The World - A Better Place Due To Reagan

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Ronald Reagan - Time Man Of The Year 1980

By Roger Rosenblatt. Reported by Laurence I. Barrett with Reagan

On an afternoon in early December, Los Angeles was in the 60s and Ronald Reagan looked like a dream. He was wearing a blue-and-green wool jacket, a purple tie, white shirt, white handkerchief, black pants and black loafers with gold along the tops. Who else could dress that way? He settled back on a couch in a living room so splurged with color that even the black seemed exuberant. A florist must have decorated it. A florist must have decorated his voice. He was talking about job hunting as a kid in his home town of Dixon, Ill., telling an American success story he has told a hundred times before. He seemed genuinely happy to hear it again. No noise made its way up to the house on Pacific Palisades, except for the occasional yip of a dog, and, of course, the eternal sound of California--the whir of a well-tuned car. Outside, the Secret Service patrolled the bougainvillaea on streets with liquid, Spanish names. Reagan's face was ruddy, in bloom, growing younger by the second.

At week's end he would be expected at the convocation of conservatives for the National Review's 25th anniversary dinner in the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Reagan would not show--a mix-up in his calendar. Riled, his hosts would sing his praises over dessert nonetheless. He was the answer to their prayers, after all; the essential reason for the elegant, confident glow of the evening. Editor William F. Buckley Jr. would shine quietly, modestly. Others, like Publisher William Rusher, would exhort the assembled "to stamp out any remaining embers of liberalism." A war whoop was in the air--black tie, to be sure--but still the unmistakable sound of a faction reprieved, at last in power, thanks to the boyish man at the other end of the country, whose time had definitely come.


As for the cause of the celebration, his rise seems astonishing. It began in October 1964 when, as co-chairman of California Citizens for Goldwater, he gave his "A Time for Choosing" television speech, a speech so tough that Goldwater himself was skittish about letting it air. Reagan ended the talk with "You and I have a rendezvous with destiny," and was at least half right. So mesmerizing was his performance, so quick in its effect, that California businessmen swamped him like groupies, formed a "Friends of Ronald Reagan" committee, begged him to run for Governor. He had to be pushed. Yet in 1966 the former star of Juke Girl snatched the governorship of California by a million votes from incumbent Edmund G. ("Pat") Brown, who must have thought he was the victim of an accident. (Reagan also starred in Accidents Will Happen.)


In fact, there has been a remarkably accidental air about Reagan's career; it has always borne the quality of something he could take or leave. The image of the non-politician running for office, antilogical as it is, has had its practical advantages, but it is also authentic. Because Reagan knows who he is, he knows what he wants. After a halfhearted run at Nixon for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968, he returned to California for a second term as Governor. But in 1976, after an all-out and failed attempt to capture his party's nomination, he genuinely did not wish to be Gerald Ford's Vice-President. When Ford's invitation went to Bob Dole, Reagan loyalists were crestfallen, reading in that rebuff the end of their man's life in politics. Only Reagan took it well, content to settle forever on his ranch, if it came to that, but also believing (as few others did) that even at age 65 you can run into luck.


Four years later, his party, now confirmed in its conservatism, turned to him like a heliotrope. He was lucky to run against (Eastern brittle) George Bush for the nomination; he was lucky to be beaten early in Iowa, before the so-called momentum against him was real; he was lucky to have Jimmy Carter as his opponent. On the night of Nov. 4, 1980, just 16 years after he had spok

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Margaret Thatcher's Eulogy
of Ronald Reagan
We have lost a great president, a great American, and a great man. And I have lost a dear friend.
In his lifetime Ronald Reagan was such a cheerful and invigorating presence that it was easy to forget what daunting historic tasks he set himself. He sought to mend America's wounded spirit, to restore the strength of the free world, and to free the slaves of communism. These were causes hard to accomplish and heavy with risk.

Yet they were pursued with almost a lightness of spirit. For Ronald Reagan also embodied another great cause - what Arnold Bennett once called `the great cause of cheering us all up'. His politics had a freshness and optimism that won converts from every class and every nation - and ultimately from the very heart of the evil empire.

