So they went on and on about how well-loved he was but it showed in this is what I remember from the eighties will horrible president that he actually was he destroyed the economy for years to come he fired the air traffic controllers he was just a soundbite all talk and BS. acomplished nothing
shareYup I was completely let down by this episode. One of the worst presidents in recent memory minus Bush jr. They never even talked about the Republican Party working with the Iranians to pull the hostages out on his first day of his presidency.
shareYea, that claim bothered me. It was Carter who had spent months negotiating for their release, yet got none of the credit. Same for the Camp David accords. At least they didn't mention the solar panels on the roof of the White House...
shareI remember that bit (Carter working for their release but it not happening until Carter was officially not the President) from "The Seventies" episode. It was funny to me that they completely glossed over that.
Good is the enemy of great.
I didn't learn anything particularly new from the episode, but they did mention his firing of the air traffic controllers and even mentioned it is the only union in the country that supported him. They devoted about ten minutes towards the Beirut bombings and Iran-Contra scandal. Perhaps, more of the Reagan presidency will be seen in the episodes of the AIDS epidemic and the resolution of the Cold War.
What we do in life, echoes in eternity.
No offense, I don't know how old you were in the 80's, but to say Reagan "destroyed the economy" and "accomplished nothing" is silly. By just about any economic metric you want to talk about (i.e. inflation, growth, interest rates, etc.), the situation was far better by his second term than it was when he came in. He left an economy in the middle of one of the biggest peacetime expansions ever.
As far as PATCO goes, I'll give this series credit: it's been one of the few to point out that their strike was illegal and RR gave them fair warning to return to work or else.
And on the foreign policy front: the tide was turned against the communist bloc and American military power was restored.
A good record by any standard.
Ignoring: QuesterJonesV, MythicCDXX, Creeping Jesus/Judas, RonPaul_Lies, Digby (and aliases), ibestupid, Holiday_Hobo, sharon_18, TilaMoo, Okie-from-Muskogee/boo321, NorCalNik, Nullifidian
I agree with Ryan. I'm 15 minutes into the Reagen episode, and they're onto the air traffic controllers with Jeff Greenfield describing the facts as they'd worked terrible hours and were underpaid. What are terrible hours? Aren't planes constantly landing at ALL hours? Underpaid is relative. The law says you can't strike, so you can't. If you're underpaid and working terrible hours as the journalist says, why not just quit? why strike? It's obviously not a job worth picketing for. Unless the pay wasn't so terrible... Who knows?
shareI agree with Ryan as well. I lived through the Ford/Carter/Reagan administration and Reagan was by far the best. Life was much better in '88 as opposed to '78. A natural leader who beefed up the military and effectively ended the Cold War. I love Ronald Reagan!
shareWell yes I guess I gotta agree with you there and some of that may be age I was 16 in 1978 let me when my parents and the economy was awful that wasn't Carter's fault that was next and informed that destroyed things things were better by 1988 especially for the wealthy the middle class was not doing well though Reagan was a horrible man and a horrible president and on top of that horrible horrible actor well maybe I take that back he did pretend to be president.
shareI'm a geezer old enough to have lived through, and voted against, both Nixon and Reagan...and I hated both of them at the time. Nixon was a liar and a con man and kept Vietnam going for four more years, costing additional tens of thousands of lives, and far more if you don't just count the American dead.
Reagan gave us the inequality we are dealing with today, destroyed a century of gains by American labor, and created the two-tier, non-union, red-blue, have-vs. have-not society America has become. My sister predicted it would take twenty years to undo what Reagan did. She was way off the mark. It will take much longer than that...and it may never happen. In any case, I won't live long enough to see the outcome.
All that being said, the decades that followed have made both Nixon and Reagan look better with every passing day. And we haven't seen anything yet. The worst is still yet to come, when the delusional passengers hand over the keys to the insane driver, who then steers the bus off the cliff.
🚋🚋 Just take that streetcar that's going uptown...