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Was Ronald Reagan a great President?Even today, twenty-three years since he left office, it is probably too early to make that call. The enduring legacy of any President is a judgement for history, and is very difficult to get a consensus opinion. Ask a broad enough cross-section of the population the question "who were the greatest Presidents?", and it is very likely that the only answer they'll all agree on is "George Washington".Now, you may be thinking that "Abraham Lincoln" is a no-brainer, but even today you're likely to find dissenting opinions south of the Mason-Dixon line. Please note: I am not making a charge of racism here. But I am aware that regardless of motives, there are many residents of the south who still refer to the Civil War as "the War of Northern Aggression": an invasion of the south. And Lincoln (with William T. Sherman as a close second) is the chief symbol of that invasion.Another President commonly thought of as "great" is Andrew Jackson. He's on the twenty-dollar bill after all. But there are many native-Americans who will not accept that same twenty-dollar note as legal tender because Jackson's face is printed on it. That's because under President Jackson, in 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, which allowed the removal of indigenous peoples by treaty. As a result, over 600,000 members of the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee tribes were forcibly removed from their homes between 1831 and 1842 and resettled in the new Indian Territory in modern-day Oklahoma and parts of Kansas. The survivors of the forced marches called it "the Trail of Tears." Today we would call such actions "ethnic cleansing."So the judgment of history can be very subjective. As these examples show, even after all parties are dead and buried, animosities stirred up as a result of official policy can live on in our collective consciousness.As for Reagan, how can we judge him in the relatively short-term? Which aspects of the Reagan Presidency are most likely to be of interest to future generations in determining whether or not he merits the cognomen of "Great"?Today, his name is used by the farthest right-wing fringe of the Republican party as a rallying cry for the dismantling of every government institution except for the Departments of Justice and Defense. But Reagan actually expanded government at the same time that he reduced tax revenues, leading to a runaway debt."The Teflon President"Reagan's Presidency was the focal point for a number of scandals involving criminal activity in or around his administration. Reagan earned the nickname "the Teflon President," because public perceptions of him were not tarnished by the controversies that arose during his administration. According to Rep Patricia "Pat" Schroeder (D), Colorado, who coined the phrase, and reporter Howard Kurtz, the term referred to Reagan's ability to "do almost anything wrong and not get blamed for it." What follows is a somewhat incomplete summary of the scandals that surrounded the Reagan Administration:The Iran-Contra Affair: in November 1986, Reagan conceded that the United States had sold weapons to Iran, as part of a mostly unsuccessful arms-for-hostages deal. Money from the deal had been covertly and illegally funneled to the right-wing Contras militant groups fighting the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. The Iran-contra scandal did serious damage to the Reagan presidency. The investigations were effectively halted when President George H. W. Bush (Reagan's vice president) pardoned Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger before his trial began.The HUD rigging scandal consisted of HUD Secretary Samuel Pierce and associates rigging low income housing bids to favor Republican contributors to Reagan's campaign as well as rewarding Republican lobbyists such as James G. Watt a former Secretary of the Interior. Sixteen convictions were eventually handed down, including:James Watt, (Reagan's Secretary of the Interior): indicted on 24 felony counts and pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor. Sentenced to five years probation, and ordered to pay a $5000 fine.Phillip D. Winn - Assistant HUD Secretary: Pleaded guilty to one count of scheming to give illegal gratuities.Thomas Demery - Assistant HUD Secretary - pleaded guilty to steering HUD subsidies to politically connected donors. Found guilty of bribery and obstruction of justice.Deborah Dean - executive assistant to Secretary Pierce - indicted on three counts of conspiracy, one count of accepting an illegal gratuity, four counts of perjury, and five counts of concealing articles. She was convicted on twelve.Joseph A. Strauss, Special Assistant to the HUD Secretary, convicted for accepting payments to favor Puerto Rican land developers in receiving HUD funding.Silvio D. DeBartolomeis convicted of perjury and bribery.Catalina Vasquez Villalpando, the Treasurer of the United States from 1989 to 1993.Pierce, the Secretary, though the "central person" in the scandal, was not charged because he made "full and public written acceptance of responsibility."There were also the Lobbying scandals involving ex-Chief of Staff Michael Deaver & Press Secretary Lyn Nofziger, as well as a number of scandals involving the EPA (Over twenty high-level EPA employees were removed from office during Reagan's first three years as president.)Finally, there is the Savings and Loan Crisis in which 747 institutions failed and had to be rescued with $160 billion of taxpayer monies. Reagan's "elimination of loopholes" in the tax code included the elimination of the "passive loss" provisions that subsidized rental housing. Because this was removed retroactively, it bankrupted many real estate developments which used this tax break as a premise, which in turn bankrupted 747 Savings and Loans, many of whom were operating, more or less, as banks, thus requiring the FDIC to cover their debts and losses with tax payer money. This with some other "deregulation" policies, ultimately