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February 7, 2005 1:44pm by David Farrar

Happy 94th birthday

94 years ago the greatest post WWII US President was born.

A free Eastern Europe is his eternal legacy.

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Comments (41)

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MiramarMike

A cracking Tui ad entry
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February 7, 2005 2:14pm
MiramarMike

A cracking Tui ad entry
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February 7, 2005 2:18pm
Mark

Nah Mike, I reckon a better one is Helen’s “I often wonder whether bla bla victim of own success bla bla being popular and competent bla bla wank wank”
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February 7, 2005 2:19pm
dim

I still think Reagans great success story was when he told the world he was going to start bombing the Soviet Union in five minutes. Just a little joke, ha ha. ‘Trees cause pollution’ and “Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born” are my other favourites.

The great success story of blogging is that it allows intellectual luminaries like Mark (above) an outlet for their biting political comments. Nice one!
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February 7, 2005 2:40pm
gazzadelsud

what Soviet Union?

bwuhahaha!

a great and successful legacy indeed, sorry that comrade Dim can’t see it.

Even when Joking around the great communicator made some great points too – love those quotes, all outrageous, but the reason they are funny is because they are also true! (and I’m a tree hugging, pro-abortion libertarian!!!!!)
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February 7, 2005 2:52pm
Mark

Dim, I thank you
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February 7, 2005 2:56pm
GPT

Had to click on the link to make sure you had this one correct! Ike was reasonable but certainly Reagan arrested the rot. Top man.
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February 7, 2005 3:36pm
RSB

“Federal Grants are like Rabits. They mulitiply like crazy and when they’re our you can’t catch them.” Brilliant.
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February 7, 2005 4:10pm
MiramarMike

But, of course, he (and most others) never through these ‘classic lines’ up – just read them well off the speech/script writers page. Maybe it’s them that we should have a “Happy Birthday” to 🙂
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February 7, 2005 4:13pm
tim barclay

If Regan is the greatest and I do not agree, then you will have to explain why Harry Truman or John Kenndy did not get it. And Lyndon Johnson’s legacy on legislative achievements will be hard to beat. I do think Kenndy on the cuban missile crisis, civil rights, and his goal of going to the moon are 3 significant achievements that Reagan will be hard to match.
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February 7, 2005 4:17pm
Kimble

Dont be such a negative nancy, mike.
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February 7, 2005 4:19pm
dim

Neither a fox nor a hedgehog. Hitchens obit of Reagan is an amusing blast at the recent spate of Reagan revisionism.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2101842/

Although I disagred with the ideology of leaders like Nixon and Bsuh Sr one can see that in their own way they were great leaders and great men. Reagan was one of the dumbest, laziest, least effectual, most dishonest Presidents the Americans have ever had. It’s both amusing and depressing to observe recent attempts by the right to redraw him as a statesman and historical giant.
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February 7, 2005 4:32pm
David Farrar

Not just the right, his reputation is massively high with almost all Americans. History is the ultimate judge and so far it is all looking good.
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February 7, 2005 4:37pm
gazzadelsud

but for ushering in unprecedented global prosperity and ending the cold war by winning it, i could almost agree with Dim.

and this from a President who believed in a work life balance!
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February 7, 2005 4:40pm
blaise

Excuse me, but aren’t you forgetting a certain James Earl Carter, Jr???

/crazytalk
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February 7, 2005 5:19pm
gazzadelsud

true blaise

Jimmy Carter, the terrible example of what happens when you meet a good ole boy who doesnt drink (to misquote PJ O’Rourke I think) author of self doubt, stagflation, genufluction to OPEC, the Iranian student fiasco (helicopters crashing during the rescue attempt) and the only living President to have been attacked by an aquatic rabbit – whilst fishing from a boat no less!

how could anyone forget?
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February 7, 2005 5:48pm
dim

‘but for ushering in unprecedented global prosperity and ending the cold war by winning it’

Did he do that before or after parting the Red Sea? Maybe it was between ‘nap time’ and his year of vacation on the ranch?
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February 7, 2005 6:14pm
gazzadelsud

ah comrade Dim, I see you have never heard of the Reagan revolution or what it did for global growth? likewise in your universe there is still a successful and “peace” loving soviet union?

