Reagen

[dairygirl4u2c]

reagan was lucky things turned out so well for his presidency.
not to discount his efforts, that got him there.
bush perhaps had more effects, but less luck.
both got far with little.
i wonder who the bigger dope was.
(does this need moved to politicos section?

[quote]The views of some of his peers and associates:

– Jim Cannon (an aide to Howard Baker) reported that Reagan's underlings told him,
"They told stories about how inattentive and inept the President was.... They said he wouldn't come to work – all he wanted to do was to watch movies and television at the residence."
Landslide: The Unmaking of the President: 1984-88

– Lee Hamilton (Representative from Indiana) in an interview with Haynes Johnson, told him:
"Reagan's only contribution [to the subject of the MX missile] throughout the entire hour and a half was to interrupt somewhere at midpoint to tell us he'd watched a movie the night before, and he gave us the plot from WarGames, the movie. That was his only contribution." ( Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years

– Columnist Richard Cohen said, "This President is treated by both the press and foreign leaders as if he were a child.... It is major news when he honors a political or economic discussion with a germane remark and not an anecdote about his Hollywood days."

– President Mitterand of France asked Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau about Reagan: "What planet is he living on?"

– Mark Hertsgaard, wrote that
"During Mr. Reagan's trip to Europe...members of the traveling press corps watched him doze off so many times – during speeches by French President Francois Mitterrand and Italian President Alessandro Pertini, as well as during a one-on-one audience with the Pope – that they privately christened the trip 'The Big Sleep.'"
(On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency

– David Nyhan, Boston Globe columnist wrote
"He demonstrated for all to see how far you can go in this life with a smile, a shoeshine and the nerve to put your own spin on the facts."

– Reagan's good friend, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher,
"Poor dear, there's nothing between his ears."

– Columnist David Broder
"The task of watering the arid desert between Reagan's ears is a challenging one for his aides."

– Patti Davis (formerly Patricia Ann Reagan) talking about her father,
"He has the ability to make statements that are so far outside the parameters of logic that they leave you speechless"
The Way I See It

– Larry Speakes (Reagan's former press secretary) describing what it was like preparing the President for a press conference:
"...like reinventing the wheel."
(Speaking Out: The Reagan Presidency from Inside the White House)

– Mark Green,
"This loathing for government, this eagerness to prove that any program to aid the disadvantaged is nothing but a boondoggle and a money gobbler, leads him to contrive statistics and stories with unmatched vigor."
Reagan's Reign of Error

– former president Jimmy Carter, March 6, 1984
"President Reagan doesn't always check the facts before he makes statements, and the press accepts this as kind of amusing."

– James David Barber, presidential scholar, "Ronald Reagan is the first modern President whose contempt for the facts is treated as a charming idiosyncrasy."
(On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency, Mark Hertsgaard)

– Simon Hoggart
"His errors glide past unchallenged. At one point...he alleged that almost half the population gets a free meal from the government each day. No one told him he was crazy. The general message of the American press is that, yes, while it is perfectly true that the emperor has no clothes, nudity is actually very acceptable this year."
, in The Observer (London), 1986[/quote]

the last three remind me of that simpsons episode, where frank grimes ends up dying, after going insane at how lucky homer was whilst being a simplton.

Edited April 11, 2009 by dairygirl4u2c

[Maggyie]

Reagan is spelled with an "a"

[dairygirl4u2c]

sounds kinda like how the obama critics treat him, per both of their ignorance etc overlooked by charisma etc
[img]http://liberalslikechrist.org/reaganremembered.jpg[/img]
(cept obama's at least smart

[Maggyie]

Reagan was not the sharpest knife in the drawer by any stretch of the imagination, but the caricature of him goes too far just like all caricatures... one doesn't get elected once, let alone twice to the presidency while being an idiot. There have been bad men, dishonest men and unwise men in the White House but no stupid men.

[dairygirl4u2c]

no one could be compeltely dumb, and be elected president.
this is true.

[CatherineM]

I voted for Reagan twice. I don't think that we are ever again going to be allowed to vote for a truly wise candidate. Bush the Elder was qualified by experience, Clinton was a Rhode Scholar. Sometimes there is more to being a really good leader. Sometimes it takes courage, or a vision, and sometimes you are just lucky by circumstances. The thing about reviewing someone in the past, is that it is easy to sit here safe in the future and micromanage decisions that had to be made with less knowledge than we have today, and quickly where we have all the time in the world to debate what we would have done in their place.