led to the largest political and financial scandal in U.S. history to that date. The ultimate cost of the S&L crisis is estimated to have totaled around USD $150 billion, about $125 billion of which was directly subsidized by the U.S. government, which further increased the large budget deficits of the early 1990s.Ignoring the AIDS CrisisOn Domestic policy issues, perhaps the greatest criticism surrounds Reagan's silence about the AIDS epidemic spreading in the 1980s.Early on in Reagan's first term, doctors in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco began seeing young men with Kaposi's Sarcoma, a cancer usually associated with elderly men of Mediterranean ethnicity. As the knowledge that men who had sex with men were dying of an otherwise rare cancer began to spread throughout the medical communities, the syndrome began to be called by the colloquialism "gay cancer." As medical scientists discovered that the syndrome included other manifestations, such as pneumocystis pneumonia, (PCP), a rare form of fungal pneumonia, its name was changed to "GRID," or Gay Related Immune Deficiency.Amoung medical professionals, it became apparent that the disease was not specific to men who have sex with men (as blood transfusion patients, intravenous drug users, heterosexual and bisexual women, and newborn babies became added to the list of afflicted), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) renamed the syndrome AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) in 1982.But the original perceptional link to homosexuality remained. This had an effect of boosting homophobia and adding stigma to homosexuality among social conservatives and religious fundamentalists, particularly since it seemed that gay sex was the prevalent way of spreading the disease. Fundamentalist televangelist Jerry Falwell regularly linked the AIDS pandemic to gay issues and stated, "AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals, it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." The religious right saw AIDS as a disease limited to the gay male community and spread by "immoral" behavior.Randy Shilts, in his 1987 book And the Band Played On, contends that the Reagan administration dragged its feet in dealing with the crisis due to homophobia, while the gay community viewed early reports and public health measures with corresponding distrust, thus allowing the disease to spread and hundreds of thousands of people to needlessly die.Although AIDS was first identified in 1981, Reagan did not mention it publicly for several more years, notably during a press conference in 1985 and several speeches in 1987. During his 1987 speeches Reagan supported modest educational funding on AIDS, increased AIDS testing for marriage licenses and mandatory testing for high risk groups.Even with the death from AIDS of his friend Rock Hudson in October of 1985, Reagan was widely criticized for not supporting more active measures to contain the spread of AIDS. Until actress Elizabeth Taylor spoke out publicly about the increasing numbers of people dying from this new disease, most public officials and celebrities were too afraid of dealing with this subject.Possibly in deference to the views of the powerful religious right, Reagan prevented his Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, from speaking out about the epidemic. When in 1986 Reagan was highly encouraged by many other public officials to authorize Koop to issue a report on the epidemic, he expected it to be in line with conservative policies; instead, Koop's Surgeon General's Report on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome greatly emphasized the importance of a comprehensive AIDS education strategy, including widespread distribution of condoms, and rejected mandatory testing. This approach brought Koop into conflict with other administration officials such as Education Secretary Bill Bennett.Social action groups such as ACT UP worked to raise awareness of the AIDS problem. Because of ACT UP, in 1987, Reagan responded by appointing the Watkins Commission on AIDS, which was succeeded by a permanent advisory council."Reaganomics"Reagan's economic policies are heralded by some as bringing about one of the longest peacetime expansions in U.S. history. During the Reagan administration, the American economy went from a GDP growth of -0.3% in 1980 to 4.1% in 1988 (in 2005 dollars), which reduced the unemployment rate by 1.6%, from 7.1% in 1980 to 5.5% in 1988. But it should be noted for comparison with today's economy that there were peaks of around 9.5% in 1982 and 1983.In 1981, Reagan significantly reduced the maximum tax rate, which affected America's wealthiest taxpayers, and lowered the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 50%; in 1986 he further reduced the rate to 28%. As a result of all this, the budget deficit and federal debt increased: debt grew from 33.3% of GDP in 1980 to 51.9% at the end of 1988. The deficit in 1980 was 2.7%. By 1983, it reached 6%. In 1984, 1985 and 1986 it was around 5%.In 1986, Reagan championed the Tax Reform Act of 1986. This legislation has recently received criticism for its impact on the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). The original claim was that this tax reform would reduce or eliminate tax deductions. The legislation expanded the AMT from a law for untaxed rich investors to one refocused on middle class Americans who had children, owned a home, or lived in high tax states. This parallel tax system hit middle class Americans the hardest by reducing their deductions and effectively raising their taxes. Meanwhile, the highest income earners (with incomes exceeding $1,000,000) were proportionately less affected, thereby shifting the tax burden away from the richest 0.5% to poorer Americans. In 2006, the IRS's National Taxpayer Advocate's report highlighted the AMT as the single most serious problem with the tax code. As of 2007, the AMT brought in more tax revenue than the regular tax which has made it difficult for Congress to reform.Reagan had presented