Ronald Reagan – Worst President Ever?

History is constantly in a state of revision.  It’s not that the facts change, or whether what happened in the past, but it’s the lessons that people claim to want us to learn that changes.  People take and twist history both ways.

There’s the infamous cherry tree that George Washington was said to have cut down and then told the truth about—but then we learn he didn’t.  There are founding fathers that we’re told believed in God, and then find out that some were deist.  There are stories told about Lincoln and the Civil War, but we eventually find out that they too were much more complicated than we were lead to believe.

The same is true in modern history.  During the presidency of Ronald Reagan the man was berated in the press, but hailed as a leader in the polls.  He was overwhelmingly elected to his second term in office, and he bears a lot of the credit for reduction in taxes, in the size of government and for helping to win the cold war.

But in order to tarnish conservative principles, it’s now being suggested by some that he may be one of the worst Presidents ever.

I guess it all depends on the criteria used to judge.  For the author in the above link, Reagan deserves infamy specifically because he chose to follow conservative principles instead of liberal ones.  Instead of imposing his will on corporations and the people, instead of using the strong arm of government, he got out of people’s way.  Freedom and private property are something that, it seems to this author, are the wrong things to stand for.

The author, however, fails to reach back and recall the true reason for the current economic crisis (and every recession and crisis since the Great Depression)—the expansion of government and the creation of the welfare state.  Indeed, the more government gets involved the worse and the longer these corrections last.

And don’t even get me started on the debt.

I’m not sure how President Obama can peacefully go on vacation to New York City or wherever when he can also say that he’s placed the nation in so much debt that we may never get out and other countries are talking about devaluing the dollar such that it may not be worth the money that it’s printed on.