One huge Reagan time bomb we forgot to mention! Judges Scalia and Thomas, Reagan's ultra-conservative egomaniac and dimwit sycophant, respectively, appointees to the supreme court, who now guarantee that our rights and our Constitution are second to corporate, mega-conservative, and Republican party interests - long live the Reagan legacy!

McDee - you are so right about the Dems. Someone needs to come forth for them and tell it like it is! There is so much fodder beginning with Reagan that I just can't understand why they don't package it up and use it ALL the time!! In fact, if they were really smart, they would print out this specific article by Cherie and all the comments and use it for their speech notes.

Let's not forget the savings and loan scandal

Reagan set race relations in this country back 25 years, turned regulatory henhouses over to the foxes of big business, deregulated CEO greed, backed "me, now" market thinking, happened to be the sitting (and dozing) president when the USSR ran out of money and Gorby saw the writing on the wall, spurned the middle and lower classes for his rich pals, stabbed the unions he promised to help in the back, ran up the biggest (to that point) pork-barrel-fueled US deficit in history, killed Carter's energy policies that could have been saving our oil dependence now, negotiated with terrorists, armed both Saddam and bin Laden, looked aside as Saddam gassed the Kurds (ironically, the charge for which he was hanged), and thought the Presidency was just another B-movie role. He was the worst president in my lifetime (which includes Nixon) and I never thought we'd see a man with fewer qualifications and less intelligence ever again in the White House. W, of course, has proved me wrong, but America's conservative slide into oblivion was started by Reagan and his contract-on-America cronies. So many of the incompetents of the Reagan years have been brought back by W, from Cheney to Rumsfeld to Negroponte, that it's like having those good ol' Reagan days back, without the excuse of Alzheimer's. Even the disgraced Newt Gingrich is on the comeback trail. If Reagan's is the mantle the current Republicans hopefuls aspire to, none of them deserve our votes.

Everything began to go downhill once Reagan was elected. Many of those reasons have already been posted above. What really surprises me is that not one single post said anything about the AIDS epidemic and Reagan's role in delaying any intention of finding out exactly what it was and what was causing it.
I am amazed that after so many comments on the mentally challenged president that the AIDS epeidemic has not been touched on.

Until W, there was not another contender for worst president. Now there is a clear winner.

But Reagan still makes my blood boil. This idiot started the long slide we've been in ever since. He put the mentally ill out on the streets, he sold us to the corporations, and who remembers the speech where he told us all that it was perfectly acceptable to hate anyone you wanted. In fact, it's a right, according to the republicans. As a result, they are the only people who get my scorn. And while we are at it, let's not forget that it was HE who bargained with the Iranians to KEEP OUR PEOPLE HOSTAGE until after the election. THAT ALONE should be enough to hate the scum.

Reagan was an actor, and the righties needed someone who could lie with a smile. They got one. They have one now who can only smirk. May they never attain another elected seatr as long as the republic survives.

Reagan was, indeed, the President that put America on the wrong track. The worst thing he did was sending the secret message to the selfish morons of America that he was giving them persmission to be even more selfish and feel good about themselves at the same time.

http://sucktheboob.blogspot.com

Oh, there's Alzheimer's, embodied in the Att'y Gen'l. Rename it: Gonzalheimer's!

Kudos to both Cherie and responder wcdevins. You are both right on target. I thought I would choke when Rudy said that Iran released the hostages 2 minutes after looking into Reagan's eye. Take back the choke - barf was more like it. I keep remembering Rummy in that photo with Saddam - pals they were. I also half to constantly remind myself that over 50 million voters did NOT vote for Bush in 2004 and that Gore really won in 2000. When are we going to get some memory and backbone, as a nation? I am afraid for us - this is not just the old pendulum swing as my repub cousin said in 2000. This is a nightmare we shall not wake from.

Don't forget the Savings & Loan scandal. Although it conveniently didn't break until Bush I had been safely elected, it was the direct result of Reagan deregulation, and basically functioned as a funnel from American taxpayers into the hands of Texan developers. Then there was Neil Bush's Silverado failure, which cost our country one billion dollars.