his economic proposals as merely a return to the free-enterprise principles that had been in favor before the Great Depression. At the same time he attracted a following from the supply-side economics movement, formed in opposition to Keynesian demand-stimulus economics. The claim by proponents of Reaganomics that the tax rate cuts would more than pay for themselves was explained by the Laffer curve, a theoretical taxation model that was in vogue among some American conservatives during the 1970s. Arthur Laffer's model predicts that excessive tax rates actually reduce potential tax revenues, by lowering the incentive to produce; the model also predicts that insufficient tax rates will also lead directly to a reduction in tax revenues, although this point is often overlooked.Reagan very significantly increased public expenditure, mostly in Defense, which rose from $267.1 billion in 1980 (4.9% of GDP) to $393.1 billion in 1988 (2000 dollars; 5.8% of GDP); These numbers had not been seen since the end of the Vietnam War.In order to cover new federal budget deficits, the United States borrowed heavily both domestically and abroad, raising the national debt from $997 billion to $2.85 trillion, and the United States moved from being the world's largest international creditor to the world's largest debtor nation. Reagan later said of the new debt that it was the "greatest disappointment" of his presidency..The impact of Reaganomics on America's middle class is a subject of much debate today, and is one of the areas that will probably not be resolved for decades. There are, however, some statistics which are very clear today. The number of Americans below the poverty level increased from 29.272 million in 1980 to 31.745 million in 1988. The poverty level for people under the age of 18 increased from 11.543 million in 1980 (18.3%) to 12.455 million in 1988 (19.5%). To make matter worse, the situation of low income groups was affected by the reduction of social spending.The burden of inequality between the richest and poorest also increased. The share of total income going to the 5% highest-income households grew from 16.5% in 1980 to 18.3% in 1988 and the share of the highest fifth increased from 44.1% to 46.3% in same years. In contrast, the share of total income of the lowest fifth fell from 4.2% in 1980 to 3.8% in 1988 and the second poorest fifth from 10.2% to 9.6%. This is the legacy of what was called "Trickle-down economics", due to the significant cuts in the upper tax brackets.The Union BusterOn August 5, 1981 Reagan fired 11,359 striking air traffic controllers who had ignored his order to return to work, as the strike was illegal under federal law. The breaking of the strike had a significant impact on labor-management relations in the private sector. Although private employers nominally had the right to permanently replace striking workers under the National Labor Relations Act, that option was rarely used prior to 1981, but much more frequently thereafter. Reagan's actions essentially broke the striking union and gave corporations the template for union-busting activities.Making the World Safe from Nuclear WeaponsBut there is also the role of Reagan the national leader, champion of Democracy over Communism and peacemaker. Even if you disagreed with him on every other facet of policy (which I freely admit that I do), I admire the way in which he balanced the economic forces of the free market against the structural problems in the Soviet system, which had accumulated a decade of economic stagnation during the Brezhnev years.By the early 1980s, the Soviet military arsenal and army surpassed that of the United States. Previously, the U.S. had relied on the technical superiority of its weapons to deter the Soviets. After Reagan's military buildup, the Soviet Union did not further dramatically build up its military; the enormous military expenses, in combination with the inefficiencies of a collectivist system, were a huge burden on the Soviet economy. At the same time, the Reagan Administration persuaded Saudi Arabia to increase oil production, which resulted in a drop of oil prices in 1985 to one-third of the previous level; oil was the main source of Soviet export revenues. These factors gradually brought the Soviet economy to a stagnant state during Gorbachev's tenure.This strategy, far more than the military rivalry that contributed to the fact that by 1985, the Soviets suffered from an economic growth rate close to zero percent. The economic problems of the Soviet system, far more than the rhetoric of "tear down this wall!", brought Mikhail Gorbachev to the bargaining table.Reagan had morally opposed nuclear weapons since 1945 and sincerely feared the biblical Armageddon. He wrote in his autobiography, An American Life, that he believed John Kennedy's Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) policy to be wrong. Reagan quietly worked to make the world safer from the threat of nuclear war during his second term.Reagan and Gorbachev held four summit conferences between 1985 and 1988: the first in Geneva, Switzerland, the second in Reykjavík, Iceland, the third in Washington, D.C., and the fourth in Moscow.Prior to Gorbachev visiting Washington, D.C., for the third summit in 1987, the Soviet leader announced his intention to pursue significant arms agreements. The timing of the announcement led Western diplomats to contend that Gorbachev was offering major concessions to the U.S. He and Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty at the White House, which eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons. The two leaders laid the framework for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START I; Reagan insisted that the name of the treaty be changed from Strategic Arms Limitation Talks to Strategic Arms Reduction Talks.By the time that Reagan visited Moscow, he was viewed as a celebrity by the Soviets. A journalist asked the president if he still considered the Soviet Union the evil empire. "No," he replied, "I was talking about another time, another era."