Republicans, meanwhile, are left to rally enthusiasm for a conservative who raised taxes, expanded the size of government, ran some of the largest deficits in American history, and appeased the Evil Empire.

And, as Milk reminded me, at one point opposed new laws to discriminate against gays and lesbians. They keeping using this name Reagan - I do not think it means what they think it means!

Republicans, meanwhile, are left to rally enthusiasm for a conservative who raised taxes, expanded the size of government, ran some of the largest deficits in American history, and appeased the Evil Empire.

And Iran-Contra. Don't forget Iran-Contra.

No creepy cult of "personality" there.

Why do I get the impression that these folks are the type who demand that their significant others don Reagan masks when they have sex?

Look, we need to stay reality based. Reagan cut taxes, yes, he passed tax increases in the mid-1980s to roll back some of his tax cuts but taxes fell as a share of GDP and tax rates declined. Taxes were 19-1/2 percent of GDP in 1981 and were only 18-1/2 percent in 1989. Likewise on spending, non-defense discretionary spending averaged 5 percent of GDP in the late 1970s and Reagan cut it to 3-1/2 percent of GDP. He cut welfare and UI programs as well. Yes, he was horrible on deficits.

And when you ask them why Reagan was great they generally point to three things - deregulation, the downfall of the USSR and restoring a healthy economy.

Unfortunately, these are all myths. Carter began deregulation (ICC, which was a good thing IMO), while Reagan continued the trend in dangerous ways, leading to the S&L failures. The USSR failed because of its economy, which was a surprise to the CIA when it happened. And the economy was largely due to a combination of Fed initiatives (Paul Volker was appointed by Carter) and industries adapting Japanese style management.

The "President Reagan" of Republican hagiography isn't much like the President Reagan of American history. I would think that a look at reality might help the Republicans change their course so they put themselves into a position where they will be able to win elections again.

Just call me Johnny One note: The Republican party is a de facto hate group practicing domestic terrorism, and it needs to be treated as such - by the media and by the justice system. It's mission, values and goals are all aimed at treasonous activity: undermining the Constitution, practicing racism and bigotry and undermining government.

Danp, don't forget that Reagan also had the ongoing collapse of oil prices to allow things to get better while he ran massive deficits that were helpful in keeping the economy going.

Reagan was a mediocre president, at best.

Reagan cut taxes

He raised payroll taxes, thus letting workers subsidize the wealthy.

Rana,

As Milton Friedman said, it is spending that is taxation. Whether you collect the taxes now or in the future does not matter. Reagan increased spending but failed to pay for his spending increases. The Voodoo Economics folks who have taken over the Republican Party make all sorts of excuses for Reagan's irresponsible decisions in this area, but their excuses are invalid. Most of them know that their excuses are invalid.

Replacing taxes with borrowing is utterly irresponsible. Once upon a time, Republicans would have been livid about such behavior, now they make mendacious excuses for it.

Not really surprised about the voting for Ronny, but, considering the composition of the present Party, I would have thought Jefferson Davis would have received more votes.

When Reagan was acting he was always given a "free Lunch." He believed in the Free Lunch. It was central to both his actions and his nostrums. The truth is Reagan was deluded. The studios were paying for Reagan's free lunch. There really is no such thing as a free lunch. Never has been. Never will be. Somebody always pays.

American taxpayers paid for Ronnie's free lunch, that's why I picked that nick. Between the dishonest excuses for the deficits, the massive spending increases under Reagan, the mendacious claims about the Laffer Curve and the rest of their Voodoo Economics, I decided to mock Reagan every time I post.

Yeah, those Democraps sure have a "deeper bench".

Just for starters:

LBJ- totally screwed up a winnable war. Destroyed the individual states traditional right to run their own school systems.
The Great (sic) Society - want to see why throwing money a minorities is a waste - look no further.

JFK- Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis, Berlin Wall, Assasination of President Diem, Gave credibility to Marxist trained "civil rights" leaders

Truman: Unpopular war totally mismanaged, terrible economic record, lowest ratings of a President

Carter/Clinton - who would defend them?

