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I said Reagan, but I suspect that Obama will overtake him by the end of his second term.
I'm in agreement. I voted for Reagan both times and always felt that things were under control during his administration, although in hindsight, there were some disturbing aspects like James Watt, his Sectretary of the Interior who was rabidly anti-environmental.
But Reagan was popular and gave the definite impression that loved American and genuinely cared about its people.
I also expect that Obama wil go down in the history books as one of the great or near great presidents. And he will end up moving ahead of Reagan at some point.
Ronnie seems to be kicking a little tail in the Poll.
Yeah, I find that quite remarkable, given the number of people that have participated in the thread is only a few more than the total votes for Unca Ronnie.
Ahh... the benefits of free and open forum registration!
But nah, on second thought, no one HERE would stack a poll with alternate account votes...
So what, he was so miserably unpopular he didn't even bother running for a second term. He started the most unpopular war we've ever had. The Great Society was a failure. What did he do to merit being the best president since Kennedy, other than win an election. By this definition you must love Reagon in '84. Seriously.
He didn't actually start the war. The Vietnam war was started in the eisenhower administration and escalated through the Kennedy and johnson admins. It is easy to look back in hindsight and say that we should not have been there. But when you consider the serious Cold WAr menace that existed then (the cuban missile crisis happened in 1962 plus the militaristic rise of USSR and China among other things), the threat of expanding Communism (Domino Principle) was very real and scary. World domination by the Communists was NOT out of the question. It was every bit as real as Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan taking over other countries in years preceding and during WWII and maybe US this time. Given those circumstances, any of the Presidents probably would have done the same thing as LBJ. LBJ's legislative accomplishments and attempts to make the country a better place far outshine those of most other Presidents. He would have been a Great President if not for Vietnam.
As a young paratrooper in the 80s, I supported Reagan because my pay went up and I had no conception of history or any independent analysis of politics (thanks to my vacuous history classes--and that's not an accident in our public schools). I spent a few months in Honduras, 12 miles from Nicaragua, and often probably closer, as the topo maps we had contained no political boundary markers. After I ETSd (ironically as there was no war for me to exercise my talents and aggression) I spent some time studying our history in Central America. Any one soldier sees so little of what is happening, but the little I saw betrayed what my government, under Reagan, told me was going on. Over 20 years later I trust no president, or administration. Reagan's performance under oath (I don't recall) sealed the deal. His lack of accountability (witness a light colonel conducting foreign policy and transfer of American military technology to the enemy), along with a lack of accountability for the parties guilty of this treason (remember we put Pollard in prison for life for lesser offenses), helped usher in our hermaphrodite military/civilian structure that sabotages our current military efforts.
Conversely, my opinion of Carter has really changed. As a kid, with no political knowledge, I hated him. But he did try to rescue our hostages in the Iranian embassy, an operation that took serious baby makers and carried serious consequences (as he found out). And, as we've seen, real men go to Tehran. Actors invade Grenada.
As a young paratrooper in the 80s, I supported Reagan because my pay went up and I had no conception of history or any independent analysis of politics (thanks to my vacuous history classes--and that's not an accident in our public schools). I spent a few months in Honduras, 12 miles from Nicaragua, and often probably closer, as the topo maps we had contained no political boundary markers. After I ETSd (ironically as there was no war for me to exercise my talents and aggression) I spent some time studying our history in Central America. Any one soldier sees so little of what is happening, but the little I saw betrayed what my government, under Reagan, told me was going on. Over 20 years later I trust no president, or administration. Reagan's performance under oath (I don't recall) sealed the deal. His lack of accountability (witness a light colonel conducting foreign policy and transfer of American military technology to the enemy), along with a lack of accountability for the parties guilty of this treason (remember we put Pollard in prison for life for lesser offenses), helped usher in our hermaphrodite military/civilian structure that sabotages our current military efforts.
Conversely, my opinion of Carter has really changed. As a kid, with no political knowledge, I hated him. But he did try to rescue our hostages in the Iranian embassy, an operation that took serious baby makers and carried serious consequences (as he found out). And, as we've seen, real men go to Tehran. Actors invade Grenada.
My experiences while in the military for over 20 years were very different than yours. For example, I didn't vote for Reagan, and voted for Carter. But long after retiring from the military, I learned that thanks to Carter's involvement against the Shah's ((a dictator, of course) human rights, the Ayatollahs took over, and the result was a new enemy of the US.
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