The savings and loan scandal was a big one but I do think the farm crisis is also another major scar inflected upon the American cultural, economic and phyiscal landscape; a scar caused by the policies of the US ag department and deepened by the Reagan years. One only has to drive through the empty landscape of abandoned farms to bear witness or better yet, wait for the next food scare and recall to see that agri-business is a dangerous contradiction that never has nutured our growth but has stunted our potential.

Let's not forget what is perhaps Reagan's greatest contribution to the dismantling of American democracy, rescinding the Fairness Doctrine--by executive order, no less. Thanks to this single act of remarkably shortsighted stupidity, half-wit gas bags like Limbaugh, Hannity and O'Reilly are free to feed the baser instincts of knee-jerk paternalists everywhere, without opposition. Is it any wonder these myopic Reagan worshippers and their disciples are obsessed with short term gains at the expense of the future of our country, not to mention our children and grandchildren? We would have better off with Bonzo in the Oval Office.

Reagan and Bush. Disgusting, foul little men. The best the Republicans can offer.

Well ol ronnie told us that "the business of america was business", Mussolini couldn't have said it better. Lincoln told us that you could fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but not all the people all the time. We have unfortunately been shown in politics, that you only need to fool enough of the people enough of the time(and enough isn't even a simple majority)to do just about anything you want.

Reagan was the first president to ROB SOCIAL SECURITY TO COVER HIS DEFICIT OF GIVING TAX CUTS TO THE RICH.If Reagan had left Social security alone we would now have billions in surplus.If moron Bush has his way he and the republican's will kill Social Security the greatest thing to happen to people who retire.I can't stand the sight of Bush or Reagan's picture both criminal's should have been impeached

I agree with everything, except for the following:

"Under Reagan, the "me" generation developed"

I would modify "Under Reagan, the second "me" generation developed.
Sorry, guys, I do view hippies as the first "me" generation.

OK, kill me.

Just to keep things accurate, Saddam was not tried and
executed for gassing the Kurds (and there were contrary
views within the Pentagon - or at least DoD - if Saddam
was responsible for the gassing because of the type of
gas used vs. the type of gas Iraq had.) He was tried
for the "executions of 148 men and boys in the town of Dujail, 55 kilometers, or 35 miles, north of Baghdad, in 1982. The mass killings came after an apparent assassination attempt against the Iraqi leader."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/06/africa/web.1106trial.php

eurobelle. All I said is that everything began to go downhill since Reagan and that's all I meant to say. If you want to expound on the systemic problem, then do so.

Hippies were not the 'me' generation, they were the "us" generation. The 'Me' generation were much differrent in their thinking and their ways.

Thanks for the correction, peoplefirst - I just saw red thinking about Reagan's "legacy" and trying to recall all his failures. The irony is still there, though - the Dujail massacre happened when Reagan and Cheney and Rummy were providing Saddam with the WMD Bush would later claim he still had...parasitic, scummy little martinets all.

Surely Reagan's worst crimes haven't even been mentioned yet. His domestic mismanagement was bad enough, but what about his foreign policy? During his presidency the US armed, funded and trained some of the worst killers in the world, especially in Central America. 80,000 killed in the El Salvador Civil War, mostly by US-armed pseudo-Fascists in the Salvadoran government; tens of thousands more in Guatemala (200,000 total from the US-supported 1954 coup until the end of the war in the late 1980s), including the genocide and forced sterilization of the native peoples of that country; 60,000 in Nicaragua, killed mainly by US-supported terrorists known as the Contras; interference in Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama; and another million dead on top of that in the South African frontline states, once again funded by American taxpayers. And that's just two regions of the world (Reagan supported Ceacescu too, amongst many other vile despots). Surely these crimes dwarf any of his domestic failings, and are what should have landed him in The Hague as soon as he left office.

wcdevins - yes, I see red too. Whenever I see/hear
someone fawning over Reagan or espousing the Republican
and demi-Republican agendas (Clinton - old and new) it
makes me want to scream.