FDR: First Socialist President, egomaniac ( all Presidents had felt 2 terms were sufficuient, not him), Sold out Eastern Europe and created the Soviet Empire at Yalta ( felt "Papa" Stalin was a better man than Churchill), tried to pack the Supreme Court

Wow- what a sterling, in depth bunch.

And yet, fred t, even with your cherry-picked criticisms, you still cannot find a Republican since Ike who was better.

Reagan opened the floodgates in leading Americans believe that their way of life is non negotiable -- a belief that has lead us to increase our dependence on foreign oil, engage in disastrous foreign policy, and borrow heavily from future generations. Reagan may have very well set us on our current course of collapse that was accelerated by George W. who, overall, sought to emulate Reagan.

Fred T - Run out of space for Franklin Pierce and his ancestor?

My favorite Republican president is Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.

OK, technically he's not a Republican, but he's intimidated and impoverished his people, and isn't that close enough?

Let's see Fred. As usual a conservative repub bases nothing on facts or presents a point entirely out of context from reality.
Wow what a sterling moron.

Mid-to-late 20th century is progress, for that crowd.

Steve, how in the world did Wilson's name get on the list of competent Democrats?

I think they're also hamstrung by their preference that people *not* study history, so they have to focus on a brand that people can easily associate. You'd think that Teddy and Ike would get the occasional nod, just from someone looking to appear to 'think outside the box'... but das base doesn't immediately recognize them, I guess.

The problem with Reagan and Bush is that they were really liberal Democrats. Reagan until he got rich and started paying taxes and wised up was practically a lifelong Democrat. He was a supporter of the satanic Franklin Roosevelt.

Not paying taxes and collecting relief are really Democratic ideals--two methods of feeding from the public trough. Supply side and trough side are different views of the same thing--deficit spending in order to achieve big government.

Bush was an ultra-liberal in every area but religion, which shouldn't really count as a political factor. Big government, astronomical deficits, affirmative action, Woodie Wilson style "making the world save for democracy," exporting feminism, and so forth.

Eisenhower was the last Republican president that my rock-ribbed Republican-voting forebears approved of. After 1963, the GOP was gradually subverted by the Reich-Republican cabal, the third force in American politics.

The adulation these guys give Reagan is not really predicated on his record, but his enduring popularity. He is the proverbial safe bet. Believe me, if Reagan's public approval ratings were as low as GWB's, he would never have suffered beatification. Reagan himself may not have been a Reich-Republican, but his administration was packed with them.

PR gestures, pseudo-piety, and spin-doctoring can't save the Reich-Republicans, who are at heart Constitutional apostates. Only a thorough purge of these types will revive the GOP.

Now, what about those Reich-Democrats?

My favorite president of my lifetime is Al Gore, who was the legitimately elected President of the United States in 2000.

Unfortunately he was prevented from taking office by a bloodless coup engineered by a cabal of career white collar crooks who attempted to steal the election with massive voter disenfranchisement and fraud, and then when that failed, turned to a bunch of corrupt, partisan Republican hacks on the Supreme Court who egregiously and sneeringly violated their oaths of office to put their hand-picked stooge in the White House.

I believe that at the dawn of the 21st century, Al Gore was -- and still is -- the single person most qualified to serve as President of the USA.

With his ongoing work to educate and advocate around the need to deal with anthropogenic global warming by making a rapid transition to a post-carbon, sustainable energy economy based on harvesting limitless, abundant, free wind and solar energy, Al Gore is in my view stepping up to a challenge greater than anything that confronted any other president in US history. Indeed, the best thing that President Obama could do with regard to the closely interconnected issues of climate/environment, energy and economy would be to implement the ten-year plan that Gore's organization has put forward.

The blatant theft of the 2000 election was a tragedy for all of humanity, not only because it foisted the corrupt and criminal Cheney-Bush regime upon the world, but because it denied the world the vision and leadership of Al Gore at such a crucial time. Literally hundreds of millions of human lives, and much of the Earth's rich, diverse biosphere, will almost certainly be lost in coming decades as a direct result of that heinous crime.