Yet his humour often had a purpose beyond humour. In the terrible hours after the attempt on his life, his easy jokes gave reassurance to an anxious world. They were evidence that in the aftermath of terror and in the midst of hysteria, one great heart at least remained sane and jocular. They were truly grace under pressure.

And perhaps they signified grace of a deeper kind. Ronnie himself certainly believed that he had been given back his life for a purpose. As he told a priest after his recovery `Whatever time I've got left now belongs to the Big Fella Upstairs'.

And surely it is hard to deny that Ronald Reagan's life was providential, when we look at what he achieved in the eight years that followed.

Others prophesied the decline of the West; he inspired America and its allies with renewed faith in their mission of freedom.

Others saw only limits to growth; he transformed a stagnant economy into an engine of opportunity.

Others hoped, at best, for an uneasy cohabitation with the Soviet Union; he won the Cold War - not only without firing a shot, but also by inviting enemies out of their fortress and turning them into friends.

I cannot imagine how any diplomat, or any dramatist, could improve on his words to Mikhail Gorbachev at the Geneva summit: `Let me tell you why it is we distrust you.' Those words are candid and tough and they cannot have been easy to hear. But they are also a clear invitation to a new beginning and a new relationship that would be rooted in trust.

We live today in the world that Ronald Reagan began to reshape with those words. It is a very different world with different challenges and new dangers. All in all, however, it is one of greater freedom and prosperity, one more hopeful than the world he inherited on becoming president.

As Prime Minister, I worked closely with Ronald Reagan for eight of the most important years of all our lives. We talked regularly both before and after his presidency. And I have had time and cause to reflect on what made him a great president.

Ronald Reagan knew his own mind. He had firm principles - and, I believe, right ones. He expounded them clearly, he acted upon them decisively.

When the world threw problems at the White House, he was not baffled, or disorientated, or overwhelmed. He knew almost instinctively what to do.

When his aides were preparing option papers for his decision, they were able to cut out entire rafts of proposals that they knew `the Old Man' would never wear.

When his allies came under Soviet or domestic pressure, they could look confidently to Washington for firm leadership.

And when his enemies tested American resolve, they soon discovered that his resolve was firm and unyielding.

Yet his ideas, though clear, were never simplistic. He saw the many sides of truth.

Yes, he warned that the Soviet Union had an insatiable drive for military power and territorial expansion; but he also sensed it was being eaten away by systemic failures impossible to reform.

Yes, he did not shrink from denouncing Moscow's `evil empire'. But he realised that a man of goodwill might nonetheless emerge from within its dark corridors.

So the President resiste

[marcer]

Thought it was time for a little Balance....Minder...

BTW Cap: patiently waiting for some evidence I am racist and make sweeping statements vs Americans.

I don't know about you all, but I particularly love number 12 on the following list. Just to prove the "free market" is (and always will be to
a certain degree), a complete myth.
By Mokhiber and Weissman

He was what Charles Derber in his new book, Regime Change Begins at Home, calls a "regime-changer," moving decisively to end the flagging New Deal era and launching the modern period of corporate rule.

Reagan changed the framework of expectations. He called into question a lot of things that had been taken for granted (such as the obligation of the government of the richest country in history to take care of its poorest people), and made it possible to consider things which had previously seemed unthinkable (for example, cutting the knees out from the powerful U.S. labor movement.)

Reagan was indeed a historic figure, and his death deserves the massive media attention it is receiving. But the odes to his cheerfulness and optimism should be replaced with reflections on how his policies destroyed lives. Pacifica's Amy Goodman has appropriately titled her retrospective coverage of the Reagan era "Remembering the Dead."

The standard commentaries recall Iran-contra as a blotch on the end of Reagan's presidency, but the incident was trivial compared to the long list of administration crimes and misdeeds, among them:

1. Cruelly slashing the social safety net. Reagan cuts in social spending exacerbated a policy of intentionally raising the unemployment rate. The result was a huge surge in poverty. With homelessness skyrocketing, Reagan defended his administration's record: "One problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice."

2. Taking the world to the brink of nuclear war. Reagan's supposed contribution to the downfall of the Soviet Union was a military spending contest that drove the USSR into economic collapse. Neglected in most present-day reminiscences is that this military spending spree nearly started a nuclear war. Development and deployment of a host of nuclear missiles, initiating Star Wars, acceleration of the arms race -- these led the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to move its Doomsday Clock in 1984 to three minutes to midnight.

