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40th President (1981 - 1989)
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I am, most assuredly, NOT a fan of Ronald Reagan.
For those poor, misguided, ignorant souls - blinded by their ideology - who mistakenly feel Reagan was a great president
and deserves a place on Mount Rushmore, I offer a markedly different point of view of the United States of
America's 40th president. This is, rest assured gentle reader, not a paean to the man, or the president. In my
opinion, he was lazy, intolerant, mean-spirited, hated the government of which he - as president - lead and, without question,
should have been impeached. No, Reagan was not a great President, but a very dishonest and corrupt one whom - without a
shadow of doubt - should have been impeached for the Iran-Contra scandal, in direct violation of U. S. law. I recommend
a very good book on the Reagan years when he was President of the United States, titled, "Sleepwalking Through
History, America in the Reagan Years", by Haynes Johnson.
I do not understand why so many misguided souls feel that Ronald
Reagan was one of America's greatest presidents. I confess to a STRONG bias against Reagan as a
man and as President of the U. S. Since I have such a strong antipathy toward Reagan, I want to quote, quite liberally,
from a very well-written book by Haynes Johnson, titled "Sleepwalking Through History, America In The Reagan Years".
These excerpts reflect my personal opinion about Reagan, but are an accurate reflection of his administration. You,
gentle reader, can decide the "greatness" of our nation's fortieth president.
John Huston on Ronald
Reagan: "God, he's a bore. And a bad actor. Besides, he has a low order of intelligence. With a certain cunning.
And not animal cunning. Human cunning. Animal cunning is too fine an expression for him. He's inflated, he's egotistical.
He's one of those people who thinks he is right. And he's not right. He's not right about anything."
"....While Reagan is officially listed as the fortieth president, he was the thirty-ninth person to hold the
office. Grover Cleveland, Who was elected to terms in 1884 and 1892 and was defeated in 1888, is listed twice...
....'A president', James Madison said in the First Congress, is ' responsible for the conduct of the
person he has nominated and appointed.' Measured by that standard, Ronald Reagan's actions in office made him
ultimately responsible for the ethical improprieties in his administration. By the end of his term, 138 administration
officials had been convicted, had been indicted, or had been the subject of official investigations for official misconduct
and/or criminal violations. In terms of numbers of officials involved, the record of his administration was the worst
ever....
....Reagan's customary response to instances of wrongdoing by aides was to criticize those who brought the charges
or to blame the media that reported them....
....The Reagan FCC was the first to vote to abolish the agency's long-standing
fairness doctrine, which required broadcasters to air controversial issues by providing a balanced presentation of public
issues. Congress refused to go along and voted new legislation to reinstate it. Reagan vetoed it. When Reagan
threatened a second veto after the same legislation had been attached to a major spending bill, Congress capitulated.
The fairness doctrine was abolished, and television operated in an atmosphere of even fewer constraints....
....For all
the prosperity, new wealth, and affluent living achieved by many, abundant official statistical evidence showed that the number
of Americans living in poverty had increased sharply during the Reagan years, that class lines were lengthening; that more
children were suffering from malnutrition; that one out of every four American children was living in poverty, and that more
than 30 percent were living in or near poverty; that the nation's infant mortality rate was higher than that of seventeen
other industrial nations; that the number of homeless people had multiplied across the nation; that after decades of moving
up the economic ladder, Americans found themselves forced to accept lower standards of living. They were now moving
down the economic scale....
....He took credit for all the good that had ensued in the eight years since and
laid blame for all the failures at the feet of others: Congress; the press; special interests in Washington. He accepted
no responsibility for massive federal deficits, conceded no errors in judgment about them, maintained he was still trying
to find out what really had happened in the Iran-contra affair and who had been responsible for it, and, rhetoric aside, offered
no new vision for the future, except a familiar Reaganesque vision of America, a land evoked by fables and mythology, by symbols
and patriotic dreams....
....His purpose was self-evident and natural: he was polishing his image and attempting
to secure a positive historical "legacy" for himself. At his last formal press conference the first question
asked was how he could square the huge budget deficits with his pledges to balance the budget. Typically he blamed not
the tax cuts that slashed public revenues by a third at the same time that he doubled defense spending but the Congress and
the Democrats who controlled it, ignoring the facts that as president he never once submitted a budget
to Congress that was in balance and that for six of his eight presidential years Congress had actually cut,
not increased, Reagan's own budget. It was Congress that moved to redress the fiscal shortfall caused by the combination
of huge tax cuts and defense increases by passing legislation raising new taxes, and it was Reagan who signed those tax increases
year after year after year from 1982 through 1988. Of eighteen tax bills he signed as president, thirteen of them called
for increases, facts that Reagan always conveniently ignored in his public statements while blaming
"big spenders" for creating the deficit....
