Please. Obama was a bad President. His foreign policy an utter disaster, one might even say a disgrace. Reagan had a vision of how to win the Cold War and what do you know, he was exactly right. Obama was wrong on the early pull out of Iraq, wrong on Syria, wrong on Russia and wrong (so so so so wrong) on Iran. Other than that, how did you like the play Mrs. Lincoln.
Please. Obama was a bad President. His foreign policy an utter disaster, one might even say a disgrace. Reagan had a vision of how to win the Cold War and what do you know, he was exactly right. Obama was wrong on the early pull out of Iraq, wrong on Syria, wrong on Russia and wrong (so so so so wrong) on Iran. Other than that, how did you like the play Mrs. Lincoln.
He should have been held responsible for Iran/Contra. Or the crack epidemic. Or the AIDS epidemic. Or the popular contempt for тАЬthe governmentтАЭ. But he was a Republican, so we had to baby him. Great President.
Uh huh. The Soviet union collapsed because it was hollow and Gorbachev believed that he could return to true Leninism to fill it out. Reagan had nothing to do with it.
The Soviet Union would eventually have collapsed under its own weight, but that collapse was not imminent. Reagan sped up the process by at least a decade.
Maybe or they could have selected a hawkish General Secretary that would respond to Reagan with full on Stalinism in '85. I was two at the time and certainly am not familiar enough with the members of the Politburo to say how it would have gone but from what I have read Gorbachev is the key actor.
It has nothing to do with personnel - the Soviet apparatchiks were mostly interchangeable. The problem was that communism was not a workable economic system in the long run - that's why it would have failed eventually. By forcing Moscow to ramp up its military industrial efforts to compete with the US buildup, Reagan exposed and exploited that weakness. The Soviet economy could not handle that added strain. That was why Gorbachev felt he had to institute perestroika, but but his perestroika turned out to be too little too late to save the Soviet Union.
Ok or he was a doddering idiot racist that almost caused a nuclear war. If you want to give credit to anyone from the administration I guess Schultz qualifies.
IIRC, you said you were two years old back then. I was working for the US government as a Soviet economic analyst, so I know about this stuff first hand.
I have a lot of respect for George Shultz. But he was carrying out the policy priorities set by Reagan. Reagan alone formulated the policy that won the Cold War. We were never on the verge of nuclear war. In fact, Reagan negotiated reductions in nuclear arms with the Soviets.
You clearly know nothing about Ronald Reagan. You are uncritically repeating the stupidest criticisms of him. He was neither an idiot nor a racist. According to the people who knew him, he was a closet intellectual who read books and discussed them with his staff. As for doddering, we now know that his last two years were marred by the onset of Alzheimer's, which explains why not much happened in those two years. But we got six good years out of him.
For future reference, the best criticism to level at Reagan, if you are inclined to do that, is Iran-Contra.
One of Reagan's initiatives was New Federalism - an attempt to shift power away from DC and back to the states. Federal grants to states had always come with strings attached, and over time that had tended to rob states of actual policymaking authority. Reagan wanted to cut some of those strings to allow states a greater role in administering their own affairs. For conservatives, this was a matter of faithfulness to the Constitution - especially the 10th amendment. Reagan's success with this agenda was mixed - it might have been one of the things that was left incomplete because of his Alzheimer's.
Please. Obama was a bad President. His foreign policy an utter disaster, one might even say a disgrace. Reagan had a vision of how to win the Cold War and what do you know, he was exactly right. Obama was wrong on the early pull out of Iraq, wrong on Syria, wrong on Russia and wrong (so so so so wrong) on Iran. Other than that, how did you like the play Mrs. Lincoln.
He should have been held responsible for Iran/Contra. Or the crack epidemic. Or the AIDS epidemic. Or the popular contempt for тАЬthe governmentтАЭ. But he was a Republican, so we had to baby him. Great President.
Uh huh. The Soviet union collapsed because it was hollow and Gorbachev believed that he could return to true Leninism to fill it out. Reagan had nothing to do with it.
The Soviet Union would eventually have collapsed under its own weight, but that collapse was not imminent. Reagan sped up the process by at least a decade.
Maybe or they could have selected a hawkish General Secretary that would respond to Reagan with full on Stalinism in '85. I was two at the time and certainly am not familiar enough with the members of the Politburo to say how it would have gone but from what I have read Gorbachev is the key actor.
It has nothing to do with personnel - the Soviet apparatchiks were mostly interchangeable. The problem was that communism was not a workable economic system in the long run - that's why it would have failed eventually. By forcing Moscow to ramp up its military industrial efforts to compete with the US buildup, Reagan exposed and exploited that weakness. The Soviet economy could not handle that added strain. That was why Gorbachev felt he had to institute perestroika, but but his perestroika turned out to be too little too late to save the Soviet Union.
Ok or he was a doddering idiot racist that almost caused a nuclear war. If you want to give credit to anyone from the administration I guess Schultz qualifies.
IIRC, you said you were two years old back then. I was working for the US government as a Soviet economic analyst, so I know about this stuff first hand.
I have a lot of respect for George Shultz. But he was carrying out the policy priorities set by Reagan. Reagan alone formulated the policy that won the Cold War. We were never on the verge of nuclear war. In fact, Reagan negotiated reductions in nuclear arms with the Soviets.
You clearly know nothing about Ronald Reagan. You are uncritically repeating the stupidest criticisms of him. He was neither an idiot nor a racist. According to the people who knew him, he was a closet intellectual who read books and discussed them with his staff. As for doddering, we now know that his last two years were marred by the onset of Alzheimer's, which explains why not much happened in those two years. But we got six good years out of him.
For future reference, the best criticism to level at Reagan, if you are inclined to do that, is Iran-Contra.
Oh so why did he kick off his campaign in Philadelphia MS talking about states' rights?
One of Reagan's initiatives was New Federalism - an attempt to shift power away from DC and back to the states. Federal grants to states had always come with strings attached, and over time that had tended to rob states of actual policymaking authority. Reagan wanted to cut some of those strings to allow states a greater role in administering their own affairs. For conservatives, this was a matter of faithfulness to the Constitution - especially the 10th amendment. Reagan's success with this agenda was mixed - it might have been one of the things that was left incomplete because of his Alzheimer's.
Or he was celebrating the murder of the freedom riders.
What does policy have to do with being an orator?
It's a lot easier to sound like you know what you're talking about when you actually know what you're talking about.