A relatively honest look at RR's legacy IMO.Certainly no more improbable star has crossed the American political firmament than Ronald Reagan, the former governor of California and 40th president of the United States. Reagan left the presidency in January 1989, the only modern president to emerge from office more popular than when he entered. He was the eternal optimist, amiable but stubborn. He put a happy face on even the grimmest realities, often relying on dubious anecdotes and statistics. He romanticized the past and drew on an essential American optimism about the future. Reagan was perhaps the ultimate television president, a man schooled not in gritty precinct politics but in Hollywood movie acting.
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The mark of Reagan's presidency was paradox. Having campaigned as an implacable foe of government deficit spending, he left office with a federal debt that was nearly triple its level when he was inaugurated. He succumbed, as Bush has, to the fallacious "supply side" economic notion that government revenues rise if taxes are cut. He reviled the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" but ultimately met repeatedly with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and worked out a detente that led in the end to the fall of communism.
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Hero though Reagan was to so many Americans, his legacy is marred. Economically, the Reagan years were epitomized by a freewheeling entrepreneurialism and free spending. But the affluent got more affluent and the poor got poorer. The number of families living below the poverty line increased by one-third. The Reagan administration's zeal for deregulation of industry helped create the savings and loan debacle, which left taxpayers holding the bag for billions of dollars in losses. All of this presaged a recurring malaise among American workers, who continue to see jobs lost to corporate downsizing and outsourcing.
His administration's resistance to federal hegemony in social issues led to significant retreats in civil rights. And Reagan's political caution on the AIDS scourge — an attitude driven by the connection to homosexuality — allowed valuable years to pass before the federal government took an assertive role in researching and preventing the disease.
The old Reagan has been gone for years, hidden within an irreversible fog. But he changed American politics for the long term. Enduring as well is the image: the cowboy hat, the genuine smile, hand aloft in greeting. Even his politics were friendly compared with today's, a lesson to those who hope for as big a legacy.
more (reg. req.)...
http://www.latimes.com/news/specials/obituaries/la-ed-reaganobit6jun06,1,2781655.story?coll=la-home-headlines
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