The difference between George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan is that Ronald Reagan was a trained, career actor (a grade B actor to be sure, but a trained actor nonetheless) who played the role of John Wayne playing the role of President.

Whereas George W. Bush was a career white collar crook, who did a drunken frat-party impression of Ronald Reagan playing the role of John Wayne playing the role of President.

Reagan "wising" up on taxes was only because he and Nancy could not compete financially with the members of his "Kitchen Cabinet". They were the poor kids, relatively, on the block. They didn't have the financial clout of oil, steel, auto dealerships, department stores and real estate that prevailed in those functions. Even that Cabinet was responsible for getting Ronny into land deals at Rancho California which he parlayed into his ranch up coast. They were the same who provided the mansion in Bel Air upon his retirement from government. Ronny made money making movies, but, he never had the wherewithal of Nancy's very wealthy friends. But, they made him their spokesperson and they reaped the rewards of his tax policies.

no one's buying tickets to the annual Lincoln-Taft Dinner.

Come for the emancipation, stay for the portion sizes!

Both Wilson and JFK look considerably worse when seen in a historical light. Especially Wilson, who achieved very little of his grand dreams and who was, from memory, something of a segregationist?

Truman is well-remembered now but was a domestic disaster and even more unpopular than GWB when he left office. His desegration of the Army led to General Colin Powell and hence, directly, to President Barack Obama (in terms of making a black face in a 'front rank' role acceptable to the American populace).

I would argue GWB's lasting legacy (besides 'resolving' Iraq ie continuing a 20+ year American engagement with the place) will be 2 successive African-American Secretaries of State (see above), which took black Americans out of the 'ghetto' of domestic cabinet roles into the front line of what people trust their president to do.

Ronald Reagan was something of a domestic disaster: corruption, the S&Ls and soaring deficits.

LBJ has been somewhat rehabilitated by history for his domestic achievements, which were stupendous.

So, on the foreign policy front, has Richard Nixon.

The interesting one to watch is Jimmy Carter, who now seems quite prescient (if damaging to the liberal cause in his presidency). Domestically he also kicked off deregulation and the increase in armaments spending.

What about Silent Cal? Doesn't he have any fans among the republican faithful?

You have to believe they've polled this Reagan crap with voters. There is a good number of people in their 40s and 50s who might actually buy into the Morning in a America crap and harken for the halcyon glimmering golden days of youth where their streams weren't poisoned and war, cancer, and debt weren't lurking around every corner.

Reagan's cult seems to be modeled on JFK's but as usual with Republicans it's all artifice and Reagan is a Potemkin president. They took the image of JFK and RFK and packaged grafted it onto a Hollywood simpleton.

I like this fred t. guy, he's a window into the soul of a true apparatchik. I don't give a shit about making two columns and checking off boxes for Republicans versus Democrats. LBJ certainly led us into a disasterous war that crippled our economy in the long term. A "winnable war" I don't think so, Nixon left with his tail between his legs after wiping out 1.5 million Cambodians. What's the legacy of Reagan? Creating the blowback that led to 9-11 because he was asleep at the wheel while party ideologues went haywire funding the mujhadeen. fred t. Reagan's an utter failure with the long view of history.

JFK...Cuban Missile Crisis

Yes, Fred, he surely fucked that up, didn't he? That's why we've all been dead for 47 years — the Soviets nuked us out of existence back in October '62.

The achilles heel of many presidents has been the addiction to 'secret ops' or covert operations.

Eisenhower (came to fruit as Bay of Pigs, and eventually the 1979 Iran Revolution), JFK (Cuba, Vietnam), Nixon (Secret Bombings etc.), Carter (Rescue Mission), Reagan (Iran Contra) and GWB (extraordinary rendition, torture etc.).

It will be interesting to see if Obama can avoid that particular trap. The Pakistan fuse is already lit.

I applaud Luther for his fine efforts at NEWSPEAK.

