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Reagan was ridiculous and he totally failed in the long run. Granted the other options were likely worse.
When I was a child, Reagan calling out the Soviet Union was ridiculous "cowboy diplomacy", anti-Communism was the hateful thing we read about in "The Crucible", the Berlin Wall had been helping imprison East Germans for a generation and a half, half of Europe was behind the Iron Curtain, the world had 60K nuclear warheads ready to obliterate half of humanity 45 minutes after someone got angry enough (or 45 minutes after a simple mistake, depending), anti-missile systems were "reckless Star Wars schemes", and tankies were still trying to get away with "both sides" false equivalences.
When I was a young adult, there was no Soviet Union, declassification was revealing more historical Communist spies and atrocities than we'd imagined, there was no Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall was a street party, the superpowers were dismantling thousands of warheads a year and no longer had the rest on a hair trigger, tactical missile defense was saving lives and theater missile defense was starting to make intercepts, and (at least for the next couple decades) it seemed like we'd seen the last of tankies.
In the long run maybe we're all dead anyway, but that was an unexpected reprieve for a couple generations at least.
Reagan's anti-communism was his redeeming quality, to be clear.
Well, that was the one quality I was referring to. And it's hard to fault him for less successful attempts to improve the country ... although if I had to pick one ticking time bomb I'd say it's a bit damning that his terms in office were (due to Congress as much as him, to be fair) when US fiscal policy stopped being "borrowing has been an indispensable tool during major wars and the Great Depression, so it's important to stay prepared by getting ahead of our debt burden the rest of the time" and transitioned to the more modern "haha T-bill printer go brrrr".
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How did Reagan fail? Reddit loves to act like he was the worse POTUS ever but he did contribute to USSR collapsing. His economic reforms caused growth to increase versus countries that failed to do the same.
He’s one of the great ones in my book.
Sometimes I just want to bash my head into the wall when people say Reagan was a failure. He was the first neoliberal/Milton Friedman back Potus. He was so incredibly successful Democrats became neoliberals and it’s now a slur against them. I had to quit being a neoliberal because my enemies stole the term. I’d argue they aren’t true neoliberals but ordoliberals would likely be more accurate but still.
The guy with the 1986 amnesty for 2.7m undocumented immigrants? Who as Governor signed the first No Fault Divorce law in the US? Traded the Hughes Amendment for the toothless FOPA? That guy is one of the greats?
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Reagan failed to roll back any of the 'civil rights' era disasters in any significant way. At a minimum, he should have been able to end with a period all of Johnson's "Great Society" nonsense, and destroy the entire 'civil rights' apparatus that had been built. Instead we got modest tax cuts and huge military spending.
What civil rights era disasters and/or apparatus are you referring to here?
The whole of the civil rights era was a disaster that broadly lead us to where we are today. The apparatus I'm referring to are the Justice Departments various offices that investigate and prosecute civil rights crap, the NGOs that feed them, etc.
Let me clarify my question a little. Can you explain why you think the civil rights era was a disaster and what you mean by "where we are today"? I'm vaguely aware of some concerns surrounding the right of free association but I don't know if that's what you're referring to here.
Civil rights destroyed the right of free association in the USA. That's the largest point. Further, it enshrined the concept of disparate impact. Does your policy coincidentally have an impact on blacks? Well then you're racist and your policy is illegal. No, you can't prove that it's not racism but simple differences between different groups. No longer can you just hire the smartest person for the job (Griggs v Duke Power). So everyone needs a Bachelor's degree to prove that they're smart and conscientious when a simple intelligence test would do. And on, and on.
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I think he means that he didn't deliver on what he was elected to do. Bush Jr. was a meh president all things considered, but if you consider "no nation building" that he ran on, he was an unmitigated disaster.
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