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6-9-04 // 10.11 am raygun NP: Morrissey - "Vauxhall And I" This whole Ronald Reagan thing puzzles me. The way the country's been carrying on, you'd think a sitting president had been shot or something. Look, I have nothing against the man as a person. I admire the dignified way Reagan announced and handled his illness, and I appreciate the way his family have worked to raise awareness of Alzheimer's, and how Nancy has continued to lobby for stem cell research. That's good work and classy, too. However, I refuse to buy into the belief that he was a great president. My problem is this: already, Reagan's legacy is seeming to be written through this hazy, romantic sort of view of "Communism killer". He's being eulogized as "The Great Communicator", single-handedly responsible for ending the Cold War. While even those claims are, in my mind, somewhat questionable due to the fact that the Soviet Union was already in decline, I have seen very few mentions from mainstream media of any negative aspects of Reagan's presidency. For example, no mention of the failure of Reaganomics/supply-side economics. No mention of selling arms for hostages. No mention of Central American "freedom fighter" shennanigans. No mention of supporting Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war. No mention of massive EPA deregulation. No mention of the S&L scandal and bailout. No mention on the single minded fixation on "Star Wars". No mention of increasing government spending on the military to the point of driving up a massive national deficit. All of this despite the fact that Reagan was supposedly a waste-trimming "the government is the problem" Republican. If you are going to frame a president's work, life, and legacy, you have to present the bad as well as the good. I don't see that being done for Reagan, and I dislike it immensely.
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