3. A targeted tax cut for the rich. The 1981 tax cut was one of the largest in U.S. history and heavily targeted toward the rich, with major declines in tax rates for upper-income groups. The tax break helped widen income and wealth inequality gaps. As David Stockman admitted, one of its other intended effects was to starve the government of funds, so as to justify cuts in government spending (for the poor -- the cash crunch didn't restrain government spending on corporate welfare).

4. Firing striking air traffic controllers. Reagan's decision to fire 1,800 striking air traffic controller early in his term sent a message that employers could act against striking or organizing workers with virtual impunity.

5. Deregulating the Savings & Loan industry, paving the way for an industry meltdown and subsequent bailout that cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.

6. Perpetrating a bloody war in Central America. The Reagan-directed wars in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua submerged Central America in a climate of terror and fear, took tens of thousands of lives, destroyed a democratic experiment in Nicaragua, and entrenched narrow elites who continue to repress the poor majorities in the region.

7. Embracing South Africa's apartheid regime (Said Reagan in 1981, "Can we abandon this country [South Africa] that has stood beside us in every war we've ever fought?" He followed up in 1985 with, "They have eliminated the segregation that we once had in our own country.") and dictators worldwide, from Argentina to Korea, Chile to the Philippines.

8. Undermining health, safety

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Perfect timing for an old actor


Ronald Reagan saw issues in black and white and, luckily, saw the reds in the USSR for what they were, writes Gerard Henderson.

Ronald Reagan may have been a B-grade actor, as his detractors consistently pointed out. Yet the former president's timing was impeccable and he proved to be a master at exiting the stage. Witness his ultimate performance. Reagan's death, on the eve of the 60th anniversary of D-Day, symbolised the final defeat of totalitarianism - in the West at least.

Commentators and historians have focused on the role played by Reagan in achieving victory for the democratic West over the communist Soviet Union in the Cold War - which started about 1945 and concluded about 1989 with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, followed shortly after by the demise of the USSR.

Certainly Reagan, with Britain's Margaret Thatcher, provided strong political leadership in what became the final decade of the Cold War. Pope John Paul II gave moral leadership in support of the same cause. And then there were the men and women in the Allied forces who ensured that the totalitarian dictators in Moscow would not prevail in their oft-stated aim of world conquest.

Reagan's role in ensuring victory in the Cold War overlooks his contribution to ensuring the final winding up of unfinished business from World War II. It is seldom remembered today that hostilities started in 1939 after the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact by the representatives of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.

At the time this was presented, both by the communist leadership in the Kremlin and by communists in the West, as a "non-aggression" pact. In fact, it was an aggression pact whereby Hitler and Stalin divided Central and Eastern Europe between themselves. Germany's invasion of Poland, which formally started the war, was made possible by the understandings reached in the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

The defeat of Nazism in 1945 was achieved by the Allies attacking from the West and the Red Army attacking from the East (the Nazi-Soviet Pact ended when Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 22, 1941). Hitler committed suicide but Stalin, his co-conspirator in 1939, triumphed. Writing in 1968, the Polish-born American historian Adam B.Ulam spelt out the (unpleasant) truth: "World War II had begun as an attempt by the West to prevent Germany's goals of domination of Eastern Europe and consequent destruction of the European balance of power. Within two years of the war's end, those aims had been achieved in the USSR."

Reagan happened to believe the Soviet Union was not entitled to dominate those parts of Europe that it had attained by conquest as a consequence of the Nazi-Soviet Pact (as in the Baltic States) or those countries which it came to dominate as a consequence of Germany's defeat, such as Poland. He also supported the right of Soviet citizens to be free from communist dictatorship.

Richard Pipes escaped from Nazi-occupied Warsaw in 1939 with his (Jewish) family and settled in the United States. He became professor of Russian history at Harvard University and one of the few members of the intelligentsia prepared to tell the truth about the Bolsheviks, from Vladimir Lenin to Stalin and beyond. For a brief period, Pipes served as an adviser on Soviet and European affairs during the Reagan administration.

