I am a bit older than you and remember poor choices made by Nixon and Reagan. Reagan vetoed the fairness doctrine which enabled news broadcasts to spin facts and bend truths. His foolishness has dumbed down journalism which is loosening our democracy for many Americans. George W and Dick Cheney removed another cornerstone of our hard won democracy by pushing No Child Left Behind down public schools’ throats, leaving little time for critical thinking and anti propaganda curriculum. And here we are…
Ronnie was a prop for others’ mal intent. So many discredited, intellectually dishonest and foolish positions and policies that helped lead us to where we are now.
To a great extent, your first sentence is correct. But the snarling nastiness of Governor Reagan gave an insight into the man's real character that President Reagan did a good job obscuring with charisma.
This is really an intriguing article. Who was a nicer person than Jimmy Carter? Remember those interest rates at nearly 20%? I’m a bit younger and I remember that. The dinner table discussions were totally gas prices and interest rates. I think my bigger reflection would be that extremists didn’t rule and Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neil were great friends and they would hammer out the deals that would lead to a better direction for our Country. Today a lot of programs are not set up to succeed. Has anyone noticed what the results are in health care right now? Everyone has affordable healthcare? At what cost? Insurance companies decide your care and not your doctor! In twenty years years the cost of health insurance has tripled, your doctor can get your third option possibly approved by your insurance company, and your taxes at all levels are paying for less care at a far higher cost. I’m very concerned that we are getting more gimmicks and less substance. We all long for the foresight and wisdom that we need in our elected officials. When we look at just the party we are becoming the problem. Each party needs the best people to step forward. We all win if we get the best people in these arenas where the decisions are made. I don’t think anyone here has an argument to not want the next JFK or Ronald Reagan. People with grit, spine, fortitude. and wisdom. Would you vote for that person? Or would you worry about whether your party was the winner? The answer is the very reason you don’t find those kind on the ballot.
It’s worth remembering that the high interest rates under Carter were due to active Fed policy to combat inflation which had been raging for years. Carter knew that the policy was hurting him politically but he didn’t attempt to fire members of the Fed board.
Reagan’s legacy also includes his utter failure to address HIV/AIDS in the early years of the pandemic and feeble response later.
We should not dismiss Iran/Contra without context of other secret deals and their consequences. It is almost certain that Reagan’s campaign apparatus made secret contact with Iran to arrange a hostage release AFTER the election. What kind of American works behind the back of the lawful government to allow a foreign nation to hold Americans hostage for even 1 day longer?
Reagan supported a secretive proxy war in Afghanistan arranging funding, training, and weapons transfers to loosely organized groups of proxy fighters including many from far beyond Afghanistan including Uigurs, Chechens, Arabs, and more. The CIA funded radical islamists because they expected radical islamists to likely cause the most damage to Soviet interests. Everybody knows about Tora Bora caves where Osama bin Laden hid from US airstrikes in 2001 which were reinforced as military sites by the CIA for the mujaheddin.
And, of course, the context of Iran/Contra was that we were nominally allies with Saddam Hussein of Iraq while secretly selling arms to Iran even as they were engaged in war against each other in order to fund a secretive right-wing military group in Central America.
Taken together all of that paints an extraordinarily bad picture of the USA and its commitment to democracy and rule of law around the world.
We are still experiencing the blowback.
And speaking of the blowback, Reagan failed to capitalize on Carter’s efforts to secure lasting peace for Israel/Palestine. After Carter secured peace between Israel and Egypt (who fought a war in 1973) the US took no active role in pushing the peace process until GHWB took office.
The bottle bill passing is a must in my opinion. I have seen much more trash by the roadside in the past few years and this is the best way to recycle. As long as the profit goes to the right places and not in to any state coffers that can be used for other things. There are poor people who supplement their limited incomes with this and it's a service that helps keep the roadsides clean. Problem is major lobbying on a national basis and winning is certain states. This country needs to get on a major new recycling trend because too much of our consumer spending is on throw away products.
That's interesting, I grew up in 50/60's here in Glens Falls/Queensbury and I don't remember that. Was that for milk bottles? Was that mandatory state law or just being able to sell junk glass to local dealer?
