What were Reagan's accomplishments exactly? He did make us feel better about ourselves, and he gave very moving speeches. He was a trained actor after all, so I am sure he saw it as just another B-movie part.
Did Reagan help end the Cold War? That is a stretch. There were only two people without whom the Cold War would not have ended, Gorbachev and Pope John Paul II. Reagan's "Tear Down This Wall" speech was a joke. How many other presidents had said the same thing. And the Star Wars defense project, if the Soviets had any Intelligence at all, they had to know it did not work (and still doesn't).
He did manage to do in eight years what had taken 200 years to do before, and that is - double the deficit. He did bring us trickle down economics, which we still have with GB the 2nd. Yes, if we just let those rich folks make more money, some of it will eventually trickle down to us. Are you wet yet? I know I'm not.
He did manage to ignore AIDS for most of his presidency. Within three years of Clinton taking office we had a viable treatment for HIV Disease. With Reagan we had mostly silence.
I think GB the 1st had greater accomplishments and did what the country needed in spite of the political costs. Something Reagan never did. He only thought about the here and now, not what was best for the country in the long run. Sound familiar?
This is what Merriam-Webster Online had to say about him:
One entry found for Reagan. Main Entry: Rea·gan
Pronunciation: 'rA-g&n
Function: biographical name
Ronald Wilson 1911- American actor & politician; 40th president of the U.S. (1981-89); achieved a significantly lower rate of inflation; lowered personal income taxes; greatly increased defense spending while reducing expenditures on social programs
I forgot about the inflation thing. You have to give him credit for that. Even if he had to double the deficit to do it.
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