Ronald Reagan

This article originally written in 2009 is an example of hatred towards Ronald Regan the 40th president of the United States of America.  It clearly shows its hatred toward Regan implying that he may be ‘one of the worst presidents ever’.

However according to some records Reagan has a fairly positive job approval rating through his presidency.

This article supports highlights some of the areas of Reagan’s failures as well as criticising and questioning some of his achievements, which would therefore challenge records such as the records previously mentioned. . For example the article strongly suggests that Regan should not have received the praise he had obtained for the ending of the Cold War. It argues that the ‘Cold war was won before Reagan arrived in the White House’, as it was a common perception in the US intelligence community that the Cold war between the USA and the Soviet Union was winding down, a large part being that the USSR’s economic model had failed to keep up with the technological race with the West. It therefore strongly implies that due to the USSR’s failings the Cold War was expected to end in the near future, thus Reagan shouldn’t have received the praise he got for the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The article also argues that Reagan ignored many factors that could hinder the USA ‘all issues that Reagan….ignored…now threaten America’s future’.  The article states ‘However, powerful vested interests’ both domestic and foreign [Reagan] managed to exploit the shortcomings of these three presidents’. It therefore suggests that Reagan had dragged the American people in the wrong direction from the tough choices that Nixon, Ford and Carter had done.

An example of this would be American’s oil dependence, the article highlights that Carter pushed a comprehensive energy policy and warned Americans that their growing dependence on foreign oil represented a national security threat (what he called “the moral equivalent of war”).

The article then moves on critisising Reagan as CEO’s wages significantly rose compared to those of the typical worker, which prevented the American middle class from progressing. This is supported in the article as it states that  ‘Before Reagan, corporate CEOs earned less than 50 times the salary of an average worker’ but by the end of the Reagan-Bush-I administrations in 1993, the average CEO salary ‘was more than 100 times that of a typical worker.’

Sources:

http://consortiumnews.com/2012/02/20/ronald-reagan-worst-president-ever/

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-presapp0605-31.html