Republicans have always been at war with George Bush.

grining cat

JFK looks bad in retrospect:

- no great domestic innovations. 'bounced' into doing anything on civil rights (and was cautious there due to opposition by his own party)

- reckless personal life-- women, mobsters

- sisyphean quest on Cuba which may have led to his own assassination. A poisonous legacy of secret projects and efforts to 'get' Castro, using the Mob and the Exiles

- reckless confrontation with Soviet Union which nearly led to nuclear war

- in granting tacit permission for the assassination of Ngo Diem, trapped the US without an exit route in Vietnam, the most disastrous single action of the USA in the 20th Century

He was a man who achieved more by his death, in many ways, than by his life.

JFK looks bad in retrospect with a narrow application of history and slim hold of the facts.

He's not a great president by any means (not sure if any president operating with a shadow government behind his or her back and over their shoulder can truly be "great") and the cult around JFK rewrites history to serve their own purposes with regularity. He's the real deal compared to Potemkin Reagan though.

What about Silent Cal? Doesn't he have any fans among the republican faithful?

Actually, Reagan himself was much enamored of Coolidge. Bizarre to say, Reagan was probably better-read in American history than most current conservative leaders.

The difference between George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan is that Ronald Reagan was a trained, career actor (a grade B actor to be sure, but a trained actor nonetheless) who played the role of John Wayne playing the role of President.

Whereas George W. Bush was a career white collar crook, who did a drunken frat-party impression of Ronald Reagan playing the role of John Wayne playing the role of President.

Brilliant.

Hoover was Hoover

Well don't forget, cmdicely on these pages yesterday explained that Hoover ended the recession that began with the financial panic of 1929.

Real Republicans look fondly back, not to the mid-to-late 20th century, but to the early 20th century, with TR, Taft, and especially Coolidge. Productivity growth, gdp growth, and technological innovation were unusually high under Coolidge.

Bush I liberated Kuwait and began the 8-year expansion that Clinton Democrats have taken credit for. His failure was that he had no idea how he had done so, and didn't even know in late 1992 that the economy was in fact expanding.

Now that gasoline is cheaper, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than when Bush II took office, and with alternative energy supplies increasing at about 100% per year, a reappraisal of his energy policies might be in order.

But then, Paulson and Bernanke are working 24/7 to reverse the deflation in fuel prices, as they are working to reverse the deflation in housing prices and everything else. With any luck, Americans will take their Bush/Obama stimulus money to the bank instead of spending all of it, which will reduce personal debt and permit an economic expansion to begin in a couple years. Immediate (that is, in 2009 and 2010) demand for most manufactured goods can be stimulated with the money no longer going for gasoline purchases.

"The Market" (a misnomer for "everybody") has made a remarkable adjustment this year. Democrats are trying to prevent the "destruction" part of "creative destruction", but the "creative" part of "the economy" (a misnomer for "what everyone is buying and selling") is doing quite well.

If cmdicely's appraisal of Hoover's economic policies is correct, the current recession ought to have ended just about now. We probably won't know until we know whether the housing market truly bottomed out, but mortgage refinancing is at very high rates, and there are lots of anecdotes (not yet "data") to the effect that the surplus of homes on the market is beginning to clear.

yours truly, and Happy New Year, everyone

from

the contrary marketeer.

Danp on January 6, 2009 at 9:37 AM,

has it about right.

Volker pursued a "strong dollar" policy not a "weak dollar" policy, which provided a foundation for later growth (including the adoption of Japanese manufacturing techniques [mostly created in the U.S.] that he describes), after the Carter/Reagan recession ended. It's a shame that Carter believed he was punishing us Americans for our sins (and was telling us to get used to being poorer) instead of laying the foundation for growth.

