Ronald Reagan was a bad president, who promulgated bad policies and appointed bad people -- under Reagan, we sent the deficit skyrocketing, growing faster in real dollars than under any other president, including the current one. We cut social spending to the bone, creating the homeless problem by turning hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people out on the streets. We appointed Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court. We cut school funding, trying to classify ketchup as a vegetable. We banned the Beach Boys as attracting the wrong sort of crowd. We traded arms, money, drugs, and hostages between Iran and the Nicaraguan rebels. More appointed officials were indicted and convicted of crimes than under any other president. We gave chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein. We claimed that trees cause most pollution.

He catastrophically lowered taxes in 1981, creating debt so bad he raised taxes each of the next six years and still didn't make up for it. And while he streamlined the complex and exemption-riddled income tax, his changes created the largest-ever shift of tax burden from the wealthy to the middle-class and working poor.

Reagan's economic policies are why we are in this mess in the first place!! Supply side economics will never work...

Let's look at Mr. Reagan realistically. He was a dyslexic, community college graduate and B-List actor. He was a nominal governor of a very rich state. He had some common sense and was a typical WASP. He was a former "Dixiecrat" who switched and helped start the "NeoCon" movement. Anything with "neo" and "con" in it should send up smoke signals.

He was loved by the average dolt who had no grasp of reality as it is for the majority of Americans. Reaganomics was a resounding failure. If you want an idea of what Reagonomics looked like and led to, all you have to do is look at the Savings and Loans scandal of that era, the rising poverty during his reign and the huge unemployment numbers and compare and contrast it with the current domestic climate. The truth is in the pudding not the oratory, oh oblivious ones.

He was perfect for a country which relies on the superficial versus the deep. A country which for decades had been replete with calculated unfairness and narrow-mindedness as well as a lack of worldliness. A country that thought it was exclusive and not a part of the global community or even that all of its own citizens are equal; one which believed it was a privileged character and used selfishness and elitism as it's creed.

As for the fall of Communism- most political scholars will tell you that Ronald Reagan, Lech Walesa and the "Solidarity Movement" in Poland, in conjunction with Pope John Paul II and the Russian Orthodox upbringing of Gorbachev led to the Soviet Union's dismantling. The truth is it all came down to money. The USSR went bankrupt from the Arm's Race, the War in Afghanistan and trying to hold together an empire whose component countries wanted independence.

What Reagan did was present agendas in a very palatable and dramatic form. Go figure. He was an actor after all! He could have been impeached for the Iran-Contra Affair, but his connections were much too powerful to allow that to happen. Just as we saw/see with the Bush's, especially "W." Feigning ignorance or naivete in order to avoid accountability is a common ploy of many scheisters and children.

The hostages were released the DAY AFTER his inauguration. It was not a coincidence or based on any "fear factor". It was based on an arms for hostage deal brokered by "his people". Anyone who understands history, the rule of evidence and simple deductive reasoning KNOWS this. It is not up for debate, no matter if some Light Colonel lied under oath or not. Get real. Don't be an imbecile.

The fact that supposedly informed and intelligent adults allowed/allow it to happen speaks volumes about what kind of society has been engineered here.

Maybe Obama will be different and change the smoke and mirrors to a more transparent magic act. Don't count on too much, but hope that the Greed Faction which has ruled for millenia will be flushed out and maybe Americans will become more savvy and knowledgeable about reality. Hope real hard! True moderation and fairness is the key.

Reagan was a below-average president. His ascendance to the throne led to the emergence of crack (as a consequence of the Iran-Contra Affair), widespread gang-banging as a means to distribute the cheap form of cocaine to the poor Black and Latino urban population (eventually to our suburbs), the unchecked machinations of private industry, the emergence of HIV/AIDS which he did little to prevent the spread of, a corrupt line of politicians remade in his image (which includes Bill Clinton) and an anemic economy.

He did bring pride back to our military and continued with top secret programs first started by Carter which further strengthened our military might. In an effort to keep up the Soviets ran out of rubles.

Those who pan Jimmy Carter are ignorant and biased. He had very little to no support from the Washington elite on passing important legislation. Many in the country wanted him to fail, just based on the fact that he was a "bleeding heart liberal". His downfall began with the huge economic problems inherited from Nixon and Ford, mostly as a result of our involvement in S.E. Asia. An example was the oil shortage which led to huge gas lines and decreased public confidence in our government. He did broker the Camp David Accord and tried to rescue the hostages with an interservice attempt, but the military strategists were pitiful and an untimely sandstorm caused the aircraft to crash into one another. He didn't plan squat, so how was it his fault?

So to put it bluntly, history defines Reagan as a very overrated and manipulated president. Some would say that his legacy is the devastation you see which became the current worldwide tsunami culminating in the financial crisis and the blatant ravaging of our country and it's reputation.

Get real and stop with the starry-eyed accounts of the evil men do.

Reagan sucked. His administration was known for selling arms to terrorists around the world and milking the poor to feed the rich. He created huge spending deficits and got credit for ending the cold war despite the fact the russians simply ran out of money.

Bad, or at least for so called conservatives. If anyone of this idiot republicans really thought about Regans presidentcy they would'nt be envoking his name so much. Lets take the cut and run war issue, Reagan cut and ran in lebanon one of the conservatives biggest problems with the dimacrates right now. Immagration, another so called core republican issue. Well, lets see, what would reagan do? Oh I know! Reagan along with his so called conservative friends voted for Amnesty for illegal immagrants which aloud 3,000,000 illegal immagrants enter this country. He also left the oval office with over a 500 billion dollar deficit, not to mention the CRACK COCAIN disaster. If this is who the replublicans have chose as their mentor then lets pray they aren't elected president.

For dreaming up the concept of "trickle-down Reaganomics" alone, I think he was a bad president...

indian accept him a good president.5

I don't like many Politics, but I believe he was good...it didn't seem to have to many hidden agenda's.

Reagan was a good president in my point-of-view, one of the best, people are saying. Then again, you either hate him or love him, I guess...

Both. I think he did good by reducing taxes. However, if you reduce taxes, you have to reduce spending, which didn't happen, resulting in a greater deficit. And there is the Iran-Contra. Its hard to say he was a great president when he gives weapons to terrorists. There are examples of good and bad decisions.