As for parting the Red Sea, well it was US policy to try and avoid any rapprochement between the USSR and the PRC, but i expect that wasn’t what you meant?
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February 7, 2005 6:28pm
GPT

Tim: …why Harry Truman or John Kenndy did not get it. And Lyndon Johnson’s record…

Truman came in off the back of Roosevelt, although he probably deserves an honourable mention.

John Kennedy was a wimp and a loser. He first committed American troops in Vietnam. His domestic agenda was weak – although he did say nice things about civil rights with little progress. He’s remembered as staring down the Russians over Cuba where good luck rather than good management saw America triumph. Sadly, the reason he is remembered in high regard is that he got himself shot.

Johnson – this is a good point. His Presidency is overshadowed by Vietnam. His domestic agenda was pretty impressive, particularly in civil rights. On the other hand he was a one term President who failed in Vietnam.

I would stand by Reagan as the best President since WWII.
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February 7, 2005 7:35pm
pundito

Dim you seem to have bought intot he leftie Reagan was no good propaganda hook line and sinker. The truth is he pushed through the building of the super nuke aircraft carriers (which so ablely saved thousands of lives in the Indian ocean these past 6 weeks) which effectively spelt the doom of your Leninist nirvana, and in the process freed millions of people from communist tyrany.
David is right, History only mostly been good for Reagan’s tenure; but what will be interesting is how Bush Jr’s tenure will hold up. For vision, we have a democratic Middle east, Manned mission to Mars, a Lunar space station to name but a few.
(I bet this post will get a few rankles up)
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February 7, 2005 8:18pm
Dim

Reagan and the Cold War.

It’s a recieved truth amoung the uneducated right that Reagan ‘won’ the cold war. And in a way, I suppose, this is true – in much the same way that a boxer who’s opponent suffers a cardiac arrest half-way through the match is technically the winner. The truth is that Soviet Union and it’s client dictatorships in Eastern and Central Europe were bankrupt and ready to fall, and at least some of it’s leaders were aware of this. Gorbachovs closest advisor, Aleksandr Yakovlev, had this to say about Reagans arms race and ‘Evil-Empire’ rhetoric:

‘It played no role. None. I can tell you that with the fullest responsibility. Gorbachev and I were ready for changes in our policy regardless of whether the American president was Reagan, or Kennedy, or someone even more liberal. It was clear that our military spending was enormous and we had to reduce it.’

A cynic might reply: ‘well, he would say that, wouldn’t he.’ But it’s the consensus amoung Soviet watchers and students of the cold war. George Kennan wrote that Reagans policies had the effect of temporarily strengthening the hardliners in the Soviet Union and extending the cold war. Condalezza Rice, in her time as an academic specializing in communist Russia made similar comments.

But didn’t Reagans arms race finally bankrupt them? Wasn’t that the plan?

The arms race had been going on for more than forty years – and it DID play a role in bankrupting the Soviet economy. Everything we know about Reagan, however – the massive arms build-up, Star Wars, his blind hatred of ‘commies’, his constant ‘end of days’ rhetoric – indicate that he genuinely anticipated a War with the Soviets from which the United States would emerge victorious. It’s probably a very fortunate thing that the Soviet Union was led by a Gorbachov, not a Kruschev.

Reagans role in the fall of the Soviets was superficial at best. If you’re looking for a real conservative cold war hero you might do better with Pope John-Paul II. His solidartiy movement in Eastern Europe did more to hasten the death of the Soviet bloc than any of Reagans absurd sabre rattling speeches.

I’ll be briefer on the suggestion that Reagan ushered in some mythical ‘age of prosperity’. He presided over the eighties boom economy which collapsed spectaculary near the end of his presidency. He campaigned on reducing government spending and by the end of his tenure US government debt was higher than at any other time in history. It took the US over a decade to recover from his spending. He presided over the S & L crisis – a direct result of his deregulation of the Savings and Loan industry which cost the US taxpayers over half a trillion dollars.

