Name ONE good thing Ronald Reagan did.

I've heard a lot of issue skirting here today. A certain politician dubiously alluded to certain facets of Ronald Reagan in a positive light. This politician has enormous backing here and elsewhere, so I as, in all candor:

Name ONE good thing Ronald Reagan did for the country. I'll wait.

:spank:

Someone had to say it. :D

then great minds think alike because that is the first thing that popped into mine! :thumbsup: :rofl:

Elevated him to sainthood, apparently.

:sarcasm:

Bake

about his sainthood - from both sides of the aisle...so, I am not so sure it was a good thing after all.

Very nice.

they made a fucking glorified martyr out of him for a week and pre-empted all of my shows. Not to mention they re-wrote the history of his presidency. :grr:

hhahaha

does that count?

I can think off.

Now we just have to contend with Putin and his mafia friends.

I hate that wrong, wrong, wrong conventional wisdom.

..if we just let it happen on it's own.

Was that worth the Trillions of dollars and Billions of lives affected?

...

Do you have any examples based in fact?

The Soviet Union ended itself, through corruption, internal divisions, and economic implosion. Gorbachev, one of the few reasonable leaders that Russia has had, might have led the country to some form of real democracy. But by forcing rapid change, Reagan et al contributed to the current chaos and mob-ocracy in the country.

Also, let's not forget that Reagan et al's blind hatred for all things Soviet led them to build up the forerunners of the Taliban.

But then we got Bush 1. :scared:

that day watching that speech he did, he forgot the words and Nancy was reciting the whole speech to him behind him, like a ventriloquist.

Was kinda pathetic.

yet he did meet with Gorbachev, didn't just sabre-rattle, didn't bring us to the brink of nuclear destruction.

He was reading what his scriptwriters were telling him to when the corpse suddenly fell over.

Presidents from Truman all the way to Carter did the hard work.

Ronnie was at the right place at the right time waving a gun at a dead man.

was going into death throes as a communist nuclear empire made them dangerous. 8 years of a tenuous peace, and then an improved relationship with Russia in the 90's that built on those first tentative steps toward diplomacy, is something Reagan can legitimately be credited for. I hate it when the GOPers blame everything on Clinton and refuse to credit him for anything. I won't be like that towards Republican Presidents--it's stupid to be that partisan, and ignores history.

is more than Bush II would have done. We can thank him for that, I suppose.

and Raygun had nothing more to do with it than a rooster's crowing with bringing the sun up. I know that it's customary for Americans to think the sun revolves around us, but trust me - events do take place on this planet without our influence on them. Even without St Ronnie's.

Besides, his MOTIVE was not the destruction of the USSR (which in retrospect was not necessarily a "good thing") but the enrichment of the arms industry through the arms race.

I'm sorry, but thanks for playing our game.

regurgitate - and you're not even aware.

Thanking Reagan for the end of the Soviet Union is like blaming the bulldog on the Mack Truck for the accident.

USSR was BANKRUPT and DYING in 1979. I KNOW because I had a Top Secret Clearance.

That includes Eisenhower, Nixon, and even Ford.

Nice try.

have to deal with the foreign policy situation that's on THEIR watches. Just because other Presidents helped contribute in various ways to the ultimate demise of the Soviet Union doesn't mean Reagan couldn't have either helped or fucked up that particular relationship during his OWN 8 years in office--he didn't fuck it up. He made some correct moves. That's the end result, and it's inarguable. You might decide he didn't do anything all that special, and maybe he didn't--but he didn't blow it either.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

Other Presidents did the work and made the difference. He took the credit.

I guess with republicans - "he didn't kill us" is...

and he got a hell of alot of flack from the RW for doing it too. He was much better about that than Poppy was.

During his time the nuclear countdown clock was closer to midnight than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Soviet Union was in a state of collapse, and his pushing only made it stronger. He prolonged the life of the Soviet Union.

some blame for the arms race and the tense situation, too--I'm not buying your argument that Reagan "prolonged" the life of the Soviet Union, either. Either way, Reagan used both carrot and stick, and nothing bad happened, and here we are, no "Day After". Good enough for me. I use results as a yardstick, and the result was a peaceful collapse with no nuclear engagement. I don't think he was a hero, but I also don't heap blame and scorn and try to discredit him in his dealings with the USSR.

