Ronald Reagan was a better President than Barack Obama

Foreign Policy "I never suggested that the media keep silent, because that's an authoritarian regime. What I suggested was that it's being used by his opposition (not just Republicans) to undermine him in the eyes of the American people. " But liberal media outlets do the same thing to the Republicans. This has been going on for years and back in the first years of the republic newspapers took the role of MSNBC (who by the way has been recently considered the least trusted of media outlets) and Fox News. Politicians have been able to manipulate their way through the mess the media can create sometimes, but for some reason Obama his stuck when less than half the total media in the United States attacks him. Most media websites, channels, etc. still defend him. [1] There is much we can do. Remember Reagan defeated the Soviet Union. We can do it again. The important thing is what to do now and Reagan's work back in the 1980s, even if it contributed weapons to future opponents of the USA, made the world a safer place than when he left it. Democracies were flourishing all over the place when he left after replacing authoritarian regimes. This has to be considered a great contribution to the world. He could not see the future and there were other contributions that led to the foundation of al-Qaeda, not just Reagan giving arms. Remember that Saudi Arabia refused Osama Bin Laden's offer for a Muslim only army. Obama continued the Bush timetable after he left and has to also be held accountable. I agree with my opponent that the problem is between ethnic groups, but disagree that nothing can be done. Many might know about Yugoslavia and what has made that region better is the breakup of the country into several small countries based on ethnicity. We should split up Iraq from its old borders into new countries so there is less violence. ISIS does not want all of Iraq, it wants the northern part. That's a sign there is something that can be done. Yes, Bolivia and Brazil did have transitions to democracy in the 1980s encouraged by the Reagan administration. A simple timeline could be looked up to find this. The Contras, which members of Reagan administration supported through illegal arms (an investigation found the president knew nothing), were taking part in a brutal civil war that both sides are responsible for, not just the Contras. War is brutal, we all know that and guerrilla warfare which was used by both sides is exceptionally brutal, but it is something that happens. We can't stop something just because one little war crime occurs. War crimes have continued to occur and the important thing is to win the war for the greater benefit of the people. It should be noted that the Sandinista regime which favored the Soviets decided to confiscate land and other property, collectivized farming, and censored free speech. The regime relocated many Native Americans in the region in favor of benefitting the government and committees were formed to executed those disloyal. This both sides were bad, but we had to favor the lesser of two evils. The US had also done this many times before Reagan. [2] As I have sources before many countries still stand even with crumbling economies and it's not like the Soviets couldn't divert resources from the military to social programs if they had the chance, but they didn't. Instead, Reagan stopped them from being able to divert resources to the economy. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who worked with both leaders, said at the time: "There was one vital factor in the ending of the Cold War. It was Ronald Reagan's decision to go ahead with the Strategic Defense Initiative. " [3] One thing we have to understand is see General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev as a preserver of communism, not a reformer. Glasnost and perestroika were meant to preserve the Soviet Union and save it, not make it crumble. As he said: "We are not retreating from socialism, but are moving toward it. " That is what Gorbachev wanted to achieve and he wanted to prolong the USSR and save it. However, he did not want to lose the Cold War. The only redeeming quality about him was that he was open-minded and he could do diplomacy. It was at Reykjavik, Iceland at a summit in 1985 that Gorbachev realized he could not defeat Reagan and Thatcher noted that it was the turning point of the Cold War. The communists were desperate to get rid of SDI in order to save themselves, but Reagan would not let this happen and the Americans won the Cold War. Was it wrong for us to make the USSR decisively fall faster like Nazi Germany? I don't think so. [3] On a final note, I want to mention South Africa because it forgot to mention it in my last post. Reagan supported "constructive engagement" of South Africa because of how fragile it really was there. He did not want the country to collapse in a civil war between the white government and the black civil rights leaders. Nor did he want the white government to see steamroll protesters. Because of this he decided to do a slow pace in order to turn the country into a better one with more civil liberties. Congress imposed sanctions and these policies worked. I don't see a problem here. [2] Now Grenada. It's a Marxist dictatorship that needed to be overthrown and we did. I don't see a problem. There were 1,000 US medical students there who were in danger. Martial law was imposed in Grenada and any student seen in the streets after hours would be shot. We needed to save them and save the people and that's what we did. [2] Economic Policy Keep in mind one of the reasons Obama's policies won't go through is because they are not popular while Reagan's were. The Republicans are just doing what the American people request with Obama's awful approval ratings. They strongly voted against Obamacare which is also very unpopular. Reagan's policies on the other hand were very popular and that is why he was able to get them passed. As I previously noted, and according to the laws of the Laffer curve, lower tax rates actually get more revenue because lower rare create incentives for people to work and bring their capital back into the economy. Laffer noted that government revenues increased from -2.8% to 2.7%. We can't ignore that. This is because of the Laffer curve, but think about today. We don't debate if the taxes should as high as 90% or as low as 50% like pre-WW2 politicians did. Reagan transformed the economy in that you could get the same revenue from lower rates. To day we debate if it should as high as 50% of as a low as 15%. That's a clear transformation. As I said wealth gaps are natural and Reagan limited domestic spending. Previous presidents have gone into debt during war. We need money to win the war and that is what Reagan did. The debt ballooned because of the war as with WW2 and WW1. It should be noted that regulations aren't what caused the economic crisis, the Fed did. In fact, there are arguments government created the economic crisis of 2008. Since Jimmy Carter Democratic presidents have been pressuring banks to give loans to low-income people. This was through the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. Other laws also added to the problem. [5] If look specifically at the government statistics we find that those with income of $15,000 to $50,000 saw their percentage of people drop by 5% but those making over $50,000 increased their amount of people by 5% during the 1980s according to the Bureau of the Census. That means overwhelming most Americans got rich. Increasing the minimum wage would have killed the 1980s economy because it was already increase and fail during the 1970s. Reagan did little with minimum wage policy (so many people weren't on it anyway) and the economic recovered while wages went up. One does not need the minimum wage to increase wealth, it can actually destroy it. Sources 1. Hall, Randy. "Poll: MSNBC Least Trusted TV News Source, Fox News Most Trusted. " Newsbusters. org. NewsBusters, 10 June 2014. Web. 2. D'Souza, Dinesh. Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader. New York: Free, 1997. Print. 3. Thatcher, Margaret. The Downing Street Years. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1993. Print. Copy & Paste View in list Edit 4. Laffer, Arthur. "The Laffer Curve: Past, Present, and Future. " Heritage. org. Heritage Foundation, 1 June 2004. Web. 5. Schweizer, Peter. Architects of Ruin: How Big Government Liberals Wrecked the Global Economy--and How They Will Do It Again If No One Stops Them. New York: HarperCollins, 2009. Print.