The S&L debacle happened in part because Republicans (in executive and legislative branches) gutted the regulatory apparatus. It would have happened anyway (after the runaway inflation earlier), but Republicans made it worse, as the Democrats more recently exacerbated the housing bubble and bust.

fred t: Truman: Unpopular war totally mismanaged,

Truman would have done better to have put a declaration of war to the Congress for them to vote on. But he did not mismanage the war. It took a while to appreciate MacArthur's incompetence after the successful Inchon invasion, and to relieve him, but that is not "mismanagement". Once MacArthur returned to the U.S., testified before Congress, and began his speaking tour, almost everyone appreciated that Truman had done the right thing in a difficult circumstance, and so he had done.

Marketeer,

Has the Pentagon gotten rid of its shrine to the only recent general have been relieved of command for insubordination to the President?

marketeer,

"Bush I liberated Kuwait..."

After he and Ronnie first sold his bud Saddam Hussein all the chemical precursors and armaments, and then gave him the green light to invade Kuwait, via April Glaspie.

"...and began the 8-year expansion that Clinton Democrats have taken credit for."

That would be chronologically impossible given that all the economic numbers were moving in the wrong direction. The federal deficits were exploding faster than the GDP was expanding, which was completely unsustainable. There were fewer workers in the private-sector workforce at the end of his four year term than at the start, which hadn't happened since the Great Depression. The GDP rate was the slowest of any four year presidential term in fifty years.

You couldn't get there from there.

Even better news: The Republicans' traditional bench of presidential prospects, governors, is even shallower. Sarah Palin? Bobby Jindal? Tim Pawlenty? Mark Sanford? Uh, go for it.

I'll believe the GOP is genuinely trying to get its act together when Jack Abramoff's cabana boy and unindicted co-conspirator, Grover Norquist, can't call a cab, much less call a high powered Republican summit meeting.

Clinton and LBJ? Meh.

In one term, Carter crafted the only Middle East peace treaty to this day and it's stood for 30 years.

Carter created a civil relationship between teh superpowers that produced nuclear reduction talks so successful that Ronald Reagan named HIS peace talks with the Soviets "SALT II"

Carter attempted to move our country away from fossil fuel dependence after OPEC had us over a barrel. What might the world have been like if we'd listened?

Who will defend Carter? Properly, all of us.

To: Screaming Demon

Re: Cuban Missile Crisis - yes, he did "f..k" it up. For instance:

The USA had overwhelming, as in overwhelming nuclear superiority. We had a spy on the Soviet General Staff, a Russian Colonel (Oleg Penkovsky: read the "Penkovsky Papers") and knew their inner thinking, that it was all a bluff. In fact, since the fall of your favorite country the USSR former Soviet Generals have revealed that there would have been a coup if Khruschev had actually ordered the attack.

Nevertheless Kennedy agreed to not only never again attempt the overthrow of the dictator Castro but to also suppress the Cuban Freedom fighters in America. He also took our missiles out of Turkey. The USSR would have fallen decades before it actually did had he not lost his nerve just as he did at the Bay of Pigs.

too weary: Carter attempted to move our country away from fossil fuel dependence after OPEC had us over a barrel. What might the world have been like if we'd listened?

the Great Plains synfuels plaant (coal gasification) operates at a profit, and sells CO2 to Canada as well as syngas to the U.S. It too several years and around $3B to construct. The U.S. could have initiated one synfuels plant per year for each year since then, and we would now have 25 in operation and more under construction. By now, with continued process improvements, the cost of the fuel would most likely have been less than half what it was then. This would have helped to keep the cost of fuel low, and would have cost less than the INCREASE in dollar flow to the Middle East over that time. I don't think that there is any reasonable doubt that Reagan made a mistake in canceling the Carter alternative fuel program.

Free Marketeers might have called this "inefficient"( as indeed they did at the time), but it would have been a valuable long-term contribution to American wealth and productive capacity. It's a lesson for all of us to review as the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats decide how to spend the stimulus money. We should not repeat Reagan's mistake. I support free markets, but energy is not a free market anywhere in the world.

"Republicans, meanwhile, are left to rally enthusiasm for a conservative who raised taxes, expanded the size of government, ran some of the largest deficits in American history, and appeased the Evil Empire."

But he mocked liberals. That's the only thing that really matters to them.