It goes on and on. He refused to be briefed by the CIA or state department because they were ‘boring’, and instead took policy advice from his wifes astrologer. Nancy campaigned against drugs (‘Just say no!’) while addicted to pain-killers. He financed death-squads in Central-America and lied about it. Over two hundred members of Reagans staff were prosecuted for criminal charges, over a hundred went to prison. And so on, and so on. I don’t know who the greatest post-war president was (the pickings are pretty slim), but Reagan was easily the worst.
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February 7, 2005 9:12pm
flysiguy

” Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few simple phrases : If it moves tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

“The most terrifying words in the English language are : I’m from the Government and I’m here to help.”

“Government is like a baby : An alimentray canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”

– all Ronald Reagan

At least He ( for saying it ) and his speech writers ( for writing it ) had a sense of humour which seems sadly lacking well.. just about everywhere these days.
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February 7, 2005 9:16pm
Millsy

Gaz – I think that is an accurate quote of PJ’s!

As for Reagan’s dodgy quotes above I would make two points:

One, these are often made up. For example, Quayle’s “quote” about not wanting to go to Latin America because he didn’t speak Latin was a joke at a diplomatic function the Washington Post quoted as a fact.

Two, these things recycle round. Many of the W “quotes” circulating since 2000 were “quotes” previously (and often wrongly) attributed to Quayle.

Three, the media decides when there is a gaffe. Al Gore once said “A tiger cannot change it’s spots”. The media went with the printed version of his speech with the correct metaphor.

Food for thought peeps.
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February 7, 2005 9:18pm
looke

Can I ask why it is always “Eastern Europe”, even when referring to specific things Polish, like Solidarity and Pope John Paul 2? Why not, Poland threw off Communism first with the Solidarity movement, which then spread and took out the USSR? Revenge for 50+ years of occupation.
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February 7, 2005 9:26pm
gazzadelsud

ah Dim, never a blog commentator so aptly titled.

I too used to believe that Reagan was a nuclear cowboy, i snickered at the stories about him and Margaret. i knew better, I cared about the world. yadayadayada…

you should get out more, and read a little more widely. In particular you should read what the professional “soviet watchers” actually said in the 1970s and 1980s rather than what they remember saying with hindsight.

The issue for me is that those who disdain it, or naysay its achievements need to consider the counterfactual.

During the 1970s most right thinking people thought that the Soviets might win. Socialism spread across Asia, soviet agents were inserted throughout academia, labour movements and the intelligentsia, labour unrest was a dominant feature of British and European life. Cuba supported revolution in Africa, and Marxist guerillas spread mayhem through latin america.

Reagan’s morning in America (i think it was his speech) his confidence, his ability to articulate an alternative fluently, and the way he absolutely wiped the floor with the democrats (watch some of those speeches(the documentary Commanding Heights has clips), early Reagan was amazing, the later Reagan a shadow)was literally earth shattering.

and the Reagan deficit, well some regard that as a feature not a bug – it forced Congress to rein in Government spending 🙂

As for Pope JP2, absolutely agree, he too is a hero of the times. Between him, Reagan and Thatcher the West won, and liberal capitalist democracy was set in place as the most successful form of political organisation on the planet.
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February 7, 2005 9:45pm
flysiguy

Millsy

Dodgy quotes ???????

Sorry, I don’t think anyone was talking about Quayle. I don’t think anyone was talking about Gore.
sept you Millsy.
Like I said no sense of humour.
Must be something in your soup.
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February 7, 2005 11:15pm
David Farrar

Heh I have never seen anyone ever accuse Millsy before of not having a sense of humour. He is guilty of many crimes against humanity but not having a sense of humour is not one of them.
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February 7, 2005 11:23pm
Millsy

Fly – the point of my post was that a lot of quotes attributed to Presidents (usually Republican presidents) are completely fictional. I used the differing treatment of Gore and Quayle as an example because I studied it closely.

