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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.
"....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.
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