust said:
In capitalism supply side is the only side.
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Hence why capitalism is only a little bit better than the feudal aristocracies of yesteryear, and it needs to go the way of the dinosaurs to something focused on the people as whole. We don't need aristocrats, whether they're granted titles of nobility or merely own everything.


It's amazing how much geopolitics and history conservatives have to make up in order to justify this hatred of Obama.
 
CMPancake said:
If that's the case why are the 1% so afraid of paying taxes?
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Silly premise. Why pay taxes if you can arrange it so you don't have to?

Yes, *I* think they should, and I favor a true flat tax so they would, but at the same time I can't fault somebody for working it out so they don't pay taxes if the system allows them to do so. If anything, that's smart, and the people who constantly whine about it come off as jealous because they themselves don't have the same ability to do so.
 
I mean as far as presidents go he was pretty good even though I'm not on the same side of the political spectrum as he was, but best in history? not even close.
 
I would not say "best". Maybe lower Top 10-ish.

His positives: He was a leader and we desperately needed a leader at that time. It was ok to be an American again. I wasn't thrilled by his deficit spending, but I understood it had a purpose in that it helped us regain prominence in the world and I believe helped hasten the end of the cold war*. Unlike today, where people like Dick "Reagan proved deficits don't matter" Cheney (and others) completely missed the point and saw it (deficit spending) as a positive political tool.

These were reasons I would have put him in the Top 5 when he first left office. Someone else mentioned that his star fades with time, and that is true with me, because...

His negatives: I didn't recognize these right away, but I do now and they have to factor in. Reagan was by no means the first President to threaten individual rights, but he's the one who greatly accelerated the concept more than any other, and as a matter of conscious policy. Things like the militarization of police, civil asset forfeiture (CAF), the so-called "War on Drugs", and so on. His policies in these areas are/were repugnant and are a great reason why things are so screwed up today.

Anyone here who has paid attention knows that things like CAF are my pet issues, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that these taint Reagan's legacy in my eyes. I still think he was a good President overall, and like I said had some aspects we desperately needed at the time, but some of his other policies have had far-reaching effects that are not good at all.

*-Would have happened eventually anyway, but not as quickly, and probably not as cleanly.
 
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Sure. Fine. I am glad we talked about it.
 
This is what I was trying to convey, but you said it better.
 
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