So, Barack Obama is the "Cargo Cult" President, eh? This is the opinion parroted by unhinged racist windbag Rush Limbaugh. I don't know the name of the original author of the piece and I really don't care.
If Republicans want to talk about cult-like behavior they'd better get a mirror out, frankly. Let's look at the real record of one of the most overrated Presidents ever: Ronald Wilson Reagan.
The Reagan Myth
The myth of Reagan is that he brought America together, re-inspired our nation to take on the Cold War, won the Cold War, saved our economy, and was the Great Communicator.
Reagan was the oldest President ever. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 1994 and died from it in 2004. He was very likely suffering from dementia almost from the day he was elected, as he was frequently caught napping in meetings at the White House. His prior history to becoming President was a B-list Hollywood actor, and the governor of California.
During Reagan's term, the wages of working Americans stopped their gradual ascent that they'd enjoyed since the end of WWII, and have essentially stayed stagnant ever since.
Reagan was NOT a very popular president. He left office with lower approval ratings than Bill Clinton, whose final two years were marred with an impeachment trial and a complete shutdown of the federal Government.
Reagan did NOT end the Cold War. It is frequently stated that somehow Reagan "outspent" the Russians, or that our reckless deficit-busting during the Reagan years was what convinced Gorbachev to embrace glasnost. Not only is this logically ridiculous, it is factually null and void: the fall of an entire empire is due to long-term structural problems, not the reckless spending habits of a demented old man half a world away. More importantly, his bellicose warmongering, coupled with his panicked retreat on the occasions where he overreached his abilities, made the US look more like the loud-mouthed terrier who yaps at passing joggers. He likely extended the length of the Cold War by the classic Republican tactic of enraging the extremists in a foreign country.
Reagan DID start the era of Mega-deficits. Before he was elected President he had the nerve to complain about the number of debt limit resolutions that had been passed by his predecessors. He himself signed one of these instruments 19 times that I was able to discover (by digging them out of my college library, painstakingly). The debt of the US government before he took office: $900 billion. After he left: over $2 trillion.
Reagan wreaked havoc with our higher education system. He privatized the student loan system with all of the attendant suddenly making a program totally useless effects that we've come to expect from the privatization of public services. Coming out of the 1980's higher education (required for us to get all the jobs that were going to replace those manufacturing jobs our enlightened business leaders were sending overseas) ballooned out of control. Nowadays it is not uncommon for a student to bear over $50k in debt. I left college with barely $10k in debt and I paid it off less than 10 years later.
Reagan ignored the onset of the AIDS epidemic due to his bigotry. While a deadly disease took root in our nation and developed a broad population of victims, Reagan sat with his thumb up his butt and did nothing. Thousands of people die of AIDS in this country every day because for the first several YEARS of this epidemic the President of the United States made the value judgment that some people were simply not worth talking about.
Reagan was a racist. He started his campaign for President on the site of a particularly vile lynching in Mississippi with a paean to that tired old excuse for racism and segregation, "States' rights." It was a clear dogwhistle to the KKK that he would defend their right to hate and abuse minorities all the way up to the Federal level.
Reagan was a pathological liar. On multiple occasions he manufactured lies in order to shore up his position or make himself seem important. His fictional Cadillac-driving welfare mom resonates through our culture today, disparaging the out-of-work or unable-to-work as lazy freeloaders. His hysterical claim that he helped liberate Auschwitz, when he was when he was actually working in Hollywood during WWII and never made it anywhere near the front was just another in a long string of ridiculous fabrications that came out of Ronald Reagan's head whenever the mood struck him.
Reagan allowed a criminal element to run rogue during his Presidency. There were more indictments and convictions out of the Reagan Administration than any other in recent history (especially since by the Bush years the SCROTUS and DOJ were so politicized that they were incapable of rationally looking at crime committed by government officials). He either KNEW what was happening during Iran-Contra and lied about it, and is therefore a liar and a criminal accomplice, or he DIDN'T KNOW and is therefore one of the least competent Presidents of all time. Sorry, Republican hagiographers. You have to pick which one he was, because he can't be neither. Although he certainly could be both.
Reagan had a positively feeble grasp of tact and class. His infamous sound-check "joke" that went "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes" not only sparked an international incident, it also made light of the horrific death and destruction that nuclear war represented. As President, Reagan should have known that his every word was going to get repeated to someone somewhere . . . and behaved accordingly. His dismissive "there you go again" to Jimmy Carter during the 1980 Presidential debates tells you all you need to know about what an asshole Reagan was.
Reagan started the cult of Voodoo Economics which has ended with the worst economic and financial crisis of the modern era. By breezily asserting that tax cuts always increased federal government revenue, and signing on to Grover Norquist's program of drowning our Government Democracy by starving it to death until it was small enough to fit in a bathtub, Reagan set off the death spiral of reckless spending coupled with reckless tax-cutting that enabled the massive transfer of wealth away from the Middle Class and towards the super-rich that continues even to this day. Reagan's Presidency marks the end of social and technological progress that had been exploding unabated since the end of WWII. By diverting our attention to the burgeoning needs of our wealthy Aristocracy, Reagan set off an avalanche of regress in our social order. The United States, once the beacon of the Free World, is now the bankrupt crack house in a derelict neighborhood, surrounded by the wreckage of our hopes and dreams. When I was born, the average American could expect to do better and live longer than his parents. My children very likely will NOT do better financially than I have, and they will certainly have a lot of problems to clean up after.
But to listen to the Republicans, Reagan was just a fuckin' ray of sunshine through our window. The truth has a way of stubbornly sticking, though.
Stick around. Tomorrow, I will examine the cult of George W. Bush, and the complete lack of criticality with which Republicans excused his multiple and inarguable failures.