Would’ve been the late 60’s upstate. I’m from the Adirondacks. Bottles were definitely deposit then. I remember as kids we’d pick them up and do returns on them. The amount I might be wrong on, but I think quart size were a dime.
As a kid in Connecticut I remember you could buy soda by the case and the bottles were returnable. Don't know if there was a deposit. Same thing with some beer bottles - this was the 1960s - where I remember my father pouring himself a Naranganset out of a i32-ounce bottle.
I remember how depressed ii was when Reagan won a second term...As President he was very anti-union. His lowered taxes on the very wealthy with a the delusional "trickle down" theory--forcing Bush, his vice president and the next president, to raise taxes because the deficit was so high and the country was in trouble. The release of the American hostages after his first election contributed a great deal to the defeat of Carter...and I do believe he knew about the deal, about the Iran Contra affair. But what I admired about him was that he went against the cold war right wing Republicans and established a real connection with Gorbachev; they really liked each other and that allowed for a breaking down of the terrible cold war rhetoric. And his letter about his alzheimer's was very moving, and real and honest....Although he lied about many things during his speaking about Alzheimer's and his connection for Gorbachev were real and very meaningful.
I had forgotten most of the details with the negotiations with Gorbechev and didn't remember there were four summits. It definitely led to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
i remember what reagan — a past president of the screen actors guild — did to the air traffic controllers. and, as others have mentioned, his utter failure in the face of the hiv/aids crisis.
Thank you, Ken, for shining a light on the Bigger, Better Bottle Bill! Yes, it's working! But folks who run redemption centers are struggling to survive when their costs are going up but their meager 3.5 center per container hasn't changed in decades! Perhaps even more important is the Packaging bill which would require manufacturers to pay for the cost of disposing of their packaging. I can only imagine how fast alternative TRULY biodegradable packaging will show up in our supermarkets if it passes!
The irony of the guy wearing a Trump shirt at the Reagan library is spot on. I’d like to think he had some revelations on his visit. Probably not or he’d rend his garment. RR is just a faded memory for them without style or substance.
Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are present day exemplars of Reaganism and they’ve been declared unmutual RINOs by the former Democrat from Queens.
I disagreed with Reagan and Jerry Solomon on many things some of which I’ve softened on. I’d like to think neither of them would be giving sniveling, groveling performances for a cult leader like Tim Scott, JD Vance and Elise Stefanik are doing. Kristi Noem writes an autobiography bragging about killing a 14 month old puppy for being a puppy and thinks it’s politically a winner. Still thinks that.
Thanks for pointing out how aged Reagan was in ascending to the presidency. I just turned 67.
Like you I was beginning my career as well, stationed in Plattsburgh during the waning months of the Carter administration as an airman. Supporting the man who signed my check seemed logical, yet as time went on, paying 18% on a car loan as he lamented over welfare queens by targeting African Americans made me rethink that. Military service was basically workfare, with a large sign in the entrance of the commissary proclaiming, "We proudly accept food stamps." None of the stars wars money reached my pocket, I earned less the $80k in 8 years before I separated from active duty. The voodoo economic fiasco he began is continued today, as the federal debt he began to accumulate has skyrocketed. Even now the right defends and promotes corporate welfare, on the backs of working Americans. This singular burden is what will eventually financially cripple this nation, as politicians continue to allow those that benefit the most from the infrastructure which government has built and maintains to pay the least.
As "beloved" as Reagan is in the GOP, he would be denounced as a RINO today. No question. He signed a bipartisan immigration bill. As governor, he signed a major gun control bill.
But as telegenic and genial as President Reagan was, in a way that Governor Reagan wasn't, he started the process of destroying the concept of public. This destruction of the public was accelerated by Gingrinchites, neo-cons and the "Tea Party" and is reaching its nadir (hopefully) right now.
Reagan and his ideological heirs have spent the last 50 years trying to undermine any notion of the collective. Collective space. Collective responsibility. The greater good. They fetishized the individual. They've sabotaged our national motto E Pluribus Unum - from many one.