Pipes's memoir Vixi (YUP, 2003) contains a portrait of Reagan. He describes him as a "remote" and "lonely" man who "drew on his inexhaustible reservoir of anecdotes to avoid serious conversation". According to Pipes, Reagan held "a few strong convictions and they guided all his policies". Namely, that "America was God's chosen country" and that communism was "an unmitigated evil that was doomed if the United States and its allies tried hard enough".

Pipes concedes that "Reagan's political and economic ideas were in some respects simplistic". Yet he was correct in his analysis of the Soviet Union, and in identifying its inherent weaknesses when so many members of the

Minder we Agree on one thing he certainly created a better world. For Terrorists and Criminals to operate in.

[Insider]

Ha ha, good point.
As mentioned on other Reagan thread;
Corporate tax rate at start of term 70%
End of term 28%
3 Trillion national debt
Irrepairable wealth disparity created, amongst all the other great points above.
He was a bloody western actor for g@ds sake!!

[Capitalist]

Stop trolling Sir. You know what happened to Dr Who, if that is you in a new guise.

[Insider]

Not fishing for anything CAP.
Just putting my 2c worth in.
I'd like to think I can contribute on a more positive level than the late Doctor.
Just don't like rose coloured hindsight glasses, thats all....
;)

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Not bad at all, as Reagan would have said .....[^]

Ronald Reagan - A Hero

Ronald Reagan is a perfect example for young people with dreams, and he is definitely an American hero. He showed us through his life honesty, trust, pride, vision, and courage as tools for success.

Ronald Reagan was from the Midwest, and his main goal was to become an actor. Becoming an actor back in his time as a young man was not a realistic goal for many people especially in the Midwest. He knew what people’s opinion were about somebody wanting to become an actor. As a young man, he never revealed his goal of becoming an actor to anybody. Regardless of the obstacles that he had to overcome and the opportunities available, he pursuit his goal not directly by going to California but by finding related work that will eventually get him there. He started as a radio announcer in the Midwest and as he achieved great ratings he became a popular figure. He then moved to California where he began his career as an actor. He became a successful actor known for his personal qualities. He was a man known for his honesty and always performing to his best. After his successful career as an actor, he became involved in politics to the point of running for governor in the state of California. During his campaign, many people were questioning him about his age and his ability of becoming a political leader. He was an actor overall with no political background or political experience. With his public speeches and his vision of helping the public, he won election as a governor for the state of California where he became a successful governor as well.

As a successful governor of California, people then requested him to run for the Presidential election in 1976. People again were questioning his age and his ability of becoming a successful leader as President of the United States. Reagan ended up loosing the 1976 election, but it did not stop him from running again and winning the election in 1980. He communicated his vision to the American people. His vision was aim to help the American people and the American economy to overcome the high unemployment rate caused by a poor economy.

Within the first year of taking over the presidency, Ronald Reagan showed to the world his seriousness about accomplishing his vision and taking decisive action. The first decision that showed the world his seriousness was the one, which he gave government employees at airports the ultimatum of returning to work within twenty-four hours or lose their job because of their breach of contract. Another decision that Reagan made was the one, which he took the decision to invade Grenada to keep our hemisphere free and safe from the spreading of communism.

Reagan’s ability to make good decisions gain the trust of the American people, but the one decision that hurt him as a leader was the one about selling weapon to the Iran contras. This decision brought disappointment to him and the American people, but the great leader that he was he recognized his mistake and apologized to the American people. Reagan had the ability to move on, and to learn from mistakes. Moving on and learning from mistakes were one of the great qualities his mother taught him.

Reagan’s leadership consisted of vision, communication, courage, and empowerment. He was able to communicate his vision in terms that people will understand, and he did this by talking to his audience. Talking to his audience, writing his own speeches, and practicing them repeatedly was the secret of his success in communicating his vision. He had the courage to move forward by making decision that will result in achieving his vision. He empowered his employees to make decision and to work on the vision he had established for them.

Ronald Reagan is an example for young people with dreams, and he is definitely an American hero. Reagan through his life showed us honesty, trust, pride, vision, and courage as tools for success. He taught us his successful leadership through his commu