Thread: Reagan legacy: Confidence, optimism and debt

Reagan legacy: Confidence, optimism and debt

By Chuck Raasch

WASHINGTON — Ronald Reagan would get a kick out of all the nostalgia surrounding the 100th anniversary of his birth on Sunday.

After all, at 73, Reagan ran on a "morning in America" theme in his re-election landslide in 1984. The nation's oldest president brought a generation of young Americans into the Republican Party.

But many of Reagan's best stories were about the past, a mythos of an America he grew up in, but one that is quite different from the America of today. Reagan's formative America was that of segregation and Jim Crow just as much as it was about the shining city on a hill that the boy from a modest Midwestern upbringing defined as America's yearning.

Reagan would also be getting a kick out of the comparisons that some are making with the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Chuck Raasch USA Today columnist

Barack Obama first stirred this tempest inside his Democratic Party when he praised Reagan's fealty to principle and message during the 2008 presidential primaries.

It is true that both Reagan and Obama were given the gift of communicating. Recently, Obama has embraced an American exceptionalism that sounded quite Reaganesque. But the ideological differences are too vast for anything other than stylistic comparisons.

Reagan tried to get ketchup declared a vegetable. Obama thinks the government should do more to get Americans to eat their vegetables.

In the lead-up to Reagan's birthday on Sunday, books have been released, ceremonies planned, websites dedicated for the centennial of The Gipper's birth. Historians, journalists and politicians are holding symposiums on Reagan's legacy.

As happened often when he was in the White House, his family is again torn asunder over what he means to them, and to America. Son Ron writes in a new book that he suspected that his dad was displaying symptoms of Alzheimer's before Reagan left the presidency. Another son, Michael, is saying it is not true.

In truth, Reagan left the country with a split verdict on his presidency.

He made believing in America acceptable after Jimmy Carter's angst and doubt. Reagan restored the power and prestige of the presidency after some had declared it too much of a job for one person. He often saw America as it should be, not as it was. But he also spoke with a moral clarity that accelerated history, starting with "evil empire" and continuing with, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

Reagan left a gauge of political optimism, and of presidential persuasion, that no Republican has come close to living up to since he left. This Reagan Syndrome is bane and benefit for today's GOP.

But Reagan also tripled the national debt in his eight years in office. Democrats who held the House of Representatives during his presidency will share the blame. Reagan got that Congress to cut taxes but not to make commensurate spending cuts.

The debt surpassed a once-unheard-of $1 trillion in Reagan's first year in office, and it was nearly $3 trillion when he left. A modern precedent had been set. A scant 22 years after he left office, the debt has ballooned to $14 trillion with an additional $1.5 trillion coming this fiscal year. Except for wars and economic depressions, this growth in debt was virtually unprecedented. Even during the Vietnam War, the rise of the Great Society and the "guns and butter" debate of the '60s, the federal debt rose only from about $285 billion in 1960 to $370 billion in 1970.

One can argue that tripling the federal debt was the price of ending the Cold War. But Reagan and many of his acolytes (except for budget director David Stockman) generally pooh-poohed the long-term impact of deficits. In the American mornings since he left office, we have learned differently.

After Bill Clinton became the first president to balance the budget in three decades (after a tax increase) another strangle-the-government-with-tax-cuts Republican replaced him.

George W. Bush doubled the debt in his eight years in office. He cut taxes and fought two wars on borrowed money. His Republican mates in Congress joined in the spending so much that they sparked a Tea Party revolt. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff calls the nation's fiscal condition a threat to national security.

And if he maintains the current rate, Obama could double the debt if he serves eight years.

That's a heck of a morning to look forward to.

(Chuck Raasch writes from Washington for Gannett. Contact him at craasch@gannett.com, follow him at http://twitter.com/craasch or join in the conversation at http://www.facebook.com/raaschcolumn)

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/fo ... 4_ST_N.htm

His legacy was fouled when he granted illegals amnesty.

He later apologized saying it was a mistake. A mistake? Like when you take the wrong road and then have to turn around? Not hardly. A cold, calculated decision to pay back his corporate slave lovers who wanted to have a population to exploit as well as encourage even more workers to come here for exploitation and large profits.

I don't understand the Reagan lovers.

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