I can't see why anyone would find that feature interesting. It serves only to remind the (lefty) reader that there's no arguing with some people.

The GOP's current "What Would Reagan Do?" obsession reminds me of the Walt Disney empire in the decade or so after Disney's death.

They practically made Disney a synonym for old-fashioned and boring, when I was growing up, by asking themselves, "What would Walt do?" and making decisions on that basis.

Maybe I'm experiencing the early stages of Alzheimer's, but I recall Reagan pledging to reduce the size of government generally and, specifically, to eliminate the Department of Education. Ooops!

At the time, I thought the Reagan administration was a plot to make me miss Nixon. Now I think the Bush II administration was a plot to make me miss Reagan. If I had to sum up in a sentence why Reagan was, comparatively speaking, a far better President than Bush II, the sentence would be: "He took 'yes' for an answer."

Reagan also did much to promote racism in the Republican party, by launching his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi (Mississippi Burning anyone?) talking about "states' rights". His administration also filed a voluntary amicus brief against the IRS arguing that Bob Jones University should have the right to racially discriminate and still keep its tax exempt status. I don't much care about the "accomplishments" when your hands are dirtied to that extent.

Walken is a pretty lame GOP sockpuppet. Can't Salon afford to find a real GOP member and pay him for his services? Because this liberal stand-in is weak indeed.

Reagan's principles? He opposed the 55 mile per hour national speed limit because he thought the enforcement method -- making it a rqmt to receive federal highway funds -- was unconstitutional. Once in office he used the exact same "unconstitutional" method to force states to adopt the 21 year old national drinking age.

He had no principles. He talked about not negotiating with terrorists while doing exactly that.

And as for stagflation? Well, Mr Volcker was responsible for that, raising interest rates to the sky to starve out the inflationary beast. Although reaganuts aren't going to be ever be confused by facts, if you go back to 1981-2 articles you'll find that reaganuts at the time were livid with Volcker.

1) Restore America's national pride
2) Revive an economy crippled by stagflation
3) Win the Cold War.

Well, good for him, but those issues are irrelevant today. He raised taxes, brought the word 'Trillion' into the average Americans (deficit) dialog, he amped up the War on Drugs to level in which family members were turning on each other and he armed Bin Laden.

The Republicans will never move on from Reagan worship. He's the only decent (and I use the term loosely) president they've had in fifty years. Besides him, they had Nixon/Ford plus two Bushes. Not a whole lot to point to.

And there are certainly no prospects on the horizon.

He certainly did wonders for the AIDS crisis.

Reagan "restored America's national pride"? That's a pretty vague and subjective standard for presidential success.

To my Republican parents, it was really the only standard that mattered: Reagan told them that America was Good, and they loved hearing it.

My parents were smart and wonderful people; they nevertheless had pretty authoritarian personalities, and were consistently uncomfortable with the zeitgeist that regarded challenges to authority as a good thing. They wanted to be told that the US was wise and good and that its authority deserved respect, regardless of the truth of that assertion.

After the 60's, they were tired of hearing about racial discrimination and the problems of redressing America's legacy of slavery. They didn't want to hear one more word about Viet Nam and the horrors our nation committed there, nor the futility of that conflict. They didn't want to learn anything more about the US's centuries-long systematic dispossession and elimation of Native Americans; they didn't want to hear anything more about looming environmental problems, or about American collusion in tyranny and right-wing death squads in Central America, or about the ethical lapses and crimes committed by the Reagan Administration. They were tired of hearing from people who thought Americans should feel moral guilt for the consequences of American actions.

Reagan told them that they and their nation were Good, that unrestrained capitalism and pursuit of the American Dream of wealth were always and everywhere benificent, and that moral guilt was a regrettable side-effect of liberalism, one that they need never feel. For consistently telling this comforting lie, they look back at him as the greatest President of their adult lives.

Reagan's genius was that he could mouth the platitudes and untruths my parents so longed to hear and to believe, and yet behave fairly pragmatically in many areas of policy. He gave that impression of being "conviction based" that won over authoritarians, but he quietly compromised when that was useful.

One the great tragedies of our national life in the years since is that a generation of Young Republicans never noticed Reagan's actual actions: they heard only his rhetoric, and took him at his word. Worshipping the memory of Reagan, they have become far more intransigent about taxes than was Reagan himself, far more interested in culture-war issues than was our genial GE-salesman actor playing President.

