Liberals Couldn't Ruin Reagan's Reputation
By Nikki Schwab, Washington Whispers
He was a popular president then, and he's definitely a popular president now. But not everyone thought history would look so kindly on Ronald Reagan. Take author Steven Hayward, for example. "I was sure even 10 years ago that Reagan would end up not eulogized but 'Coolidge-ized,' " Hayward said at the American Enterprise Institute this week. "Like the once popular president in the 1920s, Reagan would fair poorly at the hands of the media-academic complex." This served as inspiration for Hayward, who started writing his first book, The Age of Reagan, 1964-1980: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order, in the late 1990s and has a second thick volume due out in August. And after writing 1,616 pages on Reagan, Hayward says the Gipper remains popular. "I'm sure I'm not the only person who has been surprised when over the last decade an unexpected thing happened—Reagan's reputation started to soar and even liberals started to like him," Hayward says. That should be a good prologue for George W. Bush, who liberals hope history trashes.
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Reader Comments
Where is the respect
Where is the respect on this board for the President who won the cold war and changed the paradigm of the US and the world? You would never know Reagan won two landslide elections and was popular enough to have been able to get his VP (Bush 41) elected – the first incumbent Vice-President since Martin van Buren to be elected to the presidency in 150 years.
The economic situation was just as bad back in 1980 as compared to 2009. Reagan had inherited sky high inflation, taxes, gas prices and unemployment but eventually created a 25+ year economic boom and over eight years had rebuilt the military which we were able to use to win the cold war, two gulf wars and for liberal peace keeping all over the world since he left office. For all the concern about debt in the 80's where is your concern about the massive spending by the government the first six months of the Obama presidency?
The Congressional Budget Office is forecasting that the 1 trillion budget deficit in 2009, using the administration's spending assumptions, will equal 13 percent of the total economy, as measured by the gross domestic product which would surpass the record of recent years - 6 percent of GDP, achieved in 1983, during the Reagan administration. Without a doubt, the deficit will be the largest in dollar terms, what exactly are we all getting with these 1-2 trillion dollar deficits starting this year?
life
i'm so tired of the hate--we'll all have to answer to God some day. sadly, that is true wheather you believe that or not.
Bottom 10 at best
Liberals don't have to ruin Reagan's reputation. The current economic mess is entirely the product of the policies of Ronald Reagan as put into place by himself and the utterly awful George W. Bush.
Our current crisis is Reaganomics gone wild, and history is finally catching up with the Great Prevaricator.
I figured it would take history twenty years to drop Reagan to the bottom of the heap where he belongs, but I was hoping the countdown would start from the beginning and not the end of his presidency. The only thing that kept the clock from starting sooner was fact that a Democrat, William Jefferson Clinton, exercised the kind of financial prudence that Republicans talk about, but never carry out.
While millions found Reagan to be a likeable fellow, he was an awful president, and history will judge him to be so.
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