Ronald Reagan's Administration was one of he most successful

You had a lot of words but very few actual defenses. Reiterating the same revisionist history, you've done little to support the actual case at hand. You say that Reagan's legacy is built on "his strong character and realist beliefs" -- well, that might actually be largely true. He did have a strong character as have many presidents his beliefs may have been reality-based (outside of the astrology), however this does not qualify one as successful. It isn't that he didn't have a character or beliefs, it's that his policies were a disaster. We can see this today better than ever, he may have been Teflon then... but today we aren't wearing rose covered glasses and can see how things played out. Economics are not zero-sum and nobody actually believes they are, if you produce more goods from raw material you actually create capital. I, economically, am a staunch Keynesian. If you prime the pump and put more money in the economy this has considerable success as far revitalizing an economy. Largely this was the policy used during the Great Depression by FDR. There's a certain flip between the Keynesian economics and Trickle-Down Economics. In the former money is given to those likely to spend it (poor and middle class people) with jobs, training, and public works. Trickle-Down basically gives more money to the already rich who tend to sit on their cash rather than feed it back into the economy. Bush repeated this strategy at the start of his term cut the taxes to the upper 1%. The result was that the economic success of Clinton was largely flipped backwards and the national debt ballooned much as had happened under Reagan. Cutting taxes and increasing spending by massive amounts apparently causes debt to skyrocket... go figure! Economically this strategy goes plunk. Why did Reagan seem successful then? The economic problems of the late 1970s were triggered primarily due to stagflation triggered by shocks to commodities largely due to oil. The US oil production peaked and caused massive shockwaves throughout the economy. This was ended, not by Reagan's policies, but despite Reagan's policies. In principle by two factors, a three year contraction of the money supply by the Federal Reserve under Paul Volcker, initiated in the last year of Carter's presidency, and to long term easing of supply and pricing in oil during the 1980's Oil Glut. (See: Alan Greenspan, age of turbulence). You even go so far as to pretend that Reagan was responsible for Clinton's surpluses even though he cut spending and increased taxes over the objections of the Republicans in congress? Clinton's surpluses were largely caused by the massive expansion of the IT sector. Microsoft, not Reagan. In fact, the tax cuts initiated by Reagan were followed by extremely slow growth (~.2%) whereas the Clinton tax increases were followed by large growth (~3%). The idea that Reagan did X and the economy did Y therefore Y was caused by X is disingenuous for a number of reasons (and a logical fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc). First, "it's the economy, stupid" which is to say it does whatever it will do. It's nearly impossible to predict, and taking credit is like taking credit for wind. Calling the Cold War ending a peace dividend is rather silly, we didn't actually need enough weapons to blow up the world multiple times we probably didn't even need enough nuclear weapons to blow up the world once. He could have simply stopped buying more nukes than we needed and saved a good amount on spending defense. However, there were few things Reagan liked more than increasing spending (Jelly Beans?) and could have cut the bloated defense budget and then spend a lot to modernize the military like Clinton did. So we see, Reagan is largely unimportant when it came to the economy. The stagflation ended after the oil market stabilized and the Fed's policy to control inflation took effect. Reagan primary contribution was to give the rich some money, which was exactly as effective as when Bush did it back in 2000 aka not at all. Though the spending he did to running up a massive national debt, is largely his cross to bear. --- My second argument does not question Reagan's character. My second arguments notes that Reagan engaged in activities which actively gave aid to our enemies. He supported numerous horrific regimes who murdered, killed, traded in drugs, later became terrorist organizations, etc. That's not a question of character, it's a question of fact. Selling Iran weapons and giving the sale money to fund South American terrorist factions is an issue to say the least. Giving rise to Saddam, supporting Noriega and Pinochet with their death squads, rape rooms, and crimes against humanity. You say that Carter turned his back on the Shah? -- Good. He was right to do so. By realism you mean that he negotiated with terrorists? You know why we don't do that? It bits you in the butt in the long run. Reagan started out by negotiating with the terrorists who took over the American embassy, struck a deal and had them keep the hostages hostage until the *hour* he took office. I think Carter might have had better luck if somebody hadn't gone their like a cockroach for the purposes of undermining the US foreign policy. You are right that Noriega had his drug charges recognized for 1984 and that he was convicted in Miami. What you failed to note was that under Reagan he *STILL* had US support until 1988 (Reagan), wasn't convicted until the 90s (Not Reagan). Reagan was clearly an ally of Saddam. Reagan set up Saddam in the first place and supported him. I didn't say we weren't friendly at first, my point was that that strategy constantly bit us in the butt. Support Osama Bin Laden (among others, he was a smaller player at the time) as well as Saddam, Noriega, Pinochet over the government the people would have preferred has caused problems for our foreign policy ever since. What communist government (there's a few socialist ones like Sweden which aren't corrupt) is not corrupt? Well, none really comes to mind. Is that suppose to argue that communism is successful? It isn't. The USSR was an extreme case of this. It rotted from the inside and fell. Certainly it was opposed, but it doesn't negate the fact that it rotted and fell due to internal corruption rather than outside forces. Noting that this is true of most communist governments doesn't negate the argument. The arms race? MAD works regardless of the number of nuclear weapons. "I can blow you up once" is as effective as "I can blow you up 40 times". Honestly, we would have been fine with enough weapons to vaporize the USSR half a dozen times and would have saved a good deal of money rather than spending a lot and having this worthless stockpile of old dusty nukes. SALT was a godsend, in that it *ENDED* the arms race. Also, fyi, the US had fewer missiles. SDI? Star Wars? Seriously? You mention one of Reagan's massive wasteful blunders? I debated expounding on the point myself to highlight how pathetic Reagan's policies were! We never came close, not even remotely close, not even one missile when we knew where it was! The USSR noted that even if it worked and could shoot down 10,000 missiles, they'd only need to build 20,000! Not only was SDI an unsuccessful money pit it threatened to restart the arms race! Reagan was a failure. He talked a good talk, and he walked a walk... but it was largely in the wrong direction. Other than taking credit for things he didn't do, his resume is filled with things he did do which have been massive failures. Take the War on Drugs, the black markets, draconian drug laws, mandatory minimums, prison bloating, ineffectiveness, and allowing the funding for crimes... this, like Reagan's other policies have been complete failures. A smile and a good one liner... but when you take a deeper look at Reagan you see a failure.