I did not want to say anything about the death of Ronald Reagan yesterday until I had time to think about it. For better or worse, if you liked him or not, there is no getting around the fact that he was very important in shaping American politics, international relations, domestic policy, and the way Americans view themselves. I never liked him. I never thought the man had much going on upstairs, I always felt that he was playing the part of a president as an actor would rather than being a president. Maybe the two are the same. Perhaps that is what has gone wrong with our recent president.
Reagan symbolized the 1980's for me. It really was his decade. Even today he has such an influence on politics. So many current politicians think they are Reagan Republicans, so many young Republicans claim Reagan as their favorite president and place him at the head of the Pantheon of American politicians.
I always saw his influence as similar to the Pied Piper of Hameln. He did bring back to America a sense of purpose, strength and self-respect that was missing after Vietnam, Nixon, Ford, Carter and an economy that was in deep trouble. He had a bit of the John Wayne cowboy American swagger that tends to turn off a lot of thinking individuals, especially our international allies. But that same sense of self is what many Americans love because of how we see it, but also because we know it scares the crap out of some countries, even if they are our allies.
I can't be one of the brainwashed nuts who reflect on how perfect the Reagan years were or how he single-handedly knocked down the Berlin Wall and won the Cold War. He continued policies and actions that Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy were all an important part of. After the Cuban Missle crisis there was a change in how we dealt with the Soviets, and it was more diplomatic. When Reagan came into office he returned us to a war footing that scared most people. It's no coincidence that most movies about Nuclear Apocalypse came out in the 1980's. "The Day After" influenced and demoralized a whole generation to a degree that I think has not been acknowledged. "War Games" showed us how tense things would be if we lost control of our power over nuclear weapons, but the Day After showed us what would happen (in a TV way) once those weapons were launched. And of course "The Road Warrior" showed us just how expensive Gazzoline could become.

Reagan rattled his sword with SDI or Star Wars as it was called, built up our military to a huge degree, and really played the game of Nuclear Brinkmanship like no one else before him ever had. The fall of the Soviet Union was an amazing thing to witness. When it comes down to it there are two reasons why that happened the way it did. I think the most important was Economic, the other was Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev loosed the iron grip the Soviets had on their satellite nations as well as his own people. But I don't think he could have done that or would have done that if it weren't for the economic failures of Communism and the arms race that Reagan started and ultimately won.
When it comes down to it,Reagan gave us a 3 Trillion Dollar debt to revive our economy and bankrupt the Soviets. Towards the end it wasnt't a race to see who could build more weapons, it was a race to see who would go bankrupt first, the US or the USSR. Luckily we had better credit cards to count on. Which we are still paying to this day. And with a continued budget deficit we will never be able to pay off that debt. Love Clinton or hate him, he was serious about balancing the budget and making sure that the national debt wouldn't haunt the next generations of Americans. Then Dubya comes along and decides to monkey around with it because he bought into the Reaganomics that his father once called "Voodoo Economics."
That was swallowed hook, line and sinker by Republicans everywhere. But under Reagan, America was strong abroad. And that boosted American self-confidence, which we can see Dubya continuing with over-confidence to our detriment.

I could go on and on about deregulation, the environment, crime, etc. Though I think the biggest crime the Reaganites are guilty of is lying about his Alzheimer's disease. They point out that he didn't develop it until 1993/1994. They even call it "a surprise to many." Well I was not the least bit surprised. Where the hell were these people during the 80's? He showed signs of it during his presidency. The jokes were there for years about how he was senile. His defenders think it would hurt his image to say that he had the disease during his presidency. But what they don't realize is that they hurt the disease and those with it, by denying that a person could be a pretty functional president for 8 years with the disease. We know FDR couldn't walk, Kennedy had major health problems, so come clean about Reagan.
It angers me that they would lie so blatanly and that so many people tend to buy it and the rest of the revisions of history associated with his presidency.

Reagan really did change America and again, right or wrong he was an important president who has been a tremendous influence in much the same way Kennedy inspired generations of Americans. It will be interesting to see how that continues to develop or change.