Our so-called representatives and "leaders" have gotten
us here despite our votes against them. Some things in
the past are difficult to remedy. And with too many
foxes in charge of the henhouse, it will be difficult
even now to implement a part of the solution by sending
a message as a start to current and future politicians
and their spawn:

Impeach, Convict, Hang War Criminals

Thanks to Reagan going to bat for companies, it's legal for a company to terminate an employee and higher one at less money if all alse is equal.
Reagan set up a government agency to halp companies move out of the USA.
He sold Saddam Hussein weapons of mass destruction and predicted that it would heap great benefits for the US.
He mined the coast of Nicaragua.
He lied about the 1956 elcction in Nicaragua that never took place. He said that they weren't held because Ho Chi Minh was afraid that he'd lose.
The S & L scandal
Us support of death squads in El Salvador.

Ms. Miner took the words right out of my mouth and very eloquently put them to paper. I cannot believe the number of people in this country who continue to wax orgasmic over Ronald Reagan. Most are ill-informed, apathetic Republicans who cannot see past Reagan's carefully staged jar of jelly beans. Not only was Reagan a complete phony, but he was also the catalyst for the regressive movement in this country that has given us our current crop of psychopatholgical, narcissistic neo-con-artists. These people truly put the con into conservatism. Americans better wise up before our dream of a republican democracy has been fully transformed into Reagan, Rummy, Cheney, Rove, and Bushs' elitist-corporatist-fascist oligarchy, a true nightmare.

Jimmy Carter had the White House fitted with solar panels with a subsequent saving of roughly 15% of power usage.Reagan had them removed upon his election as President.A mental giant I think not and it would have been done as a sop to the energy industry who had and have most pollies in their pockets.

1980 was my first election, and I was swayed by my parents and voted for Reagan. I've regretted it ever since, and have repented for my stupidity. Carter was a vastly superior president to Reagan. One wonders what our history would have been had he been re-elected, and the economic upswing (which goes in cycles) had then occurred under his 2nd term.

The hostages were released on inauguration day 1980 because President Carter had worked nearly round the clock for 3 months to bring them home.

I also agree with daveg955.
To quote daveg".................".
Flabbergasted and speechless;a condition many feel in the politics of America.

aquietman says: "The hostages were released on inauguration day 1980 because President Carter had worked nearly round the clock for 3 months to bring them home."

And LBJ, never blameless, gave up running for re-election to spend his time figuring out a way to end the war in VietNam. What might be accomplished if the current occupant dedicated more of his time to ending his war, instead of working out, going to bed at 10, and clearing brush on his "ranch"? That is most galling about Republicans - they refuse to see what a do-nothing petulant little crybaby, a serial failure, their neo-Reagan actually is. I guess having canonized a B-movie actor, they don't have far to slip to be Bushlicks.

I realize that the following features of the Reagan era blanche in comparison to the atrocities listed above, but, as long as this list is developing, I'd like to make my contribution. First, as to Reagan's changes in the student-loan/college aid programs: In the early 80's, when I was to start my university courses, I was informed that I would not be eligible for financial aid because my parents income had to be listed with my own in determining "need". As a 19 year old who left home at 17, not supported by or having contact with my parents, there was no way to establish "emancipation" without some legal procedure. (I worked, studying part-time, until I was old enough to qualify -24yrs.) Second, since the right-wing so often argues "states-rights", it is worth pointing out that Reagan was the one who came up with the scheme to withhold federal highway funds in order to force states to comply with the "21-years as minimum drinking age" standard. These rules are not, as far as I know, federally mandated, but enforced by this threat.

Having grown up in Berkeley, California, I've known Reagan since day one. There is a book, "The Last Days of the Late, Great State of California" which chronicles his career starting with a gang of wealthy Southern Caifornia businessmen approaching him to run for governer. Good reading.

While governor, the San Francisco Chronicle ruthlessly repeated every one of his ignorant, narrow minded, and mean spirited remarks, of which there were many, because he didn't know how to keep his mouth shut. Unfortunately, the rest of the state's newspapers were more charitable. Who he really was and what the public was shown were almost polar opposites. As governor, he trashed California's local economies and school districts, refusing matching Federal grant money for social and educational programs, and strangling state funds to local governments. When property taxes rose to cover the shortfall, a taxpayers rebellion occurred and there went the ball game. When he got reelected, I thought, Holy S**t, he could get elected president! Well, he did, and used the same technique to fiscally strangle the states, and here we are.

