I'll admit that I was in middle school under Reagan, so I don't know what it was like to raise a family or build a career while he was in power. I can say that my family's quality of life improved quite a bit after the hyper-inflation and oil shocks of the late 70s. So while I deplore what happened with Iran/Contra, Reagan seemed like a decent president at least for my family domestically.

I have to give Reagan credit for creating a political movement that lasted almost as long as FDR's New Deal. I also have to give Reagan credit for restoring confidence in the American people, who had suffered a serious crisis of faith after Vietnam, Watergate, etc. Finally, I think Reagan began reform of social welfare that was badly needed.

Now, the current GOP have taken things completely beyond what Reagan would ever approve. Welfare reform has given way to the disappearance of all social safety nets. Instead of the small government conservatives promised, we have an even more bloated mess. But in some ways Reagan was an iconoclast who dared take on the excesses of an entitlement beaucracy. Now it's up to strong liberal leader to do the same with out-of-control military spending and cronyism.

Amazing!

All in lockstep declaring any alternative point of view is evil, evil, evil.

Is there a litmus test to qualify as a reader?

"There is no doubt that the Reagan military buildup, which Russia would be very hard pressed to provide resources to match US resources, provided a resl stimulus to ending the Cold War."

Go google yourself a graph of the growth of the Russian-Soviet economy from late 19th century on. You'll see that the Soviet economy grew at a rate equivalent to just about any Western nation and that it continued to grow - although at a slower rate - throughout the 80s. Now recall where we were mentally at the end of Reagan-Bush (Michael Crichton's xenophobic and racist "Rising Sun" should jog your memory): our best days were behind us, Germany and Japan had won the Cold War, we had bankrupted ourselves foolishly on Star Wars and Savings and Loans scams.

In other words, military spending didn't destroy the Soviet Union, and by the end of the 12-year Reagan/Bush era Americans thought it HAD destroyed us. This guy named Bill Clinton came along and cleaned up the mess and we all forgot about it, but that's where things stood in 1991.

What really happened was that the Soviets went through several bosses in rapid succession, allowing a true believer like Gorby to get in, in a manner similar to the accident of history that led to John XXIII (a "mistake" the wingnuts in the Catholic hierarchy have spent 40 years trying to undo). Gorby really believed in the Soviet Union, and hence believed that liberalizing it would not make it come undone; and liberalization was needed because the Soviets were falling behind not militarily but in terms of pure research and technology.

Ignore the media. View "historians" with a very cold eye. Go back and read materials from that time, and read them as you do the media now, between the lines. The GOP has been screwing things up badly for 100 years, and getting away with it over and over because the media is their biotch.

Reagan gets credit for the collapse of the Soviet Union because it happened on his watch?

Uh, no it didn't. Gorbachev happened on his watch. And would not have been permitted to do so if Reagan or his advisors had had their way; THEY didn't trust him and besides, Cold War was such a big moneymaker for their real base, the War Industry (which tried like hell for a Central American war all through the 1980s). Fortunately Margaret Thatcher was there to vet Gorby, since no one in the administration seemed capable of doing so, and Nancy Reagan, desperate to give her husband a legacy other than Iran-Contra, was there to talk sense to her hubby.

So why doesn't GHW Bush get credit for the the fall of the Soviet empire? Because the people who form the media opinions - and apparently those of historians as well - in this country like the media IMAGE of Ronnie (as opposed to the reality of his putative "leadership"; if you believe the guy ever actually made policy decisions, you need to watch his farmous babbling debate with Mondale more closely, and recall all those hired helicopters and jackhammers brought in to prevent him from being asked questions) and hated GHWB.

His legacy is everything that is wrong with America today.

a man from the Reagan era who witnessed whole neighborhoods become decimated from the evils of crack and beautiful young men and women transformed to shells of themselves as a result of the excess of The 80's; then he would tell you that Reagan sucked alright. He completely "sucked" the life out of black America in the 80's and we have been trying to recover ever since.

A con man by definition has to be likable first and foremost. Reagan convinced America that debt is prosperity and created huge government budget deficits, loans. These loan proceeds from government debt is doled out to the CORPORATE WELFARE KINGS and the principle and interest for the CORPORATE WELFARE KINGS LOANS is paid back by others, the American taxpayers. Reagan debt have never been paid off. Reagan convinced America that the Nicaraguan Sandinista army was going to march across Mexico, invade Texas and capture Wash., DC, a good idea. Ron Reagan Jr., who knew G.W. Bush, questioned why the American voters would elect "an obnoxious drunk". In reality, true Reaganism created government subsidized profits and created the CORPORATE WELFARE KINGS to doled out the loan proceeds to the COPO0RATE WELFARE RECIPIENTS with these loans paid back by others. Reagan then called his CORPORATE WELFARE creation as the ingenuity's of "free" enterprise. Finally, the world knew in 1921 when the Polish army defeated the invading Russian army that it couldn't take over the world. Reagan was alive in 1921 but this information escaped him. He was also a spy for J.Edgar Hoover in Hollywood along with Charlton Heston, Jack Warner, Cecil B. DeMille, Kazan and others who used the communist scare to eliminate their competition or in Reagan case for political advantage. That's why Reagan is the world's greatest con man and it has had deadly consequences for the gullible, ignorant American public whose intelligence can never be underestimate, according to H.L. Mencken.