Ronald Reagan

[Leoreth]

He was the LEADER of the free world.

Only Americans believe that. For the rest, he was the leader of America.

 

[Arakhor]

His actions directly sped up the process, which could have otherwise potentially been turned around due to some changes in policy, etc...
So, yes. Most certainly.

So the person who arguably completes the act, no matter how little he actually does, should get all the credit and applause for doing it? If that's so, I want to come to your workplace and work the last five minutes of each of your workdays so that I can collect your entire pay-packet for myself.

 

[Quackers]

Which fanatics give Reagan ALL the credit for the ending of the SU? Anyway?

 

[Ergo Sum]

Which fanatics give Reagan ALL the credit for the ending of the SU? Anyway?

The largest portion of the Republican caucus?

 

[BasketCase]

I guess you missed the Rep filibustering the last few years there...

That's irrelevant to what Obama was doing at the time. Obama said he wanted to work with the Republicans; his actions were inconsistent with his words. In reality Obama was merely trying to get the Republicans to grant concessions on policy without offering anything in return.

Obama says he wants to reach across the aisle; he is lying when he says that.

Oh, and Napoleon´s ratings also went up after he left the stage.

Perhaps you're not seeing the Big Picture. Reagan's ratings went up after he left office. Bill Clinton's ratings have not. Nor have the ratings of most other past Presidents.

The fact that someone´s ratings go up after death should actually tell you something about how human memory works.

Nope. It doesn't tell you anything. On the one hand, people sometimes forget stuff. Not so easy with the Internet around. On the other hand, people are free to examine a person more honestly after he's dead, because he's not around to be offended.

(Or that people like him better know they know for sure the person in question is dead.) How it relates to how good someone was in office is entirely unclear, however.

Btw, following your line of reasoning FDR was a way better president then Reagan, since he got elected more often, you know, by the Voters.

You're misunderstanding my line of reasoning. What were his approval ratings? What did people think of him after he left office? What do people think of him now? He doesn't seem to have quite the same dedicated following.....

 

[Cutlass]

Reagan and the Russians


The Cold War ended despite President Reagan's arms buildup, not because of it--or so former President Gorbachev told the authors

by Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein

Shortly after the Berlin Wall was torn down, prominent political leaders and commentators concluded that the U.S. military buildup under President Ronald Reagan had won the Cold War. "We were right to increase our defense budget," Vice President Dan Quayle announced. "Had we acted differently, the liberalization that we are seeking today throughout the Soviet bloc would most likely not be taking place." Even Tom Wicker, a New York Times columnist with impeccable liberal credentials, reluctantly conceded that the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and the Reagan buildup "seemed to impress the Soviets as a challenge that they might not be able to meet."

Hanging tough paid off. Forty years of arms competition, so the argument goes, brought the Soviet economy to the brink of collapse. The Vatican's Secretary of State, Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, said, "Ronald Reagan obligated the Soviet Union to increase its military spending to the limits of insupportability." When the Soviet Union could no longer afford the competition, its leaders decided to end the Cold War. A modified version of this argument holds that the American military buildup simply worsened the Soviet economic quandary; it was the straw that broke the camel's back. Neither the strong nor the weak version of the proposition that American defense spending bankrupted the Soviet economy and forced an end to the Cold War is sustained by the evidence.

The Soviet Union's defense spending did not rise or fall in response to American military expenditures. Revised estimates by the Central Intelligence Agency indicate that Soviet expenditures on defense remained more or less constant throughout the 1980s. Neither the military buildup under Jimmy Carter and Reagan nor SDI had any real impact on gross spending levels in the USSR. At most SDI shifted the marginal allocation of defense rubles as some funds were allotted for developing countermeasures to ballistic defense.

...

As early as the 1970s some officials warned Leonid Brezhnev that the economy would stagnate if the military continued to consume such a disproportionate share of resources. The General Secretary ignored their warnings,

...

Soviet defense spending under Brezhnev and Gorbachev was primarily a response to internal political imperatives--to pressures from the Soviet version of the military-industrial complex. The Cold War and the high levels of American defense spending provided at most an opportunity for leaders of the Soviet military-industrial complex to justify their claims to preferential treatment. Even though the Cold War has ended and the United States is no longer considered a threat by the current Russian leadership, Russian defense spending now consumes roughly as great a percentage of GNP as it did in the Brezhnev years.

...

A far more persuasive reason for the Soviet economic decline is the rigid "command economy" imposed by Stalin in the early 1930s. It did not reward individual or collective effort; it absolved Soviet producers from the discipline of the market; and it gave power to officials who could not be held accountable by consumers. Consequently much of the investment that went into the civilian sector of the economy was wasted.

...

Former Soviet officials insist that Gorbachev's decisions to withdraw Soviet forces from Afghanistan and to end the arms race were made despite the Reagan buildup and SDI.

