countezero
Registered Senior Member
Don't pretend like the burden is on me. You could have tried to prove your claims whenever you wanted. You chose not to. Now you're trying to save what little face you have left. Pathetic.
Was Nixon so bad?
- Thread starter Syzygys
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Reagan wasn't a bad president o-o
Bad? Maybe not. Idiot? yes...
countezero
Registered Senior Member
Reagan was a lot of things, but he was not an idiot.
Reagan was second to W on a lot of things - second biggest budget deficits, second worst terrorist attack, second biggest banking bailout, second biggest military boondoggle, etc - but then he was hampered by a less cooperative Congress, and the necessity of uninterrupted naps.
Maybe not, just a confused and ineffectual leader with more style than substance.
Reagan was smart enough to know his limitations and let other people run the show. Although the last 2 years when his Alzheimer was taking over, he was definiatelly close to be an idiot, also did he ever answer a hard question straight?
A few of his stupidities:
http://www.slate.com/id/2101842/
A few of his stupidities:
http://www.slate.com/id/2101842/
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Nixon was a scary dude. But I think George junior is more scary.
superstring01
Moderator
Presidents are human. Given enough effort, any person can comb video and audio records and come up with a slew of slips that paint them in a negative light. Generally I'm suspicious of anything from Slate, but the fact that it was written by Hitchens, makes it a piece worth reading.
~String
countezero
Registered Senior Member
I think it's hysterical that a thread about Nixon has devolved into liberals foaming at the mouth about their other pariah -- Ronald Reagan. Hatred, apparently, knows rather typical bounds.
Reagan could string words together coherently, something Georgie has never been able to do.
They were both criminals.
countezero
Registered Senior Member
That's a rather bold statement. Would you acknowledge that it could be applied to Mr. Clinton?
No I do not.
countezero
Registered Senior Member
So lying under oath isn't a crime in your book?
Back to Reagan, I will not argue that Iran-Contra wasn't illegal because it was. And I will not argue that it was his administration and not him involved in it, because at the end of the day, he is responsible for what his administration does. However, to take one action and label a man a "criminal" seems excessive. In other words, the fact I stole something once does not make me a "thief." Nixon demonstrates a pattern of corruption and criminality that Reagan does not.
Back to Reagan, I will not argue that Iran-Contra wasn't illegal because it was. And I will not argue that it was his administration and not him involved in it, because at the end of the day, he is responsible for what his administration does. However, to take one action and label a man a "criminal" seems excessive. In other words, the fact I stole something once does not make me a "thief." Nixon demonstrates a pattern of corruption and criminality that Reagan does not.
Iran-Contra, merely the later and better documented of Reagan's years of treasonous and criminal dealings with Iran (beginning during his first campaign, by all the evidence) was itself a multi-year pattern of corruption and criminality spanning three continents, several countries, and multiple criminal organizations.
It wasn't a single deal with Iran. It wasn't a single deal with the Contras. It wasn't a single deal with the cocaine smugglers and the arms merchants.
And Reagan's seriously effective conspiring did more damage to the US than Nixon's mostly domestic and interrupted conspiracies.
Until Dan Quayle came along, Reagan was the guy reporters collected funny quotes from - he was OK reading a script, his life long career, but take the script away and he was apt to stumble out almost anything. There were whole books of these quotes, for sale in the bookstores; IIRC one of them was called "The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan". It was like the W quotes now - people snickering and feeling superior.joe said:
I once read an analysis of the advertising technique of ballyhooing exactly what the product is not, touting it as the product's strength, that included the marketing of Reagan as the "Great Communicator" in its examples.
He was the first President I know of to have his handlers noticeably limit his ad lib press time and control his press conferences tightly, in the interests of keeping the embarrassment to a minimum.
Somehow that side of his image has faded. Maybe it was Quayle, or HW (a might mangler in his own right), but if it hadn't been, our own Babe Ruth of Bungled English would have reduced him to footnotes anyway.
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countezero
Registered Senior Member
Please explain how working to release hostages and fight communism in Latin America is treasonous?
Claiming that Iran-Contra did more damage to the US than Watergate is ridiculous. I'd wager the majority of Americans, to say nothing of some people on this site, don't even know what Iran-Contra is and couldn't understand it.
That wasn't my claim.count said:
And it wouldn't be ridiculous if it had been. Not nearly as ridiculous as arguing that Reagan's Presidential career of betrayal must not have been as damaging as Watergate because the majority of Americans don't know what Iran-Contra was. About the only thing the majority of Americans who lived through the 80s watching TV can probably remember for sure is Tammy Faye Baker.
countezero
Registered Senior Member
Really?
Then why did you write that "Reagan's seriously effective conspiring did more damage to the US than Nixon's mostly domestic and interrupted conspiracies"?
You have to deal with effects, which was the point I was trying to make. Iran-Contra did not sully the office of president or seriously damage American prestige at home or abroad. It was a complicated scandal that largely blew over, regardless of how either of us feel about it.
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