Among the things they are saying was how things were more civil back in those days, that at the end of the day, Reagan was this amiable guy who was really friends with Tip O'Neil despite their battles.
What malarkey. He provoked just as strong feelings as Bush does today, both from his supporters and his detractors. And the same was probably true of Nixon as well. But Reagan certainly had more of the country fooled than Bush does.
He presided over the country when the Soviet Union imploded and of course his supporters are quick to take sole credit (they had lied about the supposedly decrepit state of our nuclear deterrent before they got into office). Now they want to put him on every f***in thing around, from airports to Mt. Rushmore.
Reagan did sign a major disarmament treaty but he walked away from a deal to sign a more far-reaching disarmament treaty:
At Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1986, Reagan and Gorbachev were on the brink of a deal to abolish all nuclear weapons, but Reagan scuttled it when Gorbachev insisted that the United States abandon its research and development of a missile defense system.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3638299/
And no, we're not out of the nuclear woods yet. Bush still funds new nuclear weapons development and there is still of course missile defense funding.
But the only thing you have to remember about Reagan is one of his most famous quotes: "moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers."
He said this not only about the Contras but about the Muhajadin. Yes, the same ones who became Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Or their Founding Fathers at least.
Lets not forget how swell the Contras were. They raped, tortured and killed civilians, probably tens of thousands of them. In other words, they unleashed
terrorism on a defenseless population. But nobody in this country seems to consider Contras terrorists -- maybe because their victims were brown -- even if there were more victims of the Contras than Al Qaeda, thus far.
Reagan was such a believer in these freedom fighters that he set about breaking US law to help the Contras overthrow a democratically-elected govt. Oh sure, it was just some rogue elements in his administration which made deals with Islamic fundamentalists in Iran (now of course, we know that the Reagan administration played both sides of the Iran-Iraq war, arming Saddam with the most vile weapons).
Reagan's defense was ignorance or poor recollection. Thus started the inevitable descent of the limbo bar for the intellectual prowess of the American presidency.
Why did people swallow all this and trickle down economics? The S&L debacle? The staggering deficits?
Because Reagan made Americans feel better about this country. How? By liberating Grenada and preventing communists from getting their hands on nutmeg.
Reagan destroyed a lot of lives, both in this country and in others. Perhaps now is not the best time to dredge up all these unpleasantries. But there needs to be an antidote to all these sickening and undeserved encomiums.
