Man this is so sad. I am choked up watching Nancy and the coffin. I really did love the man, great president, the right man for the job - defeating communism. He had a sense of dignity, professionalism, and a positive outlook for the U.S. I am feeling very patriotic today. Maybe it was my years in the military (in the 90s), but I always felt like he was the military’s greatest advocate when I was growing up.
God’s speed Mr. President.
-Gary
I have to settle for hearing it today (if the phone would stop ringing ) and hope to catch it on CSPAN tonight. Moving service. I fly a flag every day but today have my other flag out too.
I second that, but I’m not feeling sad as you mentioned…Reagan was a man of deep conviction with his faith. He’s so much better off now, living for eternity with his Creator, that we can only be happy he can finally rest in peace and pray that his family can find solice in their own faith and support from the American public who loved him as much.
Great point. As someone who watched two grandparents go through that and my family the saddness was accompanied by the relief and happiness they finally had peace. My grandmother especially I know had longed for that peace for the entire 10 years she lived in that hell. I am relieved for his family, I noticed that Nancy looks absolutely spent by the experience. It is such a burden to carry.
Nicely said.
I have a very basic amount of political knowledge. I watch the news once and a while and that’s about it. I heard on the radio the other day some politicians want Reagan’s face on the $20 bill or some other currency. I’ve heard all week that he was one of the greatest presidents ever. I don’t mean any disrespect by this question, but what exactly did Reagan do? I’ve heard he ended communism; how exactly did he do that? Will he go down in history as aother Lincoln, Washington, or Adams?
Again, this isn’t meant to stir anything up, I’m simply curious.
I feel exactly the same way. Being the President of the united States is a beastly difficult task where you must be impervious to criticism.
Former President Reagan always maintained the dignity of the office and the country. He was a very fine president and American.
I saw a photo of a woman viewing his casket yesterday with tears streaming down her face. -Made me cry too. I fear we have not just lost a former President and charismatic figure but perhaps an era of decency, simplicity and candor in government.
Reagan inherited an economy with double digit inflation and unemployment and a world in which totalatarian and communist governments were on the move. He made a series of very tough decisions and got enough Democratic support to implement those decisions. It is impossible to imagine getting that support today, but those times were different and he was different.
He decided to take a recession to get inflation out of the system. The early 80s were marked by a severe recession, but it worked. He got rid of the inflation and it hasn’t been seen since.
At the same time he started a defense build up to challenge the Soviet Union. This policy was heavily opposed here and in Europe by “peace” and “nuclear freeze” movements. Even his own daughter vocally opposed these policies. He sent Stingers to Afghanistan and turned the Soviet occupation of that country into a total disaster. In the effort to keep up, the Soviet Union went broke and collapsed 10 months after he left office. Democracy has been spreading all over the world ever since.
In order to revive the economy, he initiated tax cuts. These were substantial cuts that lowered marginal tax rates down to 28%. Some of these have been reversed, but the bulk of them are still in place. The defense cost and the tax cuts caused unprecedented deficits initially, but by the end of his term government revenues had nearly doubled and the economy was booming. That boom continues to this day with only two brief interruptions.
It is impossible to imagine in the current context, but he did all this without saying an ill word about any man.
I am guessing from your question that you are in your twenties. If so, you have never seen anything other than the politics of hatred and personal destruction. It is impossible to imagine today that he won over 1000 of the 1100 or so electoral votes in his two elections. You have never seen members of Congress vote their conscience rather than the party line on matters important to the country. Reagan rose above all that through the force of his ideas and personality.
I don’t know whether he needs to be on $20 bill or whether he will go down with Lincoln and Washington as a great president. I do know that I am unlikely to see another president like him in my lifetime. I am a big Bush supporter, but he is at best only half a loaf. Reagan was the real thing.
It’s really hard to remember what things were like in 1980. There were gas lines, mortgages of more than 14%, incredible inflation, about 100 Americans held hostage in Iran (Nightline actually started as a nightly update about the hostage crisis), the disaster of Desert One, and the best that the US President could do when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan was to deprive American athletes of the opportunity of competing for their country in the Olympics. The common wisdom was that free markets were failing and that there was a moral equivalence between communism and liberal western democracies.
President Reagan has a different viewpoint. He believed in America and American ideals. He believed in individual liberty. He believe that individuals, not governments, solve problems. He believed that the Communist system was evil because it enslaved individuals to the state. President Reagan was willing to say these things to remind us of what has made America great and what could make America great for the future.
As a result, President Reagan believed that we should confront Communism because it was evil. Therefore, he changed American foreign policy from one of containment (President Truman) and detente (President Nixon) to one of confrontation and rollback. He did this in a number of ways, some of which are listed above, and some of which may never be publicly known.
Another significant change was moving from a policy of negotiating limits on nuclear arms (SALT I and II were Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties) to negotiating treaties for the reduction and elimination of nuclear weapons. When the USSR concluded that it had to do so, President Reagan was able to negotiate the IMNF treaty, the first treaty that eliminated a class of weapons. This lay the groundwork for other treaties that have substantially reduced the number of nuclear weapons that exist in the world and that could be targeted at American citizens.
Finally, at home, President Reagan enacted a series of reductions in the marginal income tax rates, from a top rate of 70% down to 31%. This has led to incredible long term growth since these tax cuts began affecting the economy in 1982 (back when the DOW was 800). That these policies are a success is shown by the fact that even politicians that want to raise taxes do not advocate going back to the Carter rate of 70%, or even the top rate of 50% that was around after the 1981 tax cuts. Instead, they have advocated much smaller increases, impliclitly recognizing the result of the subtatially reduced taxes.
Poor guy. Sad. No one wants to die the way he did.
But about his presidency, was he involved in the “October Suprise” with the US hostages?
Paul Volker, as president of the fed, increased the FF rate. This choked off inflation.
Inflation was eliminated by then president of the fed, Paul Volker.
Paul Volker was appointed by Jimmy Carter.
Paul Volker’s 3rd term, as Fed president, was denied by President Reagan.
Yes, Carter appointed Volker late in his term after the previous Fed president was a Carter puppet who completely screwed the entire economy by printing money. You can’t get 20 per cent inflation any other way. (I want to say Miller?).
Carter was such a disaster of a president from an economic point of view, he gave a speech descibing a “malaise” that had pervaded the country. He didn’t note that it originated in the Oval Office.
Presidents pretty much get the monetary policy they want in the long run. Reagan appointed Greenspan after Volker, which has worked out for the past 17 years. I thought Volker didn’t want to serve another term, though I could be mistaken. He did his eight years, which is pretty good for that job.
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But Reagan didn’t stop inflation.
Someone else did. Who was appointed by a dem.
And then Reagan threw him out of office.
Pick on Carter.
Reagan didn’t stop inflation.
And Reagan cut taxes. If you are rich.
He raised FICA. And that is capped off. He raised a regressive tax.
For 70% of Americans FICA is the biggest tax.
And Reagan raised it.
If that is what you want to believe, fine. Reagan was a tax raising president who lucked into a great economy caused by a last minute holdover from Carter that he only reappointed once. His tax, spending and defense policies had nothing to do with the long term revival of the American economy and the breath taking march of democracy around the world over the following two decades.
Of course the fact that 70% spend more on FICA than income tax now is a result of his dropping tax rates and thus tens of millions from the tax rolls is an inconvenient fact we can safely ignore.
Are you sure Volker sought to keep his job after eight years? That is not my memory at all. I had a girlfriend around that time that worked for the Fed, but that is so long ago I could still be wrong about that. I thought he just wanted to make his fortune on Wall Street. He was a great chairman, no question about that.