...

By the time Gorbachev became General Secretary, in March of 1985, he was deeply committed to domestic reform and fundamental changes in Soviet foreign policy. "I, like many others," he observed recently, "knew that the USSR needed radical change.

...

Since he saw no threat of attack by the United States, Gorbachev was not intimidated by the military programs of the Reagan Administration. "These were unnecessary and wasteful expenditures that we were not going to match," he told us.

...

The Carter-Reagan military buildup did not defeat the Soviet Union. On the contrary, it prolonged the Cold War. Gorbachev's determination to reform an economy crippled in part by defense spending urged by special interests, but far more by structural rigidities, fueled his persistent search for an accommodation with the West. That persistence, not SDI, ended the Cold War.

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/politics/foreign/reagrus.htm

The far-fetched notion that Star Wars led to Soviet bankruptcy is belied by Gorbachev's accurate statement that he could build offensive missiles to counter missile defense faster and more cheaply than the U.S. could build those defenses, and by the absence of any panicked Soviet effort to to do so.

http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,227758,00.html

 

[Tahuti]

The Soviet Union collapsed not because of Reagan's leadership but Gorbachov's lack of it.

 

[Cutlass]

The Soviet Union collapsed not because of Reagan's leadership but Gorbachov's lack of it.

No, it was really all over but the fat lady singing even before Gorby took office.

 

[Tahuti]

No, it was really all over but the fat lady singing even before Gorby took office.

Perhaps, but the August Coup of 1991 was pretty much the real nail to the coffin.

 

[Agent327]

That's irrelevant to what Obama was doing at the time. Obama said he wanted to work with the Republicans; his actions were inconsistent with his words. In reality Obama was merely trying to get the Republicans to grant concessions on policy without offering anything in return.

Obama says he wants to reach across the aisle; he is lying when he says that.

So you claim...

Perhaps you're not seeing the Big Picture. Reagan's ratings went up after he left office. Bill Clinton's ratings have not. Nor have the ratings of most other past Presidents.

Incorrect. Also, you cleary mentioned the Voters decide. You can´t have it both ways. So it seems to me it´s you who´s missing out on the big picture here.

Nope. It doesn't tell you anything. On the one hand, people sometimes forget stuff. Not so easy with the Internet around. On the other hand, people are free to examine a person more honestly after he's dead, because he's not around to be offended.

(Or that people like him better know they know for sure the person in question is dead.) How it relates to how good someone was in office is entirely unclear, however.

You think the interent is a reliable source? That explains things... And people do not ´sometimes´forget stuff, they always do. That people are free to examine, doesn´t necessarily imply that they do, BTW.

You're misunderstanding my line of reasoning. What were his approval ratings? What did people think of him after he left office? What do people think of him now? He doesn't seem to have quite the same dedicated following.....

Most people don´t even remember FDR, simply because they have died. Personally I don´t care much about ´how people think of´ anything. I care about facts:

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/politics/foreign/reagrus.htm

http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,227758,00.html

Seems to effectively debunk one of Reagan´s major ´feats´, yet people still ´think´ Reagan caused the USSR to collapse...

 

[kochman]

So the person who arguably completes the act, no matter how little he actually does, should get all the credit and applause for doing it? If that's so, I want to come to your workplace and work the last five minutes of each of your workdays so that I can collect your entire pay-packet for myself.

Which fanatics give Reagan ALL the credit for the ending of the SU? Anyway?

Exactly. I never gave him all the credit. There were many, many factors.

Only Americans believe that. For the rest, he was the leader of America.

He was at the time.

No, he really wasn't.

So he was the leader of the nation with the strongest economy.

Not the free world. I heard we were pretty free at the time, and we did have our own government thank you very much.

Yes, you were free... thanks to the USA standing up to the Soviets after WW2 all the way until 1991.
He was the leader of the free world... doesn't mean he was the ruler of the free world, but if America had crumbled instead of the USSR... who do you think would have stopped the Soviets had they attacked?
We're all very glad they didn't... as Sting sang in "Russians", they knew it wasn't worth the cost. However, had the USA not been there after the defeat of Nazi Germany, the USSR would have gladly continued west... that was their plan before the war anyhow, so why would they have stopped when their military was running as well as it ever had at any point in the Soviet Era?

 

[Ajidica]

thanks to the USA standing up to the Soviets after WW2 all the way until 1991.

Yes we stood up to them, except when we were conciliatory to the Soviets and engaged in a couple massive policy blunders at Yalta and the aftermath of WWII.

doesn't mean he was the ruler of the free world, but if America had crumbled instead of the USSR... who do you think would have stopped the Soviets had they attacked?

