ShiftyPowers
Make America Great Again
Run DMB;2288138 said:It's hard for me to give Reagan too much credit or place too much blame on him for what happened during his presidency. He was old, lazy and uninformed on many issues. His policy decisions were heavily influenced by his advisors. Reagan acted more like a ceremonial figure than a real president. He did very well in that respect, he communicated well with the American people and foreign leaders respected him. He had to work with a Democratic Congress, and he managed that quite skillfully. Even liberal historians generally rate Reagan as one of the better presidents in US history. The bottom line is, the American people liked him. Well, white people liked him.
The best and worst thing about Reagan was his profound hatred of Communism. Reagan's policies helped bring about the fall of the Soviet Union (although, to be honest, Gorbachev contributed more to the USSR's demise). On the other hand, his ardent anti-Communism meant he was willing to do anything to hurt the Commie bastards, even if it meant putting money and weapons into the hands of other bastards.
Reagan was a man of simple philosophy: he believed in the efficiency of the private sector, the inefficiency of the public sector and in the inherent evil of Communism. Everything else was details.
No that's not true, Reagan is generally considered weak, or at least average by historians, and poor by political scientists. Like you said, he was barely a real president, he would ask for 1 page summaries on complex issues and would then make a decision based on his one page briefing. George H. W. Bush was a better President than Reagan and it is NOT CLOSE.
Best President is probably Lincoln, and it's a pretty major consensus among historians and political scientists. He suspended habeus corpus against the Constitution, and the Court actually did rule against him, but other than that there's not too much bad about him. Everyone has flaws, but Lincoln was a real mythic figure in office. Washington and Jefferson too.
Carlos*son is awful. Cleveland.... meh, ok. Probably not one of the "greatest".
My personal favorite because I did not have to live through Vietnam is Johnson. Johnson minus Vietnam is one of the absolute best. With Vietnam he's seen as average.