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Clinton focused his charm where charm is supposed to be focused.
Ronald Reagan: A Simple Man Who So Nearly Destroyed Us
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Clinton focused his charm where charm is supposed to be focused.
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I stand corrected, I glanced at it hurriedly as I had to go out.
That's an interesting glossification of economic history. Surely, you can't be talking about the same economy that had the rails come off in '87, and didn't really recover until Clinton's 2nd term? It was only the in mid-'90's that we saw rapid growth, low inflation & low unemployment, as a result of the tech boom.
Reagan's legacy, for me, will be exploding the deficit through combining massive military expenditures with huge tax cuts. Easily one of the most fiscally irresponsible admins in our history.
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The Almighty
1) Debt is not 'policy'
2) Debt and deficits are a direct result of the budgetary process in CONGRESS. The President signs the budgets or vetos them.
Learn to read dumbass.
I was referring to the FACT that idiots like you always paint Reagan with the 'look at his spending and debt' bullshit without EVER addressing the fact that the debt was entirely a bipartisan effort.
As for the repeal of Glass Steagall.... I have stated many times that Clinton and every idiot in Congress that voted to repeal it is to blame. I was singling Clinton out to demonstrate how ignorant it is to pretend that Reagan accumulated the debt on his own.
Also... those 'budget surpluses' NEVER existed on anything other than paper. They were never based on any realistic forecasting models. The idiots in the two parties pumped the CBO with a bunch of bullshit numbers based on the boom years of the late 90's and then told the CBO to 'project' the effect on yearly surpluses/deficits based on the ASSUMPTION that the boom years would continue for the next decade.
Also... the repeal of Glass Steagall was the catalyst that led to the financial sector imploding. While some of the subsequent deficit spending was necessary, it has now reached insane levels and most certainly is a large part of our debt problem. $5 TRILLION in less than four years. Yeah... that is a big fucking problem.
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Yes he did, Bush and more so Rumsfeld/Cheney must shoulder the blame for deciding to disband the Iraqi army and allowing the total chaos after the invasion to occur as a consequence.
Carter never flew the helicopter and he wasn't responsible for the sandstorm either. Reagan's people brokered a deal to supply military spare parts to the Iranians which resulted in the hostage's release.
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So are still going to maintain that the article by Andrew Alexander is nonsense?
Superfreak, Reagan started the trend, I don't think most of us deny that the trend has continued under countless administrations. Big government and being a debtor nation got into full swing under Reagan and every President and Congress since have continued this assault in the form of bad policy.
I only liked Clinton because he was such a cad and so suave about it or tried to be and that the Moral Majority and their politicians HATED him. I didn't like NAFTA, did at first, but then when I realized what it was being for, I regretted my support. I also hated his foreign policies concerning South America, too numerous to mention in this thread about Reagan.
I don't really idolize any president, I think they all has their good points and their bad.
I have a tendency to go left because I am a champion for children, the elderly, the handicapped and the working poor, and the homeless. The policies of the Democrats, generally, but not always.
I only liked Clinton because he was such a cad and so suave about it or tried to be and that the Moral Majority and their politicians HATED him. I didn't like NAFTA, did at first, but then when I realized what it was being for, I regretted my support. I also hated his foreign policies concerning South America, too numerous to mention in this thread about Reagan.
I don't really idolize any president, I think they all has their good points and their bad.
I have a tendency to go left because I am a champion for children, the elderly, the handicapped and the working poor, and the homeless. The policies of the Democrats, generally, but not always.
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The Almighty
LMAO... 'glossification'??? You obviously need to go back and look what REALLY transpired.
GDP real/GDP chained 2005
1982 4.0 -1.9
1983 8.7 4.5
1984 11.2 7.2
1985 7.3 4.1
1986 5.8 3.5
1987 6.2 3.2
1988 7.7 4.1
1989 7.5 3.6
1990 5.8 1.9
1991 3.3 -0.2
1992 5.8 3.4
1993 5.1 2.9
1994 6.3 4.1
1995 4.7 2.5
1996 5.7 3.7
1997 6.3 4.5
1998 5.5 4.4
1999 6.4 4.8
2000 6.4 4.1
Obviously GDP grew quite well in 1988, 1989, then fell during the recession of 90/91. Then escalated again in 1992-2000. So with the exception of the short term recession (driven largely by the Gulf war and Bush tax increases).
as for inflation and unemployment, like GDP, they both rose during the short recession and then receded right after.
