Criticisms of Reagan

These past few days have been very moving. Hundreds of tributes to Ronald Reagan have been written and spoken. Traffic has lined up for literally miles on the Reagan Freeway (the 118) here in Southern California for people to pay their last respects. Certainly, at a grassroots level, the man impacted many people.

And yet, there persist to be naysayers, people who want to remind us that not all was goodness and light. Acel Moore wrote a column in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Mitchell and her husband, a former police officer and a skilled mechanic who worked in the defense industry, lived in a suburb of Philadelphia and raised a daughter they sent to college. To be sure, she well remembers Reagan's eloquence, the memorable lines and speeches.

But Mitchell also remembers huge national deficits; the showdown with the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization; the Iran-contra scandal; the terrorist bomb that left 241 U.S. Marines and other servicemen dead in a Lebanon barracks; and Reagan's policy of "constructive engagement" (which to a lot of people felt like support) with the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Well, I guess because some bad things happened under Reagan's watch, it is OK to besmirch the man? I suppose I could add to the litany. Under Reagan some businesses closed, some people became sick, some dropped out of school, there were earthquakes, tornados and floods, and some people even died.

If this woman in Philadelphia only remembers "Reagan's eloquence, the memorable lines and speeches" as the good that Reagan did, this is slanderous. It implies that he talked a good game, but when it came time for actions, he failed misreably. What rubbish!

Why this need to pretend to extol Reagan's virtues, and then remind people that it wasn't all that good? "Yes, he was vauled traditional family values, but the man was divorced and estranged from his children." It seems to me, at least in this first week after his death, in poor taste to keep up the barrage of Reagan bashing.

A President's effectiveness should be judged, not by individual memories, but by the country as a whole. As a Boy Scout, I learned a valuable lesson. That was to leave a campsite better than you found it. I believe Reagan left America better than he found it. He helped cut inflation, which was killing the country in the late 1970's. His policies helped end the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union. Those who believe that Reagan was just the right man at the right time are certainly right, but their implication that his policies had nothing to do with the Soviet collapse is just foolish. Even this editorial by the NYTimes suggests that Reagan was more lucky than good.

He profited from good timing and good luck, coming along when the country was tired of the dour pedantry of the Carter administration, wounded by the Iranian hostage crisis, frustrated by rising unemployment and unyielding inflation. Mr. Reagan's stubborn refusal to accept the permanence of Communism helped end the cold war. He was fortunate to have as his counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev, a Soviet leader ready to acknowledge his society's failings and interested in reducing international tensions.

Reagan helped restore confidence in America, and how can that be measured? After years of cynicism (just watch movies from the 1970's), a sense of failure over Vietnam, America was depressed. And we needed a cheerleader who believed in the best America stood for. I believe America was better off because of Reagan's influence, and continues to be so.

On the positive side, while I am no fan of John Kerry, I was pleasantly surprised by how positive his press release tribute to Reagan was.

In spite of what the professional critics say and write, even in his death, Ronald Reagan continues to inspire devotion to country and hope for tomorrow. Criticize that!