Reagan

I suspect that most of the people who criticize Reagan in the comments (I mean from a conservative perspective, lots of liberals hated him) are under the age of 40 and therefore don’t remember the context of Ronald Reagan. Maybe they look at his record and think it’s not that “convervative” but they don’t realize how liberal the country was before he was President and that he began a conservative revolution that made conservative thought more mainstream, and that he personally remade the Supreme Court to be more conservative.

They also don’t remember the low self esteem we had as Americans after our military failure in Vietnam (58,000 Americans killed and the North Vietnamese still took over), and how the country felt about Iran holding our citizens hostage and Jimmy Carter unwilling to do anything about it (except for a “rescue” mission that crashed). People don’t realize what a revelation it was when Reagan intervened in Grenada and showed that the U.S. military can do something.

And of course, they forget the greatest threat to America, which was the Soviet Union. Reagan stood up to the Soviet Union. Did this have anything to do with the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union, or was Reagan just in the right place at the right time? Regardless, he presided over the end of the Soviet Union, an international event which greatly enhanced U.S. security and made the world a better place. Liberals liked to call him a “warmonger” but in fact he brought peace to the word.

Reagan is not a president to just be judged by what legislation he proposed to Congress or what he vetoed. He is remembered for how he inspired us, how me made us feel proud to be American, how he was respected internationally by world leaders such as Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev, Helmut Kohl, and Yasuhiro Nakasone. That Reagan was the greatest President of my lifetime has little to do with his specific policy positions and a lot to do with how he handled the job of President and what was accomplished.