Ronald Reagan was a Bad President

To provide a quick roadmap I'll first go over my own constructive case and then move on to my opponents side of the flow. Before we discuss if Ronald Reagan was a bad president or not, it is most appropriate to clarify a few things: First in the Negative world we will be determining who is and isn't a bad president through relative terms, so to prove that Ronald Reagan was a bad president, Aff would have to prove he was, on balance comparatively worse than the average president. So for my side of the flow: Contention One: Relatively, Ronald Reagan was the Best US President Since my opponents only standard for a "bad president" is one that is bad for America (via his own definition), and we can only relatively determine if a president was good or not, Ronald Reagan was not only NOT a bad president, but he was in fact by a relative standard the greatest president we've ever had. According to a 2011 Gallup Poll, 19% of Americans thought Reagan was the greatest President we've ever had, where he even came before presidents such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and JFK. Therefore, relatively Ronald Reagan is the best U.S President Contention Two: Ronald Reagan Ended the Cold War Ronald Reagan played a huge part in ending one of the world's most deadly conflicts by being a great statesman and pragmatist. In fact, according to a traditionally center left source, The Brookings Institution, Ronald Reagan's attitude towards Gorbachev and his policy of being a hardened cold warrior to the public but privately being open to negotiation and correspondence with Mikhail Gorbachev was instrumental in ending the Cold War. This alone would be enough to conclude that on balance, he was a not a bad president considering the Cold War was the paramount foreign policy issue of the last half of the 20th century for the United States. Contention Three: Economy Not only did Reagan reverse the horrendous monetary policies of his predecessors, he significantly improved the economy throughout the duration of his presidency. After a rapid increase in unemployment in the first two years of his presidency (undoubtedly due to the policies of his predecessor), unemployment began plummeting from peaking at around 10% to roughly 5% by the end of his presidency. In fact according to Forbes, Reagan oversaw the best peacetime economic recovery in American history, where he also cut inflation in half by increasing interest rates, tripled the value of the stock market, and increased real per capita disposable income by 18%, effectively refuting pretty much any claim the Affirmative could make that he harmed the economy on balance Moving to my opponent's side of the flow: Intelligence: There is no real indicator that intelligence positively contributes to a president's performance, in fact this would go directly against my opponent's own definition of a "bad president" where he said it is a president that is "not good for america". My opponent provides no warrant for why a lack of intelligence is "bad for america" and even if he does later provide this link, hold him to a higher evidentiary standard than a few quotes he pulled from god knows where. With that said, there were plenty of presidents that were on the lower tier of intelligence relative to other US presidents that were highly regarded, including Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, LBJ, and George Washington. Foreign Policy: First cross apply my earlier point about foreign policy, now lets move to his side of the flow for this issue: Contras: My opponent presupposes that there was a morally superior side in this issue without realizing that both sides committed human rights abuses and that the FSLN still carried out mass property confiscation. Allegation of Creating Al-Qaeda: There is no substantiated evidence that the arming of the Afghan Muhjahideen created Al-Qaeda, as Osama Bin Laden said himself "the collapse of the Soviet Union ... goes to God and the mujahideen in Afghanistan ... the US had no mentionable role," but "collapse made the US more haughty and arrogant." And the first US journalist to interview Bin Laden said on CNN "The story about bin Laden and the CIA " that the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden " is simply a folk myth. There's no evidence of this. In fact, there are very few things that bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the U.S. government agree on. They all agree that they didn't have a relationship in the 1980s. And they wouldn't have needed to. Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently. The real story here is the CIA did not understand who Osama was until 1996, when they set up a unit to really start tracking him." Apartheid: No offense but this is complete intellectual dishonesty here as even though Reagan vetoed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, he implemented his own set of sanctions and just believed the act to be outside the scope of the powers of congress. If my opponent wants to extend this argument at least acknowledge it is a more nuanced issue than you at first claimed. Alleged support of other regimes: Reagan later retracted his support of Noriega and the next President (his own Vice President) invaded Panama to depose Noriega. The US offered minimal support to Iraq beause of Iran's illegal move to close off the strait of Hormuz, one of the most important shipping areas in the world, and due to Iran's general hostility to the United States. President Jimmy Carter also supported and aided Ferdinand Marcos, and my opponent provides no warrant as to why Marcos was not worthy of US support. Additionally, it was in large part due to Reagan that El Salvador went from a dictatorship to a Democracy, due to Reagan threatening to cut off US aid unless the "brutal dictatorship" as my opponent endeavors to call it, made democratic reforms. My opponents allegations of President Reagan's corruption and lying are non unique since almost every president has had administration officials that had to resign due to a scandal. My opponent also changes the number of corrupt Reagan officials from 138 to 9, so I would be truly curious to know which it is. This argument is also based on my opponents own definition irresolutional since he provides no impact in his argument for why pardoning a few supposedly corrupt officials was bad for america. Liar: Only one of my opponents allegations of Ronald Reagan lying was supposedly "Proved wrong" (according to who, exactly?), the others were either never proven or in my opponents opinion wrong. For the following reasons I negate. Back to you Pro. Sources: http://www.brookings.edu... http://www.gallup.com... http://historyinpieces.com... http://www.forbes.com... http://us-presidents.insidegov.com... https://en.wikipedia.org... https://en.wikipedia.org... https://en.wikipedia.org... http://www.theguardian.com... https://en.wikipedia.org...