Not good for me or America, but I wish Democrats could nominate someone who could do that. The fact that Hillary is our frontrunner tells me we won't.

And I am sure it was puffed up. Clinton hat 70% when he left.

put Nixon and Clinton in the same breath. Trying to insinuate the impeachment thing was it. Of which you cannot equate either of those as anywhere near as bad as the other.

Wow, if that isn't an example of repeating a lie often enough, I don't know what is.

What a fucking joke! :nuke:

I don't debate with creationists, and I am not going to debate you. Believe what you want.

Reagan voted 'greatest American'
Former President Ronald Reagan
Many Americans look back fondly at Reagan's presidency
Former US President Ronald Reagan has been voted the "greatest American" of all time by his fellow citizens.
Mr Reagan, who died last year aged 93, topped a list of 10 contenders, which featured six former presidents.
He edged out Abraham Lincoln, who abolished slavery, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4631421.stm

Zogby poll: 65 percent rank Ronald Reagan "great" or "near great" president, compared with 41 percent for George W. Bush, 44 percent for Bill Clinton, 33 percent for George H. W. Bush, and 32 percent for Jimmy Carter

Thursday, June 1, 2006 10:55 p.m. EDT
Poll: Reagan, Clinton Most Popular Presidents

Americans believe George W. Bush is the worst president since 1945, while Ronald Reagan was the best and Bill Clinton made both lists in a national Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday.

Thirty-four percent of those surveyed ranked Bush at the bottom, 17 percent said Richard Nixon was the worst and 16 percent picked Bill Clinton. The poll found 56 percent of Democrats, 35 percent of independent voters and 7 percent of Republicans thought Bush was the worst.

"Democrats just plain don't like President Bush," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "His father, the 41st president, was voted out of the White House after one term. Nixon quit under fire. But most Democrats think Bush 43 wins the worst-president race."

The poll found 58 percent of voters disapprove of the job Bush is doing, the same number that gave him poor marks in a March 2 survey.

But another Republican got higher marks. Twenty-eight percent of voters ranked Ronald Reagan as the best president since 1945, putting him at the top of the list. Bill Clinton came in second with 25 percent, thought 40 percent of voters ages 18-29 ranked him at the top.

The telephone poll of 1,534 registered voters nationwide was conducted May 23-30 with a sampling error margin of about 2.5 percentage points.

© 2006 Associated Press.

strikebreaking (air traffic controllers)

arms dealing (Iran/Contra)

environmentalism (dismantling the EPA)

deregulation (S&Ls, anyone?)


change is good!

because it'll be a long wait!

help restore American political pride after the bummer that was the 70's. He also apparently knew to use his military force in only short burst demonstrations rather than long expensive protracted conflicts. Wow 2 good things.

Another media manufactured myth.

:popcorn:

I lived in the 70's, I lived in the 80's. Long time Dems like my Dad voted for Reagan because he made them feel good about America again. He did. I won't argue it. The opinion polls are on Reagan's side. I grant him it. Reagan's yeah America, boo USSR pro wrestling crap apparently worked on many people. Personally I was one of 3 kids to vote for Carter in my grade school mock election. Ouch.

And a lot of other people felt the same way.

In the first, he got hundreds of Marines killed to no purpose, withdrawing without accomplishing any stated goals; in the 2nd, he invaded for no purpose, except to distract us from the disaster in Lebanon.
He used the military as a political tool for the home front. Unconscionable.

ON EDIT:
Nevertheless, I will not deny that he was a savvy politician. He was very good at what he did - it's just that everything he did was WRONG.

Yeah basically he used the US military stupidly but not stupidly for a long time. Hey I was trying to think of good things:)

other than that, :shrug:

dg

I like Ron Jr.

