Important Note:

Opinions are fun. My friends tell me I am someone with lots of opinions and that's fine since I don't get mad at others when they disagree with me. In this same spirit I am interested in hearing yours views as long as you are able to share your views without boiling over. I look forward to hearing from you. I tend to write in the form of short essays most of the time, but contributions do not need to be in this same format or size. Some of the content here will date itself pretty quickly, other content may be virtually timeless, this is for the reader to judge.

Displaying 1 - 1 of 1

The Ronald Reagan Legacy                                                                                    

Posted at: Feb/06/2011 : Posted by: mel

Related Category: Historical Insights,

I know, there has already been a lot written about Ronald Reagan, so why should I say anything? There is no doubt that if you want to do some research on our 40th President, you will find a daunting amount of information. Actually my inspiration is his rapidly approaching 100th birthday, but the reason I am writing is because I feel the need to say something from my own perspective.

For me the most defining presidents in American political history include Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. I am by no means a professor of U.S. history. My list is based on my perspective as to defining moments in U.S. history both domestically and internationally and the presidents who presided over those events. Some will argue that the presidents were by happenstance in office at the time of critical events in history, others would argue that the actions of the sitting president brought key historical events to a crescendo. Regardless of your philosophy about time and history…there is a lot to be said for how a president deals with the key events of their time.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with his personal history, Ronald Reagan’s first career was as a Hollywood movie star who appeared in roughly 50 films from 1937 to 1964. In that era of studio control appearing in nearly 50 movies must have meant there was “star quality” present. If you are like my kids who won’t watch anything that is not in color, this is a revelation since the body of his work only rebroadcasts in black & white. Attitudes and stereotypes are not too significantly different now than they were then when Reagan first ran for Governor of California. While famous at the time, he was not considered all that smart because he was “an actor.” In 1966 Reagan won the Governorship of California and served two terms.

Reagan was defeated in 1968 & 1970 in his first two attempts for the White House, but in 1980 he won both the Republican nomination and the national election.

As president, Reagan’s legacy is one of war, taxes and government. His supply-side economic policies, dubbed "Reaganomics," by the press advocated reducing tax rates to spur economic growth, controlling the money supply to reduce inflation, deregulation of the economy, and reducing government spending. None of these changes make sense without remembering how tough things were in the late '70s. Whether measured in terms of the double digit inflation, or the lines at the local gas station, it was a different era from what we know now. Reagan came in and reduced the top marginal tax rates from 70 to 28 percent. New at the time, the argument was that the wealthiest few would have more to invest and subsequently use the additional monies not paid in taxes to create jobs. He also pushed for a lot of deregulation of business, airlines, trucking and banking. In truth, the push for deregulation was begun during the Carter administration. At the time, Savings and Loans were very tightly regulated to the point of only being able to finance home loans. The fees and level of competition in the airlines and the trucking industries guaranteed profits, but significantly hindered new firms entering these markets. The theory was that by removing much of the regulation these same businesses would find ways to generate more growth to create jobs and more profit for taxation. History has obviously shown us that these arguments were valid; unfortunately there were also those who took these opportunities to excess creating different problems. Social and governmental policies tend to swing like a pendulum, and much of this was a reaction to the regulation growth of the previous 15 years begun with Lyndon Johnson’s “great society". In general, it was Reagan’s belief that with less regulation, business would thrive, creating jobs so that government would not have to provide as much in the way of assistance.

Reagan also changed the politics of budgets and taxes opening the door to record deficits. Dick Cheney would later be quoted as saying that "Reagan taught us deficits don't matter," a proposition that mainstream economists and tea party activists of the 2010 political movement alike reject. Still, Reagan shifted the politics of taxes so much that politicians now raise taxes at their peril because the open debate no longer centers just on the program and its need, but on the long term cost as well.

