Bonzo's Apotheosis

[womzilla]

I still don't have time for real posts, so here's a (slightly amended) post from Atrios which well captures my reaction to the last week's news coverage:

• The House and Senate did not both come under Republican rule during Reagan's time.
  
• The Berlin Wall did not come down when Reagan was in office.
  
• Reagan is not the president who left office with the highest approval rating in modern times.
  
• Reagan was not "the most popular president ever."
  
• Reagan did not preside over the longest economic expansion in history.
  
• Reagan did not shrink the size of government.
  
• Reagan did preside over what was at the time the "biggest tax cut in history" but it was almost instantly followed up by the "biggest tax increase in history." [And then followed again by a huge tax increase. And then again, in his second term.]
  
• Reagan was not "beloved by all." He was loved by some, liked by some, and hated by some with good reason.
  

I disagreed with both the broad strokes and details of almost all aspects of Reagan's economic domestic policy, social domestic policy, and foreign policy. This is a man who launched his presidential campaign with a speech about "state's rights" in a town known, nationally, for the murder of three civil rights workers and subsequent cover-up.

I wouldn't wish Alzheimers on Stalin. I wouldn't wish the burden of watching one's husband suffer through two decades of Alzheimer's on Lady MacBeth. But that doesn't wash away supporting Saddam Hussein and the contras, nor the (until then) most irresponsible fiscal policy in American history, nor the Meese Report on Pornography. Reagan was one of the worst presidents America has ever had and was an amoral thug wrapping himself in ultraChristian exterminationist rhetoric. Let's not forget that.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"I wouldn't wish Alzheimers on Stalin."

Why not? Not painful enough?

B

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

Given that the Republicans obviously don't feel the same, here's their proposal for Bush's new running mate: Bush/Zombie Reagan 2004: http://bush-zombiereagan.com/faq/

Re: Reagan

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

caliban and I just returned from Alaska, where we'd been for more than a week. I was shocked, going through the newspapers that had been saved for us by the cat sitter, by the amount of space that was given to Reagan's death and funeral. Apparently nothing else happened while we were gone.

I was not about to read this puffery because I'm pretty sure there was very little about how he wrecked the economy. (I remember 1984 -- we had to take every other Friday off from work to keep our jobs. And a good thing -- nowadays they would have just laid us all off so the managers could keep their jobs.) And you can bet there are no reminisces about his gasing the students at Berkeley while he was governor.

Re: Reagan

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

Whoops! Big typo. I meant calimac not Caliban!!!

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

Catching up on my magazine reading this weekend and found a column from Anna Quindlen about the American tendency to confuse likability with leadership: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5197008/site/newsweek/