At first as President the reporters had a field day with his off the cuff remarks, but his handlers caught on, and learned to keep him away from reporters (I will never forget Ed Meese dragging him into the limo saying loudly over and over "Thank you Mr. President" while Reagan went on eagerly delighting reporters with his ignorance), a lesson that hasn't been lost on today's politicians. John Kennedy was the last politician who really liked to talk freely with politicians, except for Dennis Kucinich, who never speaks "off the record". He has nothing to hide or hold back.

Yes, beefygtr, I think his worst legacy was eliminating the "fairness doctrine", the beginning of corporate control of OUR airwaves. That, "corporate personhood". and media consolidation.

I can't quite agree with you, graeme, his foreign policy is nothing new, although perhaps bigger and better. We've always stolen other's resources for our use, starting with the Native Americans right here.

clyde, I thought it was Nixon who started borrowing from Social Security to improve the appearance of the budget.

eurobelle, I agree with Amos that the hippies were an "us" generation (and that's my generation), but after Kent State, lost all interest in defying the establishment and things changed right there. That was 1970. Three assassinations and the murder of students made me drop out of politics and activism for 20 years. All I did was show up for elections to write in my candidates and go home.

WJM, the one thing I can't accuse Reagan of was lying. In fact, he was - to the dismay of his handlers - eager to say what he thought. He never really knew what was going on. He agreed with the conservative philosophy as he understood it, but never knew what he was talking about in his speeches. And never in his life did he exhibit the qualities of a deep thinker. When reporters started asking him questions, his ignorance floored them. One said, "He has a limited grasp of complex issues". Also, Alzheimers is not a rapid onset disease. He was truly out to lunch. When young, he was poor, and a liberal. Then he became a rich movie star and started hating taxes. Familiar story.

The Iran hostage story? Reagan's handlers had George H W Bush go arrange that if they held back releasing the hostages until after the election, the US would arrange gun sales to the Iranians in their war with Iraq (at the same time, the US was giving Iraq satellite info about the Iranians to the Iraqis and selling them the gas they used against the Iranians and Kurds). We wanted it both ways and got it. George's reward? The Presidency 8 years later. He sailed in on Ronnie's coattails, but it wasn't enough to keep him there. And the citizenry had no idea of what was really going on, as usual.

justin,
Thanks but that wasn't my intention [laugh] but I like your description.

Trickle-down economics? Yeah, like a leaky backed-up commode from the floor above, we know what's coming our way. And posthumous thanks, Ronnie, setting into motion economic policies that precipitated the Crash of '87.

Reagan: the Great Communicator? His debate with Carter set the stage and the tone of Republicanism for the next 27 years: antagonistic insults ("There you go again") followed by unsubstantiated anti-Communist rhetoric and patriotic chest thumping.

And he showed absolutely no class or humanity whatsoever when asked by the press what he thought about John Lennon's murder. His reply: "Who?" while he smiled as if he had said something clever.

Reagan was the first true neo-conservative for the great unthinking masses. Nowadays, the neo-cons have substituted Communism with anything of an Arab or Islamic nature under the umbrella term 'terrorists'. And the insults and chest thumping have become more bullying. Although I have to admit, at least Reagan wasn't stupid enough to say something truly idiotic like "'They' hate our freedom."

It's time for an opposing candidate/party that will step up to the bullies, call them on their insults and lies, and show them for what they are: sheep in wolves' clothing. Democrats? Maybe but I'm not holding my breath.

Regardless of who it might be, a widespread tearing down of the myth of St. Reagan the Conservative by exposing the myth for what it is/was would be a nice start.

By the way, I consider the American public just about as much out to lunch as Reagan was. How many people noticed that when all those Marines were killed in Lebanon, in Reagans's first press conference about it, he was SMILING for the camera as he read his script. Someone behind camera caught on and the next time he looked properly sad. I realized that he really didn't understand what was going on, he was just reading his part.

If he had only had a movie director behind the camera instead of political handlers, he could have fooled more people.

Well done!

Ronald Reagan supported terrorism. His funding of a terrorist force, the Nicaraguan contras, a creature of the CIA, was criminal.