Reagan’s tenure as president was also an era when the world knew two “Super Powers”, the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR). The two powers had already spent nearly 35 years posturing against each other and fighting proxy wars with their support and aid to various countries. The posturing included an “arms Race” in which each one tried to develop and field weapons of superior capability and numbers to the others. The US already had a history of going to the table and negotiating arms limitation treaties with the Soviets and Congress wanted President Reagan to do more in this direction. Resisting this policy, Regan pursued a massive buildup of the US military. The buildup is sometimes referred to as Reagan’s “600 ship Navy”. While it is true that the Navy grew from 435 ships to 600, the other services saw similar buildups in their equipment and resources (tanks, aircraft, heavy equipment, etc.). As was expected in the arms race, the Soviets tried to keep up against a scale of military hardware construction not previously seen. While all this construction was extremely expensive for the American’s, it was worse for the Soviet’s. The Soviet’s quickly ran out of material, labor, and manufacturing resources for producing such things as cars, refrigerators, farm equipment and all the related spare parts. This cause and effect had actually been predicted decades earlier and as expected, the Soviet Union imploded as a result of being unable to meet internal needs of their citizens while trying to compete in the arms race. By the end of Reagan’s tenure as president the now bankrupt Soviet Union was unable to pay many of its military personnel and was looking for foreign aid to feed its hungry population. Other technologies that were pushed by Reagan included the extremely controversial missile defense shield (aka: Star Wars) which represented at the time a technology leap that no other country possessed. While a missile defense shield is defensive in nature, if only one country has it, the impact on the perceived balance of power is significant.

Publically he described the Soviet Union as the “evil empire” and backed up this rhetoric by supporting anti-Communist movements across the globe. As the USSR was collapsing, Reagan negotiated with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and this effort culminated in the INF Treaty and the decrease of both countries' nuclear arsenals.

In the light of all this military hardware Reagan was often portrayed by many liberals and conservative as a warmonger. The truth is that he showed great restraint in the use of force, sending U.S. forces into battle rarely, including to the Caribbean island of Grenada and to Lebanon. All things considered, his bark was bigger than his bite, which looks pretty good now.

Reagan is also remembered by many for helping turn the American people against their federal government. While the notion is debatable, looking at the national attitudes ten years before and ten years after, it would be hard not to attribute this to his administration. There is no doubt that some of this attitude is more a function of the times. With the advent of cable televisions and the proliferation of new media networks there was a need to fill them with content. In an era of 3-4 television networks, the media held itself to a very distinct standard with respect to the reporting of government. With dozens of new channels to choose from, many of these networks went looking for a new audience by focusing on attitude or agenda based reporting. Ronald Reagan himself said that the Congressional Democrats were addicted to spending. Many of the new media outlets ran with this message and it proliferated quickly. I don’t think coming out of the Lyndon Johnson era that there is any doubt on that issue, Congressional Democrats were pushing a big government policy with the associated big government spending required to make it work. As Newt Gingrich and others have since found out, the Republican members of Congress were just as addicted to spending in their districts as the Democrats were. Sparking the media to highlight these excesses accelerated a national distrust of “big government” and government in general.

Reagan’s methodology was to push for cuts in taxes, since no one wanted the specific programs that impacted their districts to be reduced, deficits became a reality. Where cuts to spending were made, the impacted programs that lost out created resentment by the American people who were impacted against their federal government. The obvious repercussion to all of this is that many of the social programs implemented in the 50’s and 60’s were simply too costly in the long run. Much like giving a child candy, they become accustomed to the treat and scream loudly when it is taken away. Good and well-meaning programs are not always affordable. With the tax cuts and a shrinking middle class, Reagan also presided over the escalation of the divide between the wealthiest American’s and everyone else. Obviously, many of the manufacturing jobs were lost to less expensive over-seas labor and domistic automation, but changing with the times is difficult.

As a person he is remembered by many who worked directly with him because he never got mean, he never got bitter, he never got personal. His engrained optimism was often a frustration with rivals who were probing for a weakness or vulnerability. As a public persona, the world knew Ronald Reagan as the embodiment of America, similar in many respects to the way de Gaulle was viewed as the ultimate personification of France in his day. There is obviously no doubt that surviving an assassination attempt combined with his Hollywood history playing cowboys helped to reinforce his image both at home and abroad as the true American.

Despite being the touchstone for the modern conservative movement in America, many of Reagan’s key policies and phrases are quoted by Democratic Presidents as well, including Clinton and Obama.

Reagan’s legacy, much like Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt whose actions all transcends any one political party. He fought and won the war with the Soviet Union without firing a shot, he taught us that deficits are okay when you have things to get done, he push for a strong federal reserve to manage money policy and he asked all Americans to start questioning the actions of their Federal Government. You can question the values of these polices now, but in their time these were radical changes and the impact has shown itself to be pervasive for decades. These are turning points that make him more than merely the 40th president, for me he has to be considered one of our greatest and most influential Presidents of our history.

Comments (0)                                                                                                                                                    [Add Comment]