Now... are you actually going to pretend that the economy had 'the rails come off' from 1987-1997? If so, you are one of the worst revisionists I have ever come across.
As for fiscal responsibility.... you are grossly mistaken. Proclaiming Reagan as one of the worst? EACH of the four that followed Reagan was worse in terms of fiscal responsibility.
Reagan ran up the debt by $1.6 Trillion in real dollars, as did Clinton. (Reagans would be about 2.15 Trillion when adjusted for inflation) Bush Sr was worse than both of them. Bush Jr.... well we know how bad he sucked. Obama has been a fucking nightmare who seems determined to be worse than Bush Jr.
But back to Reagan.... that deficit spending came during the cold war. Again, I ask you as I did others... would you have preferred we not spend the money to rebuild the military that Carter left in shambles? Would you prefer we simply succomb to the USSR in terms of global power?
Will you or will you not acknowledge for ONCE that the budget comes from CONGRESS. That no President can raise the debt ceiling, spend all that money... WITHOUT Congress?
Now look at Clinton. No cold war. Massive Tech/Telecom/biotech/internet boom underway creating an environment of full employment, low inflation and peace time prosperity.... and yet he STILL raised our debt every fiscal year. (though I do give him credit for trying not to 1998-2000.) He raised that debt while DECREASING our military. What is HIS reason for vastly over spending his revenues?
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Tony Blair was 3 times, twice with landslides but eventually we woke up and realised what a charlatan he was.
1) So what?
2) Debt and deficits are a direct result of the budgetary process, including the president's budget submission to Congress. Can you identify the years wherein the final budget signed by President Reagan exceeded his budget submission to Congress? If so, please state the differential between Regan's submission and the budget Reagan signed.
Moreover, having signed the budgets are part of a deliberative process with Congress, Reagan is responsible for them, much like Clinton is responsible for Glass-Steagal because he signed a bill that resulted from the deliberative process.
I gladly state that spending is a bipartisan effort. You want to absolve Reagan of his responsibility in that process.
Fair enough, but if that's your point you should be consistent regarding Reagan's role in accumulating debt.
What does that have to do with blaming Clinton for the debt accumulated by Bush?
Moreover, your claims about the CBO forecasting are demonstrably false. I don't have the time right now, but if you go back and look at the CBO's projections in 2000 for economic growth in the ensuing decade, my recollection is that the CBO pegged GDP growth at a relatively modest annual rate of 3.5%.
The largest part of the problem is the continuation of Bush policies, including most significantly, the Bush tax cuts, the pill bill and the two wars. And since I assume you want to blame Obama for not changing those policies, I guess we should blame Bush for not reninstating Glass Steagal.
If I remember correctly, didn't Reagan start to cut back before the fall of the USSR because the US citizenry was yelling about his defense spending? I didn't agree to the build up, I didn't think it was our place to become the world power. At least not through the military, I was for going the other way into education and technology and bringing the West to the other parts of the world through more peaceful means.
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The Almighty
Bullshit again. That is simply a line the masters of the left have spoon fed to you. The trend started long before Reagan was in office. Ike was the last President to preside over a decline in US debt. Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter all continued adding to the debt year after year. Each getting progressively worse.
You are ignorant if you think Reagan was a proponent of big government or debt.
The champion for children.... unless of course the parents cant be inconvenienced... then you support killing those kids
The working poor are harmed consistently by the policies of the Democrats.
Tell us... what are the Dems doing for the homeless.
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Canceled
God, talk about rewriting history, the Soviet buildup was in response to Reagan's rhetoric and bluster as this article points out. I remember it very well, most of the Reagan defenders aren't old to remember and thus rely on RW blogs and websites instead.
Did Reagan's Military Build-Up Really Lead to Victory in the Cold War?
By Lawrence S. Wittner (Source)
Mr. Wittner teaches history at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Toward Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971 to the Present (Stanford University Press).
In an op-ed published in the New York Times on January 5, Professor Kiron Skinner, co-editor of Reagan: A Life in Letters, repeats the familiar refrain of Republican triumphalists that Ronald Reagan's aggressive rhetoric and military policies improved Soviet-American relations and led to the end of the Cold War.
This fairy tale may warm the hearts of true believers in the efficacy of military buildups and wars, but it has little resemblance to reality.