He should have been impeached for Grenada and, as a result, the equally impeachable offense of Iran Contra would have never happened.

I am tired of mainstream media lying because they never reported the facts at the time that you could read in The Nation, In These Times, Mother Jones and elsewhere.

"I agree with Amos that the hippies were an "us" generation (and that's my generation), but after Kent State, lost all interest in defying the establishment and things changed right there."
Well, I see several problems here, including such a fast
and easy discouragement. I am familiar with some other countries where persecutions and murders provoked more organizing, and more protests.
From my perspective, the hippies were a "me" and conformist generation. Nothing is more conformist that the desire to please one's peers. I hear from old hippies "Oh, EVERYONE smoke," etc. The border between "me" and "us", and group and individual selfishness is fluid.
There were just a couple of steps to make to turn this country into a much better place, and it was up this generation when young, idealistic, and energetic to make these steps. They chose a different (in my opinion wrong) path.

I can't get over how the mainstream media makes him out to be such a beloved president. I grew up in the 80's. Maybe it was just in the area in which I lived, but almost everyone seemed to hate the man. I used to get teased because my birthday was the same as his. I actually remember my parents getting excited when he was shot. My father still gets angry everytime something comes up on tv about him and says his Alzheimer's disease was karma.

hybri,
"Everything began to go downhill once Reagan was elected"
You're missing the point - there has been a systemic problem.

when will the Republicans be held accountable?

Reagan created, trained, armed and funded the Mujahideen in Afghanistan during the 1980s. The strengthened Mujahideen later became, were responsible for, the Taliban and Al Quaeda.

No one seems to mention this anymore. 9/11 is Reagan's legacy to the American People.

I think in this eurobelle is right, that the 60s generation thought it should come easy, having been raised by parents who had it very hard (having themselves grown up during the depression and wanting better for their children). Although of that generation, I wasn't actually a hippie, I was a "good" liberal Democrat until the Vietnam War. And it's true that when I saw that the public wouldn't turn against the war until people felt the pinch in their wallets, that the Kent State murders simply brought the public response of "serves them right" I did feel like I was wasting my time trying to change anything and quit. Now I feel differently about it. I see that we have to keep trying and not give up. If we don't set an example, who will? That's really all we can do in this world, is set the example with our own behavior. Others will do what they do, but they do need examples.

But I think we've gone from the 40s generaton thinking they have to work hard for what they want, to the 60s generation thinking it should come easy to the 80s generation which thought it should be given to them, and now? What of the current generation? My grandkids (current generation) are pretty worried about the state of the world, and feel like they've been unfairly handed a mess to clean up (they have). But I think they'll take it on.

It's been pretty slick of the Bush crowd to insulate the public from the ramifications of their occupation. No pain, no outrage. This public is so sedated, it's scary. I talk to all kinds of people, no one's paying attention, or cares. They don't care about the occupation, except to either vaguely dislike it or to go with the FOX line, and pay no attention to politics, and think it's a waste of time to vote.

I know as activists we're a minority, but I have hope that our young people will decide it's up to them make the changes we need. Certainly more of them are voting than ever before. That's encouraging.

When I hear people talk about Ronnie like he was the second coming of Christ, I always wonder just what he did that was so great. He did what Republicans are great at, made rich people richer and poor people poorer, plus he added to the latter group. He supported terrorist in South America and then couldn't remember the arms deals our government made.Saddam and Osama were our "friends" so he supplied them with chemical weapons to use againt Iran. Maybe once you're dead, people forget the bad things you did. It sure seems like that in his case.

Reagan didn't do a single thing for the US or the world that was good, rather the opposite. For his murderous, sociopathic policies, he was despised by the majority of people in the US at the time and by virtually the entire world outside the US. Bush II's policies are merely a continuation of Reagan's. I remember people during the 80s saying that if Reagan's destructive institutional changes weren't undone, we'd have an even worse president in the future, and we've got one now. I believe it was Phil Gramm who said that he wanted the Republicans to "finish the Reagan Revolution" and that's what Bush II is now doing.

