Ronald Reagan

[amadeus]

I'm not sure what you mean here. Do you mean that FDR is one of the most idealized presidents, or that FDR is one of the worst presidents? Cause in the latter case, I've got a nice list that I'd consider worse than the man so popular he scored four terms.

In some cases, the more terms they win, the worse they are. In response to your question: FDR was both.

 

[aronnax]

In some cases, the more terms they win, the worse they are. In response to your question: FDR was both.

That makes absolutely no sense. If FDR was so terrible, why did he get elected a 3rd and 4th time?

And also, it's a pretty thin statement to make as well because FDR is the only US president to serve more than 2 terms.

 

[amadeus]

That makes absolutely no sense. If FDR was so terrible, why did he get elected a 3rd and 4th time?

If the PAP is so terrible, why do they keep getting re-elected?

And also, it's a pretty thin statement to make as well because FDR is the only US president to serve more than 2 terms.

I meant for it to apply to two-term presidents as well.

 

[kramerfan86]

It does. Reagan's average ratings are well above average. His best-ever approval rating? Not so hot. George Dubya's got him beat by a country mile.

57% does not constitute huge though and someone pointed out that when you take the averages of recent presidents he is hardly blowing them out of the water

Dude?? This is the United States we're talking about here. Around here, the voter is the final arbiter of a president's quality. And, here's another point where Reagan kicks butt: the ratings of his Presidency continued to improve after he left office. As time passes, the voters have been looking more favorably upon Him.

No, in no metric should one ever use general popularity as the gold standard for quality IMO. Looking at gallup since they conveniently list their averages, Bill Clinton actually had a higher average gallup approval rating, i guess by your own standard he is a greater president then Reagan right? HW who was only a one termer had a better approval rating on average than both of them, guess he was the best modern era president right? Final arbiter has spoken!

Oh and fun fact, Clinton's approval has kind of trickled up as time passes along too.

 

[aronnax]

If the PAP is so terrible, why do they keep getting re-elected?

The PAP wasn't terrible. As flawed as the system was against opposition parties, it is wrong to say that the PAP had no popular support and didn't downright win the previous elections.

I doubt you actually know anything about Singaporean politics aside from a few buzzwords so don't walk into something you know nothing about. As much as I am oppose to the PAP on certain policies and ideologies, I cannot deny that they have a good track record in governance and in economic policy and that they were elected time and time again because the people genuinely supported them. The 2011 General election is easily the most competitive and fairest election since 1959 and the PAP still secured 60.1% of the popular vote.

Now, back to my origin question, if FDR was worse because he was elected 4 times, why was he reelected with a 60.8%, 54.7% and a 53.4% in popular vote.

I meant for it to apply to two-term presidents as well.

Still makes no sense.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

And lo, he stood before the Brandenburg Gate and spoketh, "Tear down this wall". Angels wept, the foundation beneath the wicked divide torn asunder, yadi, yadi, yadi, he won the war singlesentencely.

Questions?

 

[Tycho Brahe]

Reagan was the first solid republican president after the mess with Nixon. He was the voice (one of them) against porn, drugs and the whole counter-culture. "Back to normal" after the moral decay of the 60ies and 70ies.

Writing this, I'm quite clear on why Gerald Ford was/is consideret a failure? Maybe because he wasn't elected? Like, you know, GW Bush.

 

[useless]

I love how Obama is considered to be a "Messiah" of the left by sections of the right, yet they do not see the irony nor hypocrisy of the ascension of Ronald Reagan by them as some sort of hero.

 

[BasketCase]

Actually,Obama is not all that. A lot of "true" lefties are really disappointed with him right now. The only reason they still support him is because they prefer wishy-washy Obama over Gingrich or Romney.

No, in no metric should one ever use general popularity as the gold standard for quality IMO.

That's what elections are all about. General popularity isn't merely the gold standard, it's the ONLY standard. A President is elected based on which candidate got the most votes, and that's the end of it.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

That may be, but that still doesn't make it the gold standard for quality.

 

[Core Imposter]

The 70's were pretty dismal. It was a decade ruined by crooked republicans and weak democrats all started by misguided democrats in the 60's (Vietnam War anyone?).

The 80's were a return to prosperity. Although Regan gets too much credit. The technology boom was the reason the economy recovered in the 80's, not Reagan. Just like I don't give Clinton credit for the technology boom (WWW) in the 90's that energized our economy. Presidents don't have as much influence over the economy as most people think in my opinion.

To what degree if any do you credit a leader for inspiration?

 

[holy king]

And lo, he stood before the Brandenburg Gate and spoketh, "Tear down this wall". Angels wept, the foundation beneath the wicked divide torn asunder, yadi, yadi, yadi, he won the war singlesentencely.

Questions?

everyone knows david hasselhoff brought down the wall.

 

[useless]

Nah it wasn't the citizens of the countries struggling against the oppressive communist system, it was some senile dude.

 

[Cutlass]

I ask the same thing about any president, save for a few. FDR was one of the worst.

What's special about Reagan? Well, he had a lot of people charmed, he used a lot of libertarian rhetoric, and I think the country was looking for someone to rally around after the dismal 1970s. I wonder how things would have played out of George H.W. Bush had been the GOP nominee in 1980.

FDR was only the "worst" if what you judge him on is the fact that you oppose freedom and prosperity. If freedom and prosperity are something you actually want, then FDR becomes among the best.


As for that ridiculous fiction that Reagan won the Cold War, it's just that, ridiculous. And if a lot of people believe it, that just demonstrates how effective a good propaganda campaign can be.