....In his time the Progressive Era did appear
to come to an end. From health to housing, from the environment to consumer protection, from education to child nutrition,
from deregulation of financial markets to public transportation, every aspect of the domestic ledger had been affected.
The poor had been left poorer, the rich, richer; the social compact, if not broken, had
been severely weakened. In fundamental ways America was more divided into its many racial, ethnic, and regional groupings
than when he became president....
....agencies of the federal government that existed to help the needy became places
of political influence peddling for a profit, and at the expense of the average citizen. Reagan alone could not be blamed,
as he was regularly by his harshest critics, for fostering the new climate of racial hostility and hatred in America.
But through a pattern of indifference and insensitivity, through calculated policies that worked against the interests of
the poor and minorities, through repeated and open political appeals to ideologically divisive groups, he added to these new
tensions and made them worse....
Reagan's was not a generous-spirited presidency; it was characterized by its
small-mindedness and even at times by its meanness. However inadequate the terms of "liberal" and "conservative"
had become in his America, he intensified an already growing public mood of "conservatism"....
....He was a
president willing to take great risks to carry out his objectives, including the ultimate one of impeachment. In an
era of high rollers, he may have been the biggest risk taker of all....That does not mean his actions were always right, wise,
truthful, or even lawful. They were not. Nor does it mean that he paid attention to the business of governance. He
did not. His was a lax and largely inattentive presidency....
....Some people, in retrospect, would conclude
that they had been had. Reagan, the wizard, had deceived them. The pictures he had painted for the country had
taken on a life of their own; they had replaced reality. It was the pictures they had believed
in. Maybe that was it. For eight years the country had been staring up in some kind of trance at pictures
in the sky. Now Reagan would be gone and people were left with the memory of how he had made them feel better.
His departure was like the end of a fireworks display when the colors and trails and sparks fade, leaving nothing but a dark
sky...."**
**These remarks were excerpted, verbatim, from "Sleeping Through History, America In The Reagan Years",
copyright 1991, by Haynes Johnson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Selma civil rights conflict.
 Reagan's ideas were so old, they seemed new. He preachd
an individualism, inspiring and cruel, that isolated and shamed the halt and the lame. He dumbed-down America, blending
fact and fiction, transforming political debate into emotion-driven entertainment. He recklessly mortgaged America with
uncontrollable military spending, less taxation and more debt. His administration was shredded by lying, secrets of
hidden wars, double-dealing and the worst recession in American history. Source: "President.Reagan - The Triumph of Imagination". Coyright © 2005 by Reeves-O'Neill, Inc.
Reagan: A Different
View
By Denis Mueller
Let
me start off by saying that my sympathy goes out to Nancy Reagan. My mother died from Alzheimer's disease and it is a
very difficult experience for families. I would also like to add that Reagan seemed like an amiable man. It is hard for me
to say because I did not know him but I will take the word of those who did. But I did not like his policies and I did not
like his policies especially when it concerned minorities.
On June 21, 1965, three civil rights workers were killed
in Philadelphia, Mississippi. It was a brutal murder in which the lives of three young men were snatched away from them. So
when Reagan ran for Governor of California in 1965, he voiced opposition to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This is appalling.
People were dying for the right to vote and Reagan opposed this basic right. Now you can say that many people did but Ronald
Reagan show no remorse when in 1980 he began his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi and spoke about states rights. He said
that the act of 1965 was an insult to the south.
This is not the only thing that he did. He called black mothers
"welfare queens" and fired members of the civil rights commission who were critical of his polices. He supported
the awful government of South Africa throughout his administration. Never mind that its racist policies were the scourge of
the world. He criticized civil rights workers but praised Jesse Helms.
In Latin America, he supported the vilest
of governments including the death squads of El Salvador. He praised the contra terrorists and drug runners by calling them
the equivalent of our founding fathers, which was a unique tribute to our founders. It must be remembered that the contras
attacked villages and killed women and children and did acts that we now condemn in Iraq. He fought for aid for other repressive
governments like the one in Guatemala. Never mind that they killed and buried people, much like the former leader of Iraq
did, but that did not much bother the president.
Remember at the time it was under his administration that we
armed Iraq and viewed Saddam Hussein as our friend. Reagan cut programs that aided the poor and said that it was trees that
caused pollution. He was no friend of veterans either. In an April 21, 1980 issue of Newsweek he said that: "Because
Vietnam was not a war, the veterans are not even eligible for the G.I. Bill of Rights with respect for education or anything."
I give him credit for helping end the cold war but there were other people that should get some credit as well.
What about the brave people who in Eastern Europe risked their lives to speak out against communism and end those repressive
regimes, not to mention the Soviet leader who in the end lost his job. Yes, Reagan did some good but to many of us, he was
no saint.
Copyright 2004 by PENN LLC. All rights reserved. Go ahead and forward this, in
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