Ronald Reagan: a 21st century neo-liberal?

[Junkie Brewster]

Interesting editorial from Cynthia Tucker in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

http://blogs.ajc.com/cynthia-tucker/2010/06/08/would-ronald-reagan-be-too-liberal-for-gop-today/?cxntfid=blogs_cynthia_tucker">Would Ronald Reagan be Too Liberal for GOP Today?

Cynthia actually quotes extensively from Lou Cannon, Reagan biographer, in an column he wrote for the LA Times:

As governor, Reagan was the biggest California spender of the last half century. Under him, state spending leaped 177%. And as president, he spent like the proverbial drunken sailor to expand the Navy and the nuclear missile arsenal while winning the Cold War. He left Washington with a then-record national debt.

His first year as governor, Reagan raised taxes equal to 30% of the state general fund, still a modern record. And as president, he increased taxes several times, although conservatives pretend to remember only the one big tax cut.

As governor, Reagan protected the spectacular John Muir Trail in the Sierra from highway builders and Central Valley business interests. He blocked dam building on the Eel and Feather rivers. He and Republican Gov. Paul Laxalt of Nevada set aside their aversion to centralized, intrusive government and created a bi-state agency to control growth at Lake Tahoe.

Reagan signed legislation creating the California Air Resources Board, leading to the nation’s first tailpipe emissions standards.

Now Republicans Whitman and Poizner advocate postponing implementation of a law to control greenhouse gas emissions.

Today, Reagan would be tagged by his party as an environmental extremist.

The article goes on to cite Reagan's liberal views on abortion (at least while he was governor) and his signing of an amnesty bill for illegal immigrants. Today, the GOP would turn it's back on Saint Ronaldus Maximus

[Lasher]

1. Saint Ronnie didn't win the Cold War.

Wasteful overspending on defense didn't end the Soviet Union. In fact, it played into the hands of authoritarian "Communist" hard-liners in the Kremlin. Reagan thought the Soviet Union was more powerful than we were. He was trying to close what he called "the window of vulnerability."

This was sheer idiocy.

Here's the truth: we'd already won the Cold War before Reagan took office. All Reagan needed to do was continue the tried-and-true containment policies Harry S. Truman began and all subsequent presidents employed. The Soviet Union was Collapsing from within. The CIA actually told this to Reagan as he took office.

Reagan ignored this, and wrecked our budget.

We didn't have to increase weapons spending, but Reagan didn't care. He ran away from summits with the dying old-guard Soviets, and the new-style "glasnost" leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev baffled the witless Reagan and his closed-minded extremist advisors.

Maggie Thatcher finally cajoled the Gipper into meeting Gorby, and Gorby cleaned Reagan's clock. Reagan's hard-right "handlers" nearly had to drag Reagan out of the room before he signed away our entire nuclear deterrent. Reagan -- and the planet -- was lucky Gorbachev sought genuine and stable peace. Had Yuri Andropov's health held, Reagan's "jokes" and gaffes might have caused World War III.

Eventually Reagan even gave Gorbachev his seal of approval. Visiting Moscow before the August Coup, Reagan said the Soviet Union was no longer the "Evil Empire." He predicted his friend Gorbachev would lead the Soviet Union for many years to come.

As usual, Reagan was wrong. A few months later, disgruntled military officers kidnapped Gorbachev, throwing him out of power forever. Reagan remained disengaged: nothing he did caused the coup, and nothing he did made the Soviet military support Boris Yeltsin over their superiors.

We're all fortunate things happened as they did -- but once again, Reagan did nothing to make this fluke more likely.

http://www.americanpolitics.com/20020319Hersh.html

[AnArmyVeteran]

4. Even Henry Kissinger said the Cold War would have ended within 6 months without Reagan.

Kissinger said the Cold War would have ended plus or minus 6 months of the actual date even if Reagan wasn't president. You are right. The USSR was collapsing from within.

It's amazing how stupid and ignorant right wingers are. They look at Reagan as a god to be worshipped even when they know nothing about what he really did, or did not do.

[stubtoe]

5. Lasher, I continue to be most grateful for your historical perspectives.

Thanks!

[Lasher]

6. Why thank you for that.

Shucks, wasn't nothin'.

:blush:

[MrCoffee]

2. Fuck Ronald Reagan's rotted corpse with a chainsaw

[JHB]

3. Hell, he wasn't good enough at the time, when he "backslid"...

...like actually talking to Gorbachev instead of treating him like, oh, certain other Oval Office Occupants treated Saddam Hussein.

Glenn Greenwald had a nice reminder in an article from a few years back:

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In fact, though Ronald Reagan has been canonized as the Great Churchillan Warrior, back then he was accused of being the new 1938 Neville Chamberlain because he chose to negotiate with the Soviets and sign treaties as an alternative to war. Conservative Caucus Chair Howard Phillips, for instance, "scorned President Reagan as 'a useful idiot for Kremlin propaganda,'" and published ads which, according to a January 20, 1988 UPI article (via LEXIS):

likens Reagan's signing of the INF Treaty to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's signing of an accord with Nazi Germany's Adolf Hitler in 1938. The ad, with the headline, ''Appeasement Is As Unwise In 1988 As In 1938,'' shows pictures of Chamberlain, Hitler, Reagan and Gorbachev overhung by an umbrella. Chamberlain carried an umbrella and it became a World War II symbol for appeasement.

According to the January 19, 1988 St. Louis Post-Dispatch (via LEXIS), when Pat Robertson was campaigning for President in Missouri in 1988, he "suggested that President Ronald Reagan could be compared to Neville Chamberlain . . . by agreeing to a medium-range nuclear arms agreement with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev." The Orange Country Register editorialized in September, 1988 that "Ronald Reagan has become the Neville Chamberlain of the 1980s. The apparent peace of 1988 may be followed by the new wars of 1989 or 1990." And even the very same Newt Gingrich, in 1985, denounced President Reagan's rapprochement with Gorbachev as potentially "the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Chamberlain in 1938 at Munich."

Rumsfeld himself has been tossing around the Chamberlain insult in order to promote his pro-war views for almost 30 years. The Associated Press reported on November 26, 1979 on efforts to oppose ratification of the SALT treaty: "'Our nation's situation is more dangerous today than it has been any time since Neville Chamberlain left Munich, setting the stage for World War II,' Rumsfeld said at a news conference."

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http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/08/chamberlainappeasement-cliche_31.html