In fact, Soviet-American relations went into a deep freeze until early 1985. Horrified by the Reagan administration's nuclear buildup and loose talk of nuclear war, the Soviet government ratcheted up its own military might. The new Soviet party leader, Yuri Andropov, concluded that "peace cannot be obtained from the imperialists by begging for it. It can be upheld only by relying on the invincible might of the Soviet armed forces." Responding to U.S. missile deployment in Western Europe in December 1983, the Kremlin broke off arms control negotiations, resumed the SS-20 nuclear missile deployment that it had previously halted, placed SS-23 nuclear missiles in East Germany and Czechoslovakia , and moved Soviet nuclear submarines closer to the coasts of the United States . In late 1984, the Kremlin incorporated a 45 percent increase in military spending into its next five-year plan.
Reagan's "evil empire" speech of March 1983 was widely noted in the Soviet Union , recalled Vladimir Slipchenko, then a member of the Soviet General Staff. "The military, the armed forces . . . used this," he added, "as a reason to begin a very intense preparation inside the military for a state of war." Furthermore, "we started to run huge strategic exercises. . . . These were the first military exercises in which we really tested our mobilization. We didn't just exercise the ground forces but also the strategic arms." Therefore, "for the military, the period when we were called the evil empire was actually very good and useful, because we achieved a very high military readiness. . . . We also rehearsed the situation when a non-nuclear war might turn into a nuclear war."
Soviet leaders, terrified that the Reagan administration was preparing a nuclear first strike against their country, nearly launched a nuclear war. In November 1983, during NATO's Able Archer military exercises, the jittery Soviet government became convinced that, under cover of the exercises, a U.S. nuclear attack upon the Soviet Union was underway. Consequently, Soviet nuclear forces were alerted, command staffs reviewed their strike missions, and nuclear weapons were readied for action. "The world did not quite reach the edge of the nuclear abyss," recalled Oleg Gordievsky, a U.S. intelligence agent within the KGB. "But during Able Archer 83 it had . . . come frighteningly close."
Thus, as Anatoly Dobrynin, the longtime Soviet ambassador to the United States, recalled: "The impact of Reagan's hard-line policy . . . was exactly the opposite of the one intended by Washington . It strengthened those in the Politburo, the Central Committee, and the security apparatus who had been pressing for a mirror-image of Reagan's own policy."
In the period up to early 1985, it was Reagan who began a policy reversal. Reagan entered the White House as a fanatic foe of the Soviet Union and as a staunch opponent of every nuclear arms control and disarmament agreement negotiated by his Democratic and Republican predecessors. Not surprisingly, he and his entourage initially called for a massive nuclear buildup and talked glibly of waging nuclear war. But, battered by antinuclear protests, frustrated by Congress, badgered by uneasy allies, and confronted by an obdurate Soviet leadership, Reagan softened his hard line. His administration opened arms control negotiations, championed a "zero option" for Euromissiles, compromised on strategic nuclear weapons, and observed the limits of the unratified SALT II treaty (which, previously, Reagan had condemned as "appeasement"). Starting in April 1982, Reagan began declaring publicly that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought." He added: "To those who protest against nuclear war, I can only say: `I'm with you!'"
As these last remarks indicate, Reagan was seriously rattled by popular agitation against the nuclear arms race. In October 1983, in the context of the massive protests against Euromissile deployment, he told his startled secretary of state: "If things get hotter and hotter and arms control remains an issue, maybe I should go see Andropov and propose eliminating all nuclear weapons." On January 16, 1984, he followed up on this idea. Over the objections of other administration officials, he delivered a remarkable public address, calling for peace with the Soviet Union and a nuclear-free world. In short, in the period leading up to March 1985, Reagan and Soviet officials confronted each other eyeball-to-eyeball, and it was Reagan who repeatedly blinked.
Only in March 1985, with the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev, did Reagan find a Soviet leader ready to implement a program of peace and disarmament. Gorbachev, of course, differed from his immediate predecessors in that he came from the ranks of Soviet reformers, who favored peace and democratization. What is not as well known is that Gorbachev's ideas were profoundly influenced by the world nuclear disarmament movement. As he declared: "The new thinking took into account and absorbed the conclusions and demands of . . . the public and the scientific community, of the movements of physicians, scientists, and ecologists, and of various antiwar organizations." Thus, Gorbachev and his circle were ready to reject the traditional "peace through strength" basis of Soviet (and American) foreign policy. In subsequent years, he and Reagan pushed past the obstacles erected by the hawks in both their countries to halt the nuclear arms race and end the Cold War.