Attack public broadcasting. Destroy national parks with drilling. Poison the air and water for crappy paying jobs. Kill all regulations and rules that define a modern society. They abolished the fairness doctrine in all broadcasting, which has led to the toxic media swamp we have today.
If Trump was nihilism with a snarling face, Reagan was nihilism with a smiling face. Reagan couldn't go as far because it took decades of erosion of norms to unleash fascism fully. But Governor Reagan's nastiness gave a hint to his real character. President Reagan's people would be thrilled with how things are going. Roger Stone was a Reagan aide. Samuel Alito was a Reagan aide.
In some ways, we are lucky that the fascist man of the moment is Trump, not Reagan. Trump is such an obvious gangster that his malicious intentions are clear as day. The smiling, grandfatherly Reagan hid it better.
When I think of Ronald Reagan , the only thing that stands out were his racial dog whistles. Of all the phrases that have been attributed to him the two that stand out in my mind are the “the welfare queen driving the pink Cadillac “ an the “Strapping young buck eating the T-bone steak”. If that isn’t enough to make you shake your head and make you angry, I don’t know what will. He fanned the flames a bigotry and did it with a smile.
I think in the long Haul that Historians will find that the Reagan legacy is largely s myth. Historians of Russia maintain that Gorbachv's reform effort led to the collapse of Soviet power more than anything.Reagan did, and his economic policies made poor economic policies legitimate
Worst of all, his celebration of individualism and economic opportunism and antigovernment sentiment weakened American's sense of social responsibility and deligitiimized government action, exacerbating the nation's current problems. Hardly a positive legacy.
I am a bit older than you and remember poor choices made by Nixon and Reagan. Reagan vetoed the fairness doctrine which enabled news broadcasts to spin facts and bend truths. His foolishness has dumbed down journalism which is loosening our democracy for many Americans. George W and Dick Cheney removed another cornerstone of our hard won democracy by pushing No Child Left Behind down public schools’ throats, leaving little time for critical thinking and anti propaganda curriculum. And here we are…
"anti-propaganda curriculum"?? Does such a thing actually exist?? Would another name be "indoctrination"?? YIKES!!!!!!
Ronnie was a prop for others’ mal intent. So many discredited, intellectually dishonest and foolish positions and policies that helped lead us to where we are now.
Is not the current administration mostly responsible for where we are now?????
Hahaha! Nice one.
Thanks. I thought it was spot on as well.
To a great extent, your first sentence is correct. But the snarling nastiness of Governor Reagan gave an insight into the man's real character that President Reagan did a good job obscuring with charisma.
Fantastic writing. Measured words. Thanks.
A well written article that applies to ALL former Presidents (Kennedy and Clinton for sure).
This is really an intriguing article. Who was a nicer person than Jimmy Carter? Remember those interest rates at nearly 20%? I’m a bit younger and I remember that. The dinner table discussions were totally gas prices and interest rates. I think my bigger reflection would be that extremists didn’t rule and Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neil were great friends and they would hammer out the deals that would lead to a better direction for our Country. Today a lot of programs are not set up to succeed. Has anyone noticed what the results are in health care right now? Everyone has affordable healthcare? At what cost? Insurance companies decide your care and not your doctor! In twenty years years the cost of health insurance has tripled, your doctor can get your third option possibly approved by your insurance company, and your taxes at all levels are paying for less care at a far higher cost. I’m very concerned that we are getting more gimmicks and less substance. We all long for the foresight and wisdom that we need in our elected officials. When we look at just the party we are becoming the problem. Each party needs the best people to step forward. We all win if we get the best people in these arenas where the decisions are made. I don’t think anyone here has an argument to not want the next JFK or Ronald Reagan. People with grit, spine, fortitude. and wisdom. Would you vote for that person? Or would you worry about whether your party was the winner? The answer is the very reason you don’t find those kind on the ballot.
It’s worth remembering that the high interest rates under Carter were due to active Fed policy to combat inflation which had been raging for years. Carter knew that the policy was hurting him politically but he didn’t attempt to fire members of the Fed board.
Reagan’s legacy also includes his utter failure to address HIV/AIDS in the early years of the pandemic and feeble response later.