Reagan was, to borrow a phrase from Lady Margaret Thatcher, "a conviction politician."

Actually, Thatcher said she had to drag Reagan kicking and screaming to negotiate with Gorby, because he'd spent the decade demonizing such talks as "appeasement."

Now it's "winning the Cold War."

Whatever.

All those mean and nastly things you are saying about the Gipper are maybe, possibly, very likely true.

I don't know. I really don't much care about historical things. I let my guides, the GOP experts, do that heavy lifting of history tomes for me. So when they tell me Mister Reagan won the Cold War it makes me feel warm. The same way he made me feel good about America and our values and the shining city on a hill.

I just loved Death Valley Days and Twenty Mule Team Borax, back when I was a l'l shaver. I wish I could go back there. back to the days when being an American Moron meant something. . .

Apparently, everyone missed it. The psuedonym 'Glenallen Walken' refers to a fictitious arch-conservative speaker of the house, played by John Goodman, in several episodes of 'The West Wing'. He was portrayed as a right-winger with an itchy trigger finger, who temporarily replaces President Bartlet (played by Martin Sheen) while his daughter has been kidnapped by radicals. In the end, the script did give the Walken character a bit of dignity... so it wasn't a cartoonish character.

Are they paying Aaron Sorkin royalties for the pseudonym? Or is Sorkin actually doing the writing himself?

And when it comes to Reagan and the economy, as luck would have it, a certain Nobel laureate had a compelling column on the subject this morning.

Once an economist or politican tries to lay the blame for the current crisis on one person or event, they've jumped the shark. Don't listen to them. They are wrong.

I am so old I remember the 'great' Reagan, in the 60's, making commercials in which he announced that Medicare, which was still not a government program then, was 'communist' and 'socialist' and 'would destroy the United States. All the while being paid lot's of buck by, you guessed it, General Electric ...

There were 3 issues Reagan hammered over and over in the '80 election in my area of the south, but they were not the 3 listed. They were 1) end forced busing, 2) restore prayer in public schools and 3) outlaw abortion. He went 1/2 for 3.

What a buncha God Damn BULLSHIT!

1) this is one of the seven deadly sins... indeed, US "national pride" has killed untold numbers of innocent people around the world, especially since the reagan restoration there of. maybe millions.

2) victory over stagnation? how about enormous national deficit (not that i'm an actual budget-balancing nimrod, but jeez-louise, people, reagan is the "greed is good" president. reagan is the president of the explosion of mentally ill homeless people. reagan destroyed more peoples' lives domestically than...
aw, crap. reagan-worshippers start out criminally immoral.

3) cold war victor? ha ha ha... the ussr was already dead man walking for years while reagan was puffing out his chest, john wayne walkin' and talkin' -- aww, what's the use.

those reagan-myth makers and worshippers really really really are a self-deceived lot... yeah, to say the least...

Reagan should be known as the father of deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, big government, and government for the wealthy. We've had 30yrs now of Reaganomics to prove that greed benefits only the very wealthy at the cost of a thriving economy. 30yrs of bubbles bursting class warfare...of monopoly building destruction of our democracy by a crony system of government.

We are getting ready to enter a greater depression than our past depression which will not even bother the ultra wealthy one little bit. Ruining the entire economy just to increase personal profits...now that is a Reagan conviction you can believe in.

btw...Reagan had a complete change in his 'convictions' from when he entered politics to when he became president. Ample evidence to prove he sold out...sold his convictions of being for the people to being for the corporations at a huge monetary profit.

The 2nd worst president of the modern age would feel right at home in the party of hypocrisy, gladly carrying around a sign saying "Country First" while saying "f*#k the people".

I enjoy imagining John Goodman reading these columns (and, no, I didn't miss the reference). What I found more interesting, though, was a quote from that Kinsley article you linked. It was written in 2001, but it seems more relevant today:

"Winning an argument you refuse to lose is a Pyrrhic victory. If no outcome short of outright defeat or nuclear annihilation would be accepted as evidence that Reagan's policy was a failure, no particular outcome is evidence that it was a success."

Does that sound familiar to anyone else? Let's change a couple of words around:

"Winning an argument you refuse to lose is a Pyrrhic victory. If no outcome short of a second terrorist attack on U.S. soil claiming massive casualties would be accepted as evidence that Bush's policy was a failure, no particular outcome is evidence that it was a success."