[dairygirl4u2c]

so you're sayin things like this go too far?
[img]http://liberalslikechrist.org/reaganhead.gif[/img]
(i'm in a devious / 'whatever' mood right now for some reason

Edited April 11, 2009 by dairygirl4u2c

[dairygirl4u2c]

[quote]Why is there such a strong family resemblance between the Reagan years and recent events? Mr. Reagan's administration, like Mr. Bush's, was run by movement conservatives – people who built their careers by serving the alliance of wealthy individuals, corporate interests and the religious right that took shape in the 1960s and 1970s. And both cronyism and abuse of power are part of the movement conservative package.
In part this is because people whose ideology says that government is always the problem, never the solution, see no point in governing well. So they use political power to reward their friends, rather than find people who will actually do their jobs.
If expertise is irrelevant, who gets the jobs? No problem: the interlocking, lavishly financed institutions of movement conservatism, which range from K Street to Fox News, create a vast class of apparatchiks who can be counted on to be "loyal Bushies."[/quote]

i think this gets at the heart of it.
maybe they're not as dumb as they let on (i think they are despite what i'm about to say, but
it's thay just don't trust government, and see no point in trying
this is exemplified by two points that come to mind about bush. one, is that as soon as he took office, he took a long long vacation. i think he thought that that was all was needed from the governmetn. two, is all his administrators of various agencies were CEO types, not acadeics or intellectuals or necesssarily good policy makers etc. CEOs surely have a certain wisdom, but it's too self interetsed to be be what's for the good of the country as a whole, and not the businesses themselves (the later doesn't mean the former), and lacks the knowledge of law, policy and economics etc to run a country. (a country is nto the same as a business

Edited April 11, 2009 by dairygirl4u2c

[Maggyie]

[quote name='dairygirl4u2c' post='1831337' date='Apr 11 2009, 12:14 AM']i think this gets at the heart of it.
maybe they're not as dumb as they let on (i think they are despite what i'm about to say, but
it's thay just don't trust government, and see no point in trying
this is exemplified by two points that come to mind about bush. one, is that as soon as he took office, he took a long long vacation. i think he thought that that was all was needed from the governmetn. two, is all his administrators of various agencies were CEO types, not acadeics or intellectuals or necesssarily good policy makers etc. CEOs surely have a certain wisdom, but it's too self interetsed to be be what's for the good of the country as a whole, and not the businesses themselves (the later doesn't mean the former), and lacks the knowledge of law, policy and economics etc to run a country. (a country is nto the same as a business[/quote]

It's true a country is not the same as a business... however I think it is wrong to say that ALL agencies under Bush (or Reagan) were run by cronies or MBA types. One thing to keep in mind is the strong overlap at the highest levels of our country in all fields... It's not intellectuals vs. businessmen vs. government officials, the policy wonks run business and the businessmen went to Oxford! In fact there is hardly any distinction between them, they more or less are all the same people! You could make the argument that for multiple decades we have been governed by the same small group of people basically changing hands - and I am not talking about family dynasties like the Bushes, I mean the mid-level bureaucrats are basically all the same people and they just trade offices every time a different party comes in.

[pat22]

Regan was the greatest president ever. and he was our last REAL one.

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Maggie' post='1831378' date='Apr 10 2009, 10:30 PM']It's true a country is not the same as a business... however I think it is wrong to say that ALL agencies under Bush (or Reagan) were run by cronies or [b]MBA types[/b]. One thing to keep in mind is the strong overlap at the highest levels of our country in all fields... It's not intellectuals vs. businessmen vs. government officials, the policy wonks run business and the businessmen went to Oxford! In fact there is hardly any distinction between them, they more or less are all the same people! You could make the argument that for multiple decades we have been governed by the same small group of people basically changing hands - and I am not talking about family dynasties like the Bushes, I mean the mid-level bureaucrats are basically all the same people and they just trade offices every time a different party comes in.[/quote]
There's nothing wrong with having an MBA.