The Soviets had no incentive to attack. The Secretary General and the Communist Party could barely manage the territory they had. Their most pressing concerns were over a western invasion of the USSR, not an invasion by the USSR. Even without America, the likelihood of a full-scale Soviet Invasion would be low. They have nothing to gain, everything to loose, and if they did win the invasion, what did they get? They got a massively overextended army facing a popular insurgency with the key industries and resources bombed into uselessness. If the Soviets were to invade Western Europe, the Chinese would likely have invaded the USSR had the invasion happened after the Sino-Soviet split.

However, had the USA not been there after the defeat of Nazi Germany, the USSR would have gladly continued west... that was their plan before the war anyhow, so why would they have stopped when their military was running as well as it ever had at any point in the Soviet Era?

Lord Baal can explain it better then me, but by the end of WWII, the Soviet Army had reached the limits of its faltering supply lines and was running on life support. That is one of the reasons Stalin had originaly aimed for a Finland-like status for most of Eastern Europe. He knew that if America and the UK pressed the issue with force, the Soviet Army would crumble.
The Soviet military was good, but it needed time to regroup and reorganize.

 

[LucyDuke]

He was one of the very few Presidents who actually did manage to reach across "The Aisle". Probably the jewel in Reagan's crown was that he actually got the Jewish vote. (Jews almost always vote strongly to the left)

Every President since has said they want to get the two parties working together, but all of them, right up to Obama today, lied.

"Jews voted for him" added to the list.

Still don't see it.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

He was the leader of the free world...

No he wasn't, and you know it.

By the way, you're also not the greatest democracy in the world, nor the freest nation. Not sure if you bought that nonsense as well, so consider this a pre-emptive. And God doesn't hold a special place in it's heart for the US of A.

You're just another country, get over yourself

 

[Leoreth]

He was at the time.

You base that claim on what, exactly? If someone is a leader of someone else depends on whether they accept him as such. And citizens of other countries, even inside of the NATO (which isn't even all of the "free world", whatever that is at that time), usually didn't. You know why? Mainly because they democratically elected their own leaders, and couldn't care less about whom Americans elected as their leader. No leader-ization without representation, if you want

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I'm rather puzzled by the sentiment. If you protect something, you become it's leader? I want that explained to me.

 

[kochman]

No he wasn't, and you know it.

By the way, you're also not the greatest democracy in the world, nor the freest nation. Not sure if you bought that nonsense as well, so consider this a pre-emptive. And God doesn't hold a special place in it's heart for the US of A.

You're just another country, get over yourself

You base that claim on what, exactly? If someone is a leader of someone else depends on whether they accept him as such. And citizens of other countries, even inside of the NATO (which isn't even all of the "free world", whatever that is at that time), usually didn't. You know why? Mainly because they democratically elected their own leaders, and couldn't care less about whom Americans elected as their leader. No leader-ization without representation, if you want

You guys are 1) taking the phrase the wrong way, and 2) being personally insulted by it...
Not the intent.

The USA was the leader of the free world... not the ruler, not necessarily the best country, just the 1st power within the free world, which made the free world's continuance possible.
There were 2 superpowers at the time... USA and USSR.
USSR was the leader of the communist world. Doesn't mean they ran China...

The Soviets would have gladly waltzed through the rest of Germany, having broken the Nazi War Machine's back. That would've been Austria too... Italy? Why not? They already had all the eastern block.

Anyhow, in the ensuing decades, the USA was the icon, if you will, of democracy. Not the best, just the most powerful, influential.

If that hurts your feeling as a European, it shouldn't! I mean, don't get me wrong, I love Belgium, for example... but did it matter who was the PM of Belgium? Or who was the POTUS? It came down to economic and military might, this status, and is no way indicative of the citizenry, etc. The USA was in the best position to take this role, and did so, being the leading participant in NATO, etc.
It was, after all, military/economic might which stopped the USSR from moving west, and expanding communism in W Europe... not the amazing culture of France or the centuries and centuries of history in Italy... brute force and power...

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

The only insult is to reality. I don't identify with the country I live in, because it's just another country.

By the way, I see you changed from Reagan being the leader to the USA.

I can see a possible definition of leader as in strongest country military and economic, but you cannot make the same case for: Reagan was the leader of the free world.

Because he wasn't.

 

[Ajidica]

The Soviets would have gladly waltzed through the rest of Germany, having broken the Nazi War Machine's back. That would've been Austria too... Italy? Why not? They already had all the eastern block.

Not really. As I have said before, the Soviet army was at the point of collapse. If Stalin had thrown everything into the Western Front, he might have been able to take the rest of Germany. Then he hears about the American troops taking Vladivostok, and things go from bad to worse for Great Leader and Dear Comrade Stalin.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Yes, you were free... thanks to the USA standing up to the Soviets after WW2 all the way until 1991.

"Standing up to the Soviets?" It was the West who was the bully being stood up to, the USSR was the wormy kid who'd had enough and decided to hit the gym so he would never be bullied again.