I think that says a lot about the way the neocons think.

I think the entertaining thing is that, as I remember it, Reagan ran his campaign on deficit reduction and then went on to create the largest deficit in US history up until that point. Very convenient how Walken leaves that out.

Reagan?

He is idolized for giving (some) Americans back more of their own money.

He outspent the Soviets.

He was an actor.

Maybe fine on the world's stage with other leaders, but not exactly a bright bulb.

Come to think of it, neither is Bush.

Taxes are not something rich people should pay!

Ketchup is a vegetable.

When four students were murdered by the US National Guard during Vietnam War protests at Kent State University, then-governor of California Ronald Reagan said "If it's going to take a bloodbath to straighten this country out, so be it."

Ronald Reagan was directly responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of innocent people at the hands of US-backed terrorists and death-squads in Central America during the 1980s.

Ronald Reagan was directly responsible for providing military aid and support to the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, during his war of aggression against Iran, when Saddam was "using chemical weapons on his own people".

Ronald Reagan was a mass murderer.

What's interesting is how quickly "real" conservatives rehabilitated Reagan in the Clinton years because they were so desperate for someone they could hang their hats on. If you look at NeoCon and Hard Con commentary in the mid-80s, they were broken-hearted that Dutch sold them in favor of the Commies. _Commentary_ and AEI presentations were full of "remember when Reagan was Reagan?"

He was nearly a Com-Symp among the Limbaughs of the era until Bush Pere made being Republican look so wimpy.

Reagan's real contribution was to function as misdirection while the most radical faction of the GOP instituted a series of policies that would ultimately work against the majority of Americans. What's really interesting is to see the number of nominally serious conservatives who even today either regard that misdirection as an achievement of substance, or are unable to tell the difference.

BTW, Reagan and Osama bin Laden both take credit for bringing down the Soviet Union. Make of that what you will...

He certainly did wonders for the AIDS crisis.

Posted by: rabbit on June 1, 2009 at 3:47 PM

Isn't that the fucking truth. I don't think he even mentioned the word until sometime in his second term.

Roddy McCorley: "Reagan and Osama bin Laden both take credit for bringing down the Soviet Union."

Bin Laden's claim has merit. Reagan's does not.

The Carter administration, not the Reagan administration, began funding the Mujahadeen armed resistance to the Soviet-backed government of Afghanistan, which led directly to the Soviet invasion, and ultimately to the Soviet defeat and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

As Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said in a 1998 interview:

"... it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention ... We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would ... the day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire."

"it's awfully convenient that Reagan's admirers get to choose the former president's key goals after the fact."

Be fair.

Some of them were before the fact. Voodoo economics was to increase spending on the military, cut taxes and balance the budget.

Reagan did cut taxes and did increase military spedning.

He also signed the biggest tax increase in history and lost control of both houses of Congress before he left office.

As long as Salon continues to publish Camille Paglia, "Walken" will never be the "resident wingnut" there.

he should have been known as a convictED politician. he paid the iranian government to keep our hostaqes until after the election, his minions sold arms to our enemies, bought drugs from noriega with daddy bush's cia turning a blind eye, sold those drugs to our youth in order to launder the arms money and send the drug money to latin american terrorists. he set up the system that lead to our current financial disaster and yet, the brain dead rethugs worship him more than jesus.

The USA won the Cold War as I remember it. Reagan did his part but so did all his Cold War predecessors especially Jimmy Carter who revived NATO from its moribund Vietnam era status. (I was there in NATO HQs at the time.)

Transportation and communication between the Warsaw Pact and Europe existed in the 70s and 80s. Television from the West made it way into East Germany and Poland. Truck drivers from the East would deliver goods to the West and pick up goods for delivery. Imagine the stories those drivers told when they got home. I was in East Germany and Hungary in the early 80s. They were nothing less than a morbid disaster. Nobody smiled.

The revolutionary theory of rising expectations was surely something that the Soviet hierarchy understood -- especially as they fell into dire financial straits. My guess is that the Cold War fell despite Reagan. It fell by Reagan not being Reagan.

he paid the iranian government to keep our hostaqes until after the election

Funny how the GOP always manage to avoid mentioning that disgraceful, ugly little fact. Poppy Bush and his rotten CIA were involved in that, too.

