Is Reagan responsible for today's cynicism toward Obama's message of change?

I remember Reagan's 1980 campaign message. "Morning in America," "trickle down economics will benefit everyone," "less government is better," "smaller government and less taxes," and on and on.

Americans, including Democrats bought the rhetoric. But, the more the Reagan policies played out, the more people realized they had been duped.

The hallowed Reagan tax cuts were little more than a redistribution of the tax burden. The smaller government that was supposed to have accompanied the tax cuts never materialized. Instead, government became bigger, led by the unleashing of the military industrial complex. Reagan began the mindset of giving the Pentagon a virtual blank check, making it the rathole of federal spending that it is today, where they get anything they want with little if any accountability.

The rest of government did not shrink. It became an even more bloated bureaucracy. During the Reagan and Bush years, part of my job was in federal farm policy. The farm bills under the Reagan-Bush administrations depressed farm commodity prices and had farmers more dependent on direct government payments than any farm policy before it. This was a sample of how other federal agencies operated in the ensuing years.

We were promised greater national security through this massive military spending. What we're seeing is today's U.S., a country that's spending itself silly into economic chaos because of its addiction to outspend the rest of the world on its military to show it's still in charge.

Reagan promised fiscal responsibility. Instead, his administration never submitted a balanced budget; the largest budget deficits in history were under his watch, only to be exceeded by the current Republican in the White House; and the national debt more than doubled in only eight years.

The breaking of PATCO unleashed the downward spiral that labor has never really escaped, accelerating the economic polarization of corporate executives and the labor that produced for their companies.

Reagan began the move toward the "free trade" agreements we are under. They promised that eliminating trade barriers would bring more exports than we could ever imagine. What we've seen since then are record trade deficits. On today's Mitch Albom show in Detroit, Albom had a guest who noted that real Mexican wages have declined since NAFTA' passage. Another lie. Mexicans were supposed to have experienced a higher standard of living, leading to increased demand for U.S.-made products. Instead, manufacturing has been outsourced to low-wage countries and illegal immigration has grown exponentially.

The real Reagan legacy was not the myths perpetuated by the gerbils in the media. His real legacy is the mindset that everything can be put on credit and let the next generation worry about how to pay it. It's the "I want my cake and eat it too" attitude where people are convinced they pay too much in taxes, therefore, I demand that my taxes be cut, but don't you dare cut the public programs that benefit me or my business.

After buying the Reagan promise for change and seeing the results 28 years later, Americans are now cynical toward any candidate that promises to overhaul the status quo in Washington.

I'm hearing people of all persuasions express skepticism toward Obama's message for change. Of course, you'll get it from Republicans--they would rather see Armageddon than have a Democrat elected to clean up the clusterfuck of a mess being left by Bush and 30 years of Republican administrations in the last 50 years. But, I'm also hearing skepticism from Democrats. They aren't necessarily supporters of Hillary Clinton, either.

That's another one of Reagan's real legacies, in my opinion--little or no hope from the middle and lower classes.

and while I'm not discounting the bit on Reagan, I'd say the media and the barrage of entertainment has more incontrovertible blame.

biggest part is the democratic habit of rolling over and playing dead any time they need to stand up to the right wing.

on that one promise, he probably succeeded....just not in the direction his voters expected