If the contrasting version of these events--the triumphalist version trumpeted by Professor Skinner--is to hold water, surely there should be some evidence for it in Soviet sources. After all, the foundation of the triumphalist case is the idea that the Soviet Union surrendered when confronted with U.S. military "strength." But despite the numerous Soviet documents that have been declassified, the many statements that have been made by former Soviet officials, and the memoirs that have been written by former Soviet leaders, no evidence for the triumphalist contention has emerged.
Furthermore, former Soviet officials have repeatedly rejected it. Asked if a U.S. government hard line had forced the Soviet government to become more conciliatory, Aleksandr Yakovlev, one of Gorbachev's top foreign policy advisors, replied: "It played no role. None. I can tell you with the fullest responsibility." Arbatov, also a key Gorbachev foreign policy advisor, called the idea that a U.S. military buildup helped alter Soviet policy "absolute nonsense." Soviet changes, he said, "not only ripened inside the country but originated within it." Dobrynin did give the U.S. government some credit, but not for the efficacy of its military strength. "If Reagan "had not abandoned his hostile stance toward the Soviet Union ," recalled the Soviet diplomat, "Gorbachev would not have been able to launch his reforms and his `new thinking,'" but "would have been forced to continue the conservative foreign and domestic policies of his predecessors." When Gorbachev was asked about the triumphalist claim, made during the 1992 presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush, he replied simply: "I suppose these are necessary things in a campaign. But if this idea is serious, then it is a very big delusion."
Should we believe in illusions? For decades, U.S. government officials, historians, and the pundits told us that the Kennedy administration's military mobilization during the Cuban missile crisis led to its peaceful resolution. Then, suddenly, key U.S. officials revealed that the crisis had been overcome thanks to U.S. concessions. Now the hawks are again busy, pumping us up with triumphalist fantasies about the end of the Cold War. Should we not feel some skepticism about this process, particularly when--as in the case of Professor Skinner--it is openly employed to justify current U.S. foreign policy?
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Just to correct one thing, in January 2000 the CBO projected GDP growth of 3% for 2000 and 2001 and an average of 2.8% for the 2002-2010 period, which is lower than annual growth rate for the 1975-1996 (3%) period and substantially lower than the dot com boom years (>4%).
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/18xx/doc1820/eb0100.pdf
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/18xx/doc1820/eb0100.pdf
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
I've always believed that a true gentleman is really just a patient wolf.
DamnYankee
Loyal to the end
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The Almighty
So... I asked him what policies of Reagans he was referring to and YOU answered that with 'debt'
Yes moron... I understand that Reagan is responsible as well. Thank you for finally acknowledging that it is indeed a deliberative process with Congress. That was my point to begin with. Glad you could finally catch up.
No moron, I do not. You are being entirely dishonest in stating that.
I said quite clearly.... "I was referring to the FACT that idiots like you always paint Reagan with the 'look at his spending and debt' bullshit without EVER addressing the fact that the debt was entirely a bipartisan effort."
I did moron. You are just too fucking blinded by your partisan bullshit to actually comprehend what I wrote.
Ok... seriously... WHOSE posts are you actually responding to? Where did I ever blame Clinton for Bush's debt?
I will wait for you to show me this.
No moron. The Bush policies of tax cuts and the spending on the wars etc.. did not lead us to the economic collapse we saw in 2008. As I stated, it was the repeal of Glass Steagall that did. It was Glass Steagall that prevented investment banks from merging into the retail banking side. It was Glass Steagall that kept the firewalls between the two. It was the repeal of Glass Steagall that allowed the investment banks to take on such insane levels of risk. THAT was the catalyst for the economic meltdown.
OK. All of them.
No problem.
That's the way I read it.
Fargle Bargle.
Well, you attribute our current debt problems to the economic collapse brought about by the repeal of Glass Steagal. In so doing, you excuse the Bush policies that are the largest component of our present debt situation.
See above.
I didn't claim the tax cut and spent policies led to the economic collapse. I said that the tax cuts and spend policies are the largest contributors to out debt, which they are.
SF - it's fairly disingenuous to portray the fiscal irresponsibility & spending of the Reagan years as a pure bipartisan effort. When it came to the bloated military spending (as well as the tax cuts), Reagan set the priorities. He was the last President who could really claim a "mandate" from his elections, and he used that mandate to set us on a course of exploding deficits that haven't let up since....
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ZOMG, how embarrassing. ZOMG, you're so stupid. ZOMG, you can't read!!!!!
yours truly,
dunceler