:)

If we look at it that way, we could fill books with the things The Chimperor hasn't done (yet).

I know the knees jerk hard on this issue, but free trade with Canada has been an excellent deal for the US.

Ronald Reagan and Brian Mulroney were the driving force behind it,

lifeguard that would go on to do Death Valley Days,go figure?:shrug:

in social progress too. Reagan was selling us General Electric not social reforms.

I used to shoplift them from the neighborhood store before I ever heard of Ronald Reagan.

Er uh, I mean buy them. Legally, of course O8)

But the Jelly Belly factory does have a portrait of the old bastard on their walls....



made from Jelly Bellys, of course.

.

which was done weekly and reviewed the week and they had a bit that ran for 7 years in it for Reagan called "The Presidents brain is missing". It was done with rubber puppets of the characters and had Reagan's brain off on the run around the world.

Honestly you would have pissed yourselves laughing if you saw it.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http://www.sincuser.f9.co.uk/057/news.htm&h=171&w=275&sz=13&hl=en&start=1&sig2=HS8o-Pzjf0llckThNGwQXQ&tbnid=938cLjNrhy1eFM:&tbnh=71&tbnw=114&ei=itqQR6rBD4S6gwOX6ZGRBA&prev=/images%3Fq%3DSpitting%2BImage%2B-%2Breagan%26gbv%3D2%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DG

Thanks to Genesis.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBdUz_IJ4VA

boom-tiss

Which inspired the American public to elect another one..twice.

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” - H.L. Mencken

:rofl:

That he was a popular president, that he ended the Soviet Union...

:rofl:

Come on folks - tell us all how he won the war on drugs!

:rofl:

then we would have 8 years of poppy bush and his merry band of thugs...


....oh shit we did....


never mind

He called Chicago Cubs baseball and Iowa Hawkeye football and basketball. Everything else he ever did was crap.

When he was elected in 1980, I predicted that his time would be one of arrogance, cruelty and stupidity. At no time since did anything make me change my assessment.

They are yuuuumy!

When Barack was writing his campaign strategy memo back in Kindergaten!!!!

Working with the chimp was the highlight of his career.

and he produced two reasonably liberal kids.

Otherwise, not very much - for the country or the world!

Other than that... :shrug:


On edit: Should've been posted to the OP. Apologies. Also, it's worth pointing out that, while Reagan's administration did see a huge drop in nuclear weapons due to the above-stated treaties, it should also be noted that, previous to that, it saw an increase in said arms. Considering both that and the huge amounts of bad things Reagan did, from massive deficit spending to Iran-Contra and all in between, it seems silly to play the game of "what good did Reagan do?" Whatever good he did is clearly overshadowed by the bad.

Exactly my point.

There is NOTHING positive to be said about this man.

Then he started stirring up the "Star Wars" pot to undo any good that might have possibly come of them.

...into fighting the disease that killed Roy Cohn.

Which meant the country didn't have the trauma of impeaching his criminal ass over the Iran-Contra mess?

:shrug:

Not sure what she meant by that, but she really liked him.

And hey, anything that makes Mom happy can't be all bad.

mmm...ahhh...

I got nothing.

:patriot:

That counts for something, right? :shrug: ;)

I had avowedly Republican roommates that even years later said Reagan "had been fooled" by the Russians.

I figure anything that he did that most Republicans hated was a good thing.

And one other thing about Reagan, he had the capacity to change his mind on something. If the current Bush had that ability, we would be in better straits.

Flame away. I vote liberal and Democratic and have consistently done so since I registered in 1990.

snicker

if it weren't for Reagan, we'd all be speaking Grenadian.

How sweet.

definitions of what a pathological liar is. In fact he played the role so well - a significant part of Americans still believe and idolize the fraud as being something good.

So it is - students of reason and logic have a contemporary example of evil - and they are able to begin understand why and how so many people could have been and still are under the mesmerizing effect of political spellbinders. Who knows maybe this will lead to solving the problem of what is know as the lemming effect, social political paradigms, and then a cure for tyranny – which could save humanity from certain extinction…