As a previous post mentioned, one of Reagan's most harmful legacies results in part from his rescinding of the Fairness Doctrine in media and the subsequent rightward brainwashing of the entire population, one result of which is that most USers, particularly the young, now believe that Reagan was an unparalleled demigod, surpassing Lincoln in greatness according to a 2006 Discovery/AOL poll. I've even had several otherwise admirable, young, liberal, activist acquaintances defend Reagan to me, repeating things about him that are entirely untrue but which they've been taught in school and via the US media.

Some of the most common I've heard include that Reagan reduced the US nuclear arsenal and tried to get the USSR to do the same (exactly the opposite of the truth; Reagan was obsessed with mass slaughter and increased the US nuclear arsenal to an unprecedented size);

that "Reagan didn't court fundamentalist Christians the way Bush II does" (Reagan was the first to do so; part of his buildup of nuclear weapons was because of his belief in and desire to help bring about biblical Armageddon);

that "Reagan brought about the downfall of the Soviet Union" (he had nothing to do with it; the USSR was unilaterally dismantled by decree of Boris Yeltsin, an act opposed by most of the Soviet population, who proceeded to suffer what is euphemistically referred to as a "demographic collapse" - meaning millions of people died - when US "advisors" shoved Reagan-style capitalism down their throats);

that "Reagan made America optimistic again" (Reagan made Americans gloomy and miserable. Among other gloom-producing acts, he intiated two phenomena which are now considered normal in these Reaganized United States: mass homelessness and mass, racially-biased incarceration. That's in addition to being the first president to be opposed to the environment, the first president to systematically destroy social services, the first president to triple the debt, on and on);

"At least Reagan never lied to us." (Again, so opposite from the truth that one doesn't know where to begin. This charge stems in part from the post-Reagan, liberal-vs-conservative belief that "liberals" are so afraid of offending people that they won't call a crime a crime, while "conservatives" speak their mind and don't care what anyone thinks. Those are straw-man reputations only, with no bearing on the truth of real situations. Reagan could hardly get through a speech without lying - about the Soviets, the Sandinistas, the homeless people he created, the "welfare queens" that didn't exist - and this was lying on an unprecedented scale. Now, it seems as normal for "conservative" politicians to lie constantly as it does for there to be masses of homeless people, for 2 million people to be in jail, and for police to seize all of someone's property because of suspected marijuana possession, all horrors which do not precede Reagan and are in fact directly attributable to that monster.

One effect of such lying, and of Reagan's unresponsiveness to mass popular opinions (the largest protests in US history occured during the 1980s against his policies), was an increasing distrust of and cynicism toward government during the 1980s. Polls from the time show those attitudes increasing steadily as Reagan's policies and actions took hold, a contrast to the 1960s and 70s, when optimism really was rife in the nation. Another effect of this was declining numbers of voters, which contributed in part to Reagan's electoral victories. Now, as evinced in some of the comments here, a lot of people just shrug and say "it's always been this way," "I'm not surprised," "it's not like this is new," etc. That defeatist attitude, too, is part of Reagan's legacy.

These sociopathically destructive, protofascist changes were given the advertising label "conservative" during the 80s, and when people hear that word, they think something valuable from the past is being preserved, hence today's youth believing it's always been this way.

It would be useful to research the PR campaign that resulted in this outrageous reputation, find out how it started. It didn't arise naturally from popular sentiment. Some polls in the early 90s showed Reagan to be the most hated president in history.

On the "me generation" question, that phrase was first used in the 70s by lifestyle writers to describe what they saw as a difference from the 60s: a tendency to work on personal, inner growth through meditation, yoga, individual health consciousness, healthy diet, etc. Some hedonism was implied, but it wasn't the conspicuous consumption, status-consciousness of the "greed is good", "me-first-and-only" 80s. The 70s personal growth self-absorption was contrasted to the mass, communal movements that characterized the 60s, including hippies, movements that strove to benefit the entire society and world. I know people have been made to believe that hippies were just into hedonistic "sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll," but they and many others in society at the time were more interested in transforming society for the better and worked on it through a variety of means.

I really wish the younger generation would understand one thing: the present Bush did not spring from nowhere. EVERYTHING he does, and the current sad state of the country, had its roots in Reagan.