We should not dismiss Iran/Contra without context of other secret deals and their consequences. It is almost certain that Reagan’s campaign apparatus made secret contact with Iran to arrange a hostage release AFTER the election. What kind of American works behind the back of the lawful government to allow a foreign nation to hold Americans hostage for even 1 day longer?
Reagan supported a secretive proxy war in Afghanistan arranging funding, training, and weapons transfers to loosely organized groups of proxy fighters including many from far beyond Afghanistan including Uigurs, Chechens, Arabs, and more. The CIA funded radical islamists because they expected radical islamists to likely cause the most damage to Soviet interests. Everybody knows about Tora Bora caves where Osama bin Laden hid from US airstrikes in 2001 which were reinforced as military sites by the CIA for the mujaheddin.
And, of course, the context of Iran/Contra was that we were nominally allies with Saddam Hussein of Iraq while secretly selling arms to Iran even as they were engaged in war against each other in order to fund a secretive right-wing military group in Central America.
Taken together all of that paints an extraordinarily bad picture of the USA and its commitment to democracy and rule of law around the world.
We are still experiencing the blowback.
And speaking of the blowback, Reagan failed to capitalize on Carter’s efforts to secure lasting peace for Israel/Palestine. After Carter secured peace between Israel and Egypt (who fought a war in 1973) the US took no active role in pushing the peace process until GHWB took office.
He absolutely ignored the HIV/AIDS pandemic causing massive suffering and death because of bigotry.
AND he had the solar panels removed from the White House roof that Carter had just installed a few years before.
The bottle bill passing is a must in my opinion. I have seen much more trash by the roadside in the past few years and this is the best way to recycle. As long as the profit goes to the right places and not in to any state coffers that can be used for other things. There are poor people who supplement their limited incomes with this and it's a service that helps keep the roadsides clean. Problem is major lobbying on a national basis and winning is certain states. This country needs to get on a major new recycling trend because too much of our consumer spending is on throw away products.
I think quart bottles were a dime when I was a kid and smaller bottles a nickel.
That's interesting, I grew up in 50/60's here in Glens Falls/Queensbury and I don't remember that. Was that for milk bottles? Was that mandatory state law or just being able to sell junk glass to local dealer?
Would’ve been the late 60’s upstate. I’m from the Adirondacks. Bottles were definitely deposit then. I remember as kids we’d pick them up and do returns on them. The amount I might be wrong on, but I think quart size were a dime.
Or I could be losing it. That’s possible, too. 😉
As a kid in Connecticut I remember you could buy soda by the case and the bottles were returnable. Don't know if there was a deposit. Same thing with some beer bottles - this was the 1960s - where I remember my father pouring himself a Naranganset out of a i32-ounce bottle.
I also remember Reagan taking the solar panels off the White House, thumbing his nose at renewable energy.
I remember how depressed ii was when Reagan won a second term...As President he was very anti-union. His lowered taxes on the very wealthy with a the delusional "trickle down" theory--forcing Bush, his vice president and the next president, to raise taxes because the deficit was so high and the country was in trouble. The release of the American hostages after his first election contributed a great deal to the defeat of Carter...and I do believe he knew about the deal, about the Iran Contra affair. But what I admired about him was that he went against the cold war right wing Republicans and established a real connection with Gorbachev; they really liked each other and that allowed for a breaking down of the terrible cold war rhetoric. And his letter about his alzheimer's was very moving, and real and honest....Although he lied about many things during his speaking about Alzheimer's and his connection for Gorbachev were real and very meaningful.
"
I had forgotten most of the details with the negotiations with Gorbechev and didn't remember there were four summits. It definitely led to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Even evil Richard Nixon opened up China. We are lucky that not everything this men did was destructive.
i remember what reagan — a past president of the screen actors guild — did to the air traffic controllers. and, as others have mentioned, his utter failure in the face of the hiv/aids crisis.
What did you find wrong with firing air traffic controllers at the time???
Thank you, Ken, for shining a light on the Bigger, Better Bottle Bill! Yes, it's working! But folks who run redemption centers are struggling to survive when their costs are going up but their meager 3.5 center per container hasn't changed in decades! Perhaps even more important is the Packaging bill which would require manufacturers to pay for the cost of disposing of their packaging. I can only imagine how fast alternative TRULY biodegradable packaging will show up in our supermarkets if it passes!
