As a Peace Corps employee in Botswana in 1979, I had ragged British friends about their new hard-right prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. They got me back the following year when went for an actor-turned-politician with simplistic policy notions dressed in home-and-hearth rhetoric. While I’ve never sympathized with the deification of Reagan, I’d certainly trade our last two Republican presidents for him in a minute.
Who knows how long apartheid would have lasted in South Africa had F.W. de Klerk not adapted Reagan’s idea of constructive engagement to hammer out the historic democratic agreement with Nelson Mandela. Reagan’s idea of constructive engagement, on the other hand, was to coddle the apartheid regime for its strategic minerals and surrogate engagement against communist-supported rebels in Namibia and Angola.
I’m ready to concede that spending the USSR to its demise seems to have worked, but only because Reagan was fortunate enough to have Gorbachev as his counterpart. Otherwise, I anticipate Reagan’s historical legacy will primarily relate to his instigation of tax policies that have been a plumb for Baby Boomers in their prime earning years, so the ultimate disadvantage of those generations that follow us, with dim prospects for old age security in the form of hollowed-out social security and voucherized Medicare.
One final shot for those Benghazi crazies: Reagan reacted to a terrorist bombing in Lebanon that killed around 250 Marines by having the remaining forces simply skedaddle. Not saying that wasn’t a wise move … just saying.
Peckerdillo quotient: Yes, our first divorced president, but, during his post-Hollywood career, credit for sustaining one of the reportedly all-time great love matches.