Fact-Checking Reagan Mythology
Enough already. First they renamed National Airport “Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.” The guy wasn’t even dead yet. Then they christened a ship the “USS Ronald Reagan.” Last week California decided to remove one of the two statues it’s allowed in the US Capitol’s National Statuary Hall and replace it with a Reagan statue. And now we have
Time’s silly cover with Reagan’s face and a tear on his cheek. The Time article is about conservatives pining for the good old days of Reagan conservatism. Except they weren’t good old days, as Paul Krugman correctly points out in today’s Times. Many of today’s disasters are an extension of the Reagan legacy: laissez-faire economics, regulatory oversight conducted by lobbyists and cronies, anti-environmentalism, attacks on civil liberties, you name it. I will give Reagan this: he wasn’t as bad as Bush. Admittedly this isn’t saying much, but Reagan sometimes responded to changing circumstances. He saw the opportunities presented by Gorbachev’s Soviet Union. But Reagan didn’t end the cold war as the myth-makers would have you believe.