Good points. The 3.5-cent return for bottle centers is too little and this would help those businesses.
The irony of the guy wearing a Trump shirt at the Reagan library is spot on. I’d like to think he had some revelations on his visit. Probably not or he’d rend his garment. RR is just a faded memory for them without style or substance.
Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are present day exemplars of Reaganism and they’ve been declared unmutual RINOs by the former Democrat from Queens.
I disagreed with Reagan and Jerry Solomon on many things some of which I’ve softened on. I’d like to think neither of them would be giving sniveling, groveling performances for a cult leader like Tim Scott, JD Vance and Elise Stefanik are doing. Kristi Noem writes an autobiography bragging about killing a 14 month old puppy for being a puppy and thinks it’s politically a winner. Still thinks that.
Thanks for pointing out how aged Reagan was in ascending to the presidency. I just turned 67.
Yeah, Reagan was considered way too old to be president at the time, but these days he's just a kid.
Like you I was beginning my career as well, stationed in Plattsburgh during the waning months of the Carter administration as an airman. Supporting the man who signed my check seemed logical, yet as time went on, paying 18% on a car loan as he lamented over welfare queens by targeting African Americans made me rethink that. Military service was basically workfare, with a large sign in the entrance of the commissary proclaiming, "We proudly accept food stamps." None of the stars wars money reached my pocket, I earned less the $80k in 8 years before I separated from active duty. The voodoo economic fiasco he began is continued today, as the federal debt he began to accumulate has skyrocketed. Even now the right defends and promotes corporate welfare, on the backs of working Americans. This singular burden is what will eventually financially cripple this nation, as politicians continue to allow those that benefit the most from the infrastructure which government has built and maintains to pay the least.
Support Ukraine.
As "beloved" as Reagan is in the GOP, he would be denounced as a RINO today. No question. He signed a bipartisan immigration bill. As governor, he signed a major gun control bill.
But as telegenic and genial as President Reagan was, in a way that Governor Reagan wasn't, he started the process of destroying the concept of public. This destruction of the public was accelerated by Gingrinchites, neo-cons and the "Tea Party" and is reaching its nadir (hopefully) right now.
Reagan and his ideological heirs have spent the last 50 years trying to undermine any notion of the collective. Collective space. Collective responsibility. The greater good. They fetishized the individual. They've sabotaged our national motto E Pluribus Unum - from many one.
Attack public broadcasting. Destroy national parks with drilling. Poison the air and water for crappy paying jobs. Kill all regulations and rules that define a modern society. They abolished the fairness doctrine in all broadcasting, which has led to the toxic media swamp we have today.
If Trump was nihilism with a snarling face, Reagan was nihilism with a smiling face. Reagan couldn't go as far because it took decades of erosion of norms to unleash fascism fully. But Governor Reagan's nastiness gave a hint to his real character. President Reagan's people would be thrilled with how things are going. Roger Stone was a Reagan aide. Samuel Alito was a Reagan aide.
In some ways, we are lucky that the fascist man of the moment is Trump, not Reagan. Trump is such an obvious gangster that his malicious intentions are clear as day. The smiling, grandfatherly Reagan hid it better.
When I think of Ronald Reagan , the only thing that stands out were his racial dog whistles. Of all the phrases that have been attributed to him the two that stand out in my mind are the “the welfare queen driving the pink Cadillac “ an the “Strapping young buck eating the T-bone steak”. If that isn’t enough to make you shake your head and make you angry, I don’t know what will. He fanned the flames a bigotry and did it with a smile.
I think in the long Haul that Historians will find that the Reagan legacy is largely s myth. Historians of Russia maintain that Gorbachv's reform effort led to the collapse of Soviet power more than anything.Reagan did, and his economic policies made poor economic policies legitimate
Worst of all, his celebration of individualism and economic opportunism and antigovernment sentiment weakened American's sense of social responsibility and deligitiimized government action, exacerbating the nation's current problems. Hardly a positive legacy.
Major