"Reagan...operated out of a set of deeply held beliefs that governed his view of the world, of morality and the presidency...." Revolting and impermissible -- IF true.

Reagan's beliefs should not have mattered and in practice did not. The only relevant fact about Reagan is that he allowed himself to be surrounded and manipulated by a parcel of zealots. That is his epitaph as a politician and as a human being; nothing more may be said about him; he is a closed subject.

The only relevant fact about the zealots is that they succeeded by appealing to pure faction, which is an incurable disease.

So when do liberals give up on JFK, RFK, Truman or FDR worship? Hmmm.

Seems reasonable to ask.

Nobody seems to mention that Reagan's electoral vote in 1984 was 525-13, while FDR's in 1936 was 523-8. It's true Reagan got the most electoral votes of any president in history, since the addition of AK, HI, and DC added 7 more electoral votes, but FDR beat him for both margin and percentage of the electoral vote.

And Sean Scallon, liberals don't give anything like the adulation to any of those four that conservatives do to Reagan. Especially the Kennedys, who aren't all that popular with the majority of progressives. Did you see Democrats asking "What would–––– do?" when they were out of power?

So the wingnut said that they shouldnt move away from Reagan worship because Reagan did the following:

1) Restore America's national pride; 2) Revive an economy crippled by stagflation; and 3) Win the Cold War.

Okay... well, America's national pride does need restoring, thanks to the last Republican administration. It was fine up until we invaded Iraq.

Our economy was also crippled by the last administration.

And the Cold War has been won. The "war on terror" is still ongoing, no thanks to the previous administration.

So I guess if the right wants to worship Reagan, that's fine. But since the guy they elected for the last 8 years did the exact opposite of the three things listed, then they need to look a bit harder in their ranks.

In short, the Wingnut is a complete imbecile. Or he thinks we are. Amounts to pretty much the same thing, in the end.

I've read nearly all of this guy's essays in Salon, and, to be honest, were I him, I'd be embarrassed to be held accountable for the shoddy, intellectually dishonest, shallow, often mendacious bullshit he spouts in every one of these things. The man is pathetic.

And just in case someone calls me on it, of course the greatest percentage wins in the electoral college were Washington's two unanimous wins, and Monroe's 231-1 win for his second term (there was no opposing candidate, but one elector voted for John Quincy Adams so Washington would remain the only president elected unanimously).

does anyone else here sometimes feel despairing over just how remarkably stupid human beings are? How they'll believe any damned fool thing that makes them feel good? Even when any reasonably intelligent, sentient being would understand the nature of desire, and satisfying desire, irrespective of truth?

Most Americans are children inside their adult skins. Most Americans are profoundly stupid adults. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster that a plurality of Americans realized Obama was a leser-evil choice than McCain. But that one election does not prove Americans are any smarter than they've ever been. Or humans are.

I really despair of humans sometimes. I really do.

The idea that Reagan won the Cold War is ridiculous. He inherited a policy, containment, that was conceived by Kennan and put into place by Truman, and that was continued by all Presidents, Democratic and Republican, from then on. The essence of the policy was to hold the Soviet Union in place until it fell of its own internal contradictions.

Well, it worked. And Reagan -- or rather GHW Bush -- happened to be there when it finally came to fruition.

Sean,

"So when do liberals give up on JFK, RFK, Truman or FDR worship?"

Along with Clinton, they were successful.

According to NBC News, Nancy Reagan, in an interview with Vanity Fair magazine, says when she wakes up at night, she SEES Ronnie and TALKS to him.

Oh boy.

Next, the American RightWing will be gathering around stains on walls and grilled cheese sandwiches that resemble Bonzo Ronnie.

Greed and 'free market capitalism' run wild blowing up a huge inequitable bubble which then collapses taking down the world economy. Prudent safeguards and regulations are put in place to prevent this behavior and create a social safety net that serves us well for fifty years. Then some bonehead demigod comes along and turns a wave of no nothing populism into a mandate for scraping the rules, thus starting the cycle all over again leading inexorably to the collapse we have just experienced. If we pull out of this (an open question due to resource constraints), the question is, once living memory of this disaster fades will another bone head demigod come along and convince everyone that we would all be so much better off without all those pesky rules? I mean, how often do we have to do the same god damn thing before we begin to see the pattern?