 

[kochman]

The Soviet Union was already heading down the tubes. Reagan could have sat in his office like a senile old man and watch the USSR crumble.
NOTE: I'm not making this up as I go along, this is essentialy Kissinger's analysis. The Soviet Union was so fundamentaly unsound by this point that it was going to collapse anyhow. Reagan simply made it happen a bit faster because Gorby was rather pathetic in foreign policy and leaped at the chance to get foreign support as his domestic support was crumbling.
According to Kissinger, Reagan showed little understanding of foreign policy and relied mostly of his apparent naivite and good will to cajole foreign leaders. If Gorby hadn't been quite so desperate for support and was more like Brezhnev, Kruschev, or (God help us) Stalin: Reagan would have done jack and the world would have known it.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact states were, for the most part, liberalizing. We all know about Walesa and Solidarity, movements like that were not uncommon. Reformists had already been elected in most of Eastern Europe under a combination of Gladnost/Perestroika and Gorby's rejection of the Brezhnev Doctrine.
Reagan had little, if anything to do with Gladnost/Perestroika as both were key components of Gorby's ideology. Gorby was no Communist hard-liner. He was very much Social Democrat in his outlook.

Reagan sped it up... that's what I said... If the USSR could have spent less money on military, there would have been more money to stock those empty supermarket shelves...
It's simple.

You also don't think that the CIA/Reagan's influence had anything to do with supporting the liberalizing movements???!!!

 

[tonberry]

I ask the same thing about any president, save for a few. FDR was one of the worst.

What's special about Reagan? Well, he had a lot of people charmed, he used a lot of libertarian rhetoric, and I think the country was looking for someone to rally around after the dismal 1970s. I wonder how things would have played out of George H.W. Bush had been the GOP nominee in 1980.

He may have used a lot of libertarian rhetoric but he certainly didn’t apply it. He turn the world biggest creditor into the biggest debitor, he was quite possibly the least libertarian of all US presidents.

 

[Ajidica]

Reagan sped it up... that's what I said... it's really not that hard of a concept to grasp.

Any 'speeding up' that Reagan did was based on Gorby being as desperate as a dateless girl before the prom then Reagan being any sort of God-Sent Texas Ranger of Freedom.

If the USSR could have spent less money on military, there would have been more money to stock those empty supermarket shelves...

Debatable. If we are assuming that Brezhnev did not make any changes and left it all up to Gorby (and that Andropov/Chernenko died soon after entering office), Gorby simply didn't have the time or political capital to force through changes needed to weaken the conservative Communists and ensure Perestroika/Gladnost worked. Instead, what he got was a collapsing system that everybody in the USSR and Warsaw Pact could see was collapsing.
All of that is assuming the USSR's problems could have been patched over simply by throwing money at something rather than fostering actual development, which needed more time.

You need to research CIA in the Cold War if that is the case.

Given the activities of the CIA in the Cold War, they hardly predispose me to liking them, or trusting their covert actions would bring about liberty and democracy.

 

[kochman]

Any 'speeding up' that Reagan did was based on Gorby being as desperate as a dateless girl before the prom then Reagan being any sort of God-Sent Texas Ranger of Freedom.

Reagan had the realization that Gorby was without said date, and acted accordingly.

Given the activities of the CIA in the Cold War, they hardly predispose me to liking them, or trusting their covert actions would bring about liberty and democracy.

It's not a popularity contest. The fact is, they were supporting opposition movements in the Soviet Bloc...

 

[Camikaze]

Moderator Action: Moved kochman's and Ajidica's most recent posts on the subject from this thread. Please confine the discussion to this thread or the 'Why Communism Failed' thread.


_________________



Saying that Reagan caused the collapse of the USSR due to Star Wars strikes me as kinda like saying Jimmy Carter caused the collapse of the USSR due to the grain embargo. Sure, an escalation of the arms race by Reagan had the inadvertent effect of allowing Gorbachev to more easily shift doctrine, but so did the grain embargo. Both were factors. Doesn't mean Reagan or Carter can take the credit for the collapse. It could've been any President sitting in the chair when things really hit the fan. It just so happened to be Reagan.

It's important to note that Reagan's aggressiveness early on, if anything, actually delayed the transition from the old guard to the new. It made Andropov and then Chernenko far more wary of the changes that would inevitably result in collapse. That seems to have been Reagan's main direct impact on proceedings.

 

[bombshoo]

Given the activities of the CIA in the Cold War, they hardly predispose me to liking them, or trusting their covert actions would bring about liberty and democracy.

To be fair to Kochman, the CIA/Reagan/Thatcher/Pope support for the Solidarity movement when martial law was imposed was fairly important. Poland might be one of the few places they behaved themselves fairly well, amassing funds and support for the movement within Poland pretty much peacefully.

Reagan sped it up... that's what I said... If the USSR could have spent less money on military, there would have been more money to stock those empty supermarket shelves...
It's simple.

Ajidica is right about the USSR being about ready to keel over on its own though. This can't even be attributed to only spending problems as it really was a lot deeper than that. For instance, you mentioned empty grocery stores. There wasn't even shortages on a lot of items- it's just the quality was terrible or they were way overproducing. It wasn't only a money problem, it was far more problems with communication and organization.

Even if you think Reagan sped up the fall of the USSR, I am not sure that was for the best in the end. A more controlled collapse might have much better for the former USSR than what they ended up with.

I do have to admit at least Reagan mostly did try to help the whole thing come to an end peacefully, rather than attempting to gloat about it or force it to fall into complete chaos out of spite.