I was 25 in 1980, and remember well the election of Reagan. It seemed like instantly the whole country and culture became meaner, in a BIG way. Suddenly the powers-that-be, the corporations and money holders knew they had free-rein to do what they wanted without compunction. Reagan and the Republicans denounced evolution, but his worshippers embraced an economic version of survival of the fittest with a vengence!

And like some previous posters had mentioned--please spare me the falsehood that he "caused the downfall of the Soviet Union". The USSR was already on a path to dissolution and it would have happened whether Reagan was president or not.

Isn't it time for some Democrat to frame his/her campaign atound the complete failure of conservatism.It has been the ascendant philosophy since Reagan (even during the Clinton years) and we are in one hell of mess. Bush the Second is not an aberration. He is the logical end product of Reaganism. Bushism is simply Reaganism without Reagan and Bush lacks Reagan's ability to deliver lines. But like Reagan he is a vacuous nincompoop and needs handlers.
Everything is there: crony capitalism, enriching the rich,foreign adventurism, anti-intellectualism, religious quackery, deficits, bloated military budgets, etc.
If I were a Democratic candidate I'd take them all on: Reagan, Bush I & II, Gingrich, all the reptilian "Christian" preachers, Limbaugh and the other right-wing gasbags, Fox News, and on and on. They are all symtons of the same disease...modern American Conservatism.

Like it or not, Reagan was extremely popular when he was governor and president. You can google that and find out his approval ratings for yourself. The public was uninformed about who he was personally, he was a pr created personality, and he wasn't known as the Teflon president for nothing. He wasn't blamed for any of the disasters his policies created. Part of that was because, I think, not really understanding the problems he was creating, his sincerity in believing in what he was doing, and his limited understanding of the complexities of the problems the country faced allowed him to sincerely believe in what he was doing. People responded to his sincerity. And being an actor, he did know how to deliver a line. In fairness, he might not have been very bright, but he did have a sense of humor. In the older age groups, he's still very well liked (I can't stand to use the word "beloved" but it's probably more accurate), and I suspect among younger age groups, not very well understood. So I think people may want more progressive policies, but still are fond of Reagan personally.

A large percentage of the country supported the National Guard killings, which broke my heart, and was ready to swing in a more conservative direction. They were upset and overwhelmed by the revolution of the young. Well, they got more than they asked for and now are wanting to swing back. So here we are. And we have more conservative young people than we have ever had, and fewer idealists than ever. If any, by now.

I think it will be very interesting to see where all this is going. And regardless of what we're all doing, ultimately it will be up to the young people.

Ronald Reagan had an 8 year run playing the Pretendent of the USA. During his years the current climate of corporofascism took hold, and the progressive gains of the sixties all but erased. The status quo learned what happens when you give the people information and education, and they've been limiting both ever since. Some say we have a shadow government? I say we have a puppet government in the hands of big business- especially the ammunition business.

I agree with the sentiment here that believes Reagan to have been our worst president ever, saved by that title only by the idiocy, greed and criminality that is George W. Bush.

If none of the announced candidates breaks out of the pack-the Repugs are likely to nominate Fred Thompson-he has two things that Shrub lacks-gravitas and a functioning brain.

"An election cannot give a country a firm sense of direction if it has two or more national parties which merely have different names but are as alike in their principles and aims as two peas in the same pod"
~ FDR

If there is one evil wizard behind the curtain it's Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of neo-liberal economics. Reagan was the fist president to swing completely and utterly to the dark side of messianic free-trade faith. Not all, but many of the disastrous conservative follies of the last 27 years spring directly from the mind of Friedman. Reagan was just the "face" of the movement--as is Bush. Remember Reagan was just a mindless automaton of GE market advertising. He'd been bought decades before. Reagan was the first truly corporate-bought president, hence the first of the "fascist" presidents in the modern era. To get anything equivalent you would probably have to go back to the previous turn of the century and the industrial revolution. But even then the rules were different. A century ago a president had to be a man of substance, even if he was a buffoon. Today corporations want no more than faces: actors, front-people. They are mere facades; the country is ruled by interests so affluent they are hard to comprehend.