My sense of humour is great. Good luck finding yours!
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February 8, 2005 8:36am
tim barclay

Dim do not agree with you on Kennedy having good luck on the Cuban missile crisis. I think it was Kennedy’s cool head and brillent management that saved us from armageddon. It was essentially a political problem and Kennedy was under huge pressure to do something including bomb Cuba. But he understood that to do so provided no guarantees of wiping out the nukes but put America’s security at risk of just one nuke being set loose. That is something his Generals did not fatham. I do not credit Reagan with ending the cold war which was raged over 40 years. It was economic collapse that did it especially low oil prices at the time.
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February 8, 2005 9:13am
David Farrar

Millsy is in fact the world’s leading experts on false Quayle quotes. Seriously!
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February 8, 2005 10:32am
baxter

I agree with Tim Barclay, JFK was a great president and hailed as such throughout the free world from the time he assumed office until his death. Probably the only president to have anywhere near his charisma was Bill Clinton in my view also a fine president…Ron Reagon was certainly more convincing as president than he was as an actor.
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February 8, 2005 4:19pm
dim

gazzadelsud – thanks for your (rather condescending) suggestion that I do some more reading. So far in my argument I’ve referenced Hitchens, Rice, Kennan and Aleksandr Yakovlev. You’ve referenced . . . let’s see . . . no one! So thanks for your suggestion, but I find the judgement of latter historians more reliable than the pundits and fearmongers of the times.

Tim – I never said that Kennedy had ‘good luck’ on the Cuban Missile Crisis – although I certainly don’t agree with yours, or Baxters assesments of his presidency. Everything I’ve read about the Cuban Missile Crisis suggests that Kennedy was a boy lost in a world of men. Donald Kagans essay on the crisis argues that the Soviets backed down (partly) because Bobby Kennedy told the Soviet Ambassador that his brother could not control his Joint Chiefs and was unable to prevent them from invading Cuba – and that this was sufficient to scare Kruschev away from a confrontation. Other research argues that the decision to turn the boats back was made by one of the ships captains in defiance of his orders. Certainly I don’t think the situation would ever have come to that if Kennedy hadn’t made such a weak impression on Kruschev at their summitt meetings.
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February 8, 2005 6:05pm
baxter

GPT…I don’t know how you can rate JFK a wimp and a loser, part of his appeal to the AmericaN people was that he was a highly decorated world war 2 hero indeed his war exploits were the subject of a movie after his death.
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February 9, 2005 4:08pm
Kimble

To Kennedy we see great personal attributes acredited, “cool headedness”, “brilliant management. Whereas Reagan is only credited with being the beneficiary of being in the right place at the right time.

Often it seems as if the argument is absurdly polar. If you think the spread of Communism was bad, then Reagan was good. If you like Communism and are an apologist for mass murderers the Reagan was bad.

Ask yourself, if Jimmay Carter won a second term, what would the 80’s economy have been like? If you honestly believe that it would have been as good or better, or if you believe that Communism would have fallen anyway then you are delusional. What would South America be like? East Europe? Western Europe for that matter?

I see a “blind hatred of commies” attributed to the great man and a slur of the “uneducated” right. More Liberal elitism? Blind to the truth but too stupid to understand it anyway? KMA, use your liberal insight, education and intelligence to work that out.

Johnson did more than Kennedy for civil rights, (and not simply because Kennedy ran out of time), Nixon did better in Vietnam, and Clinton scored more fat interns. Kennedy is like Kurt Cobain, Elvis and James Dean. All are remembered as they were at their prime, and each has become more myth than man. As for Kennedy’s war record, John Kerry has that beat, 3 pruple hearts dont you know.
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February 9, 2005 4:45pm
Antarctic Lemur

Tim: JFK was the president who first slipped US “advisors” into Viet Nam, despite knowing it had been at civil war for decades.

In April 1961, JFK approved the Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba to overthrow Castro. I assume everyone knows how this turned out… Castro is still in power 44 years later.

In August 1961, JFK did effectively nothing in response to construction of the Berlin Wall, designed to keep East Germans out of the American/British/French-controlled West Berlin. This followed a half-decade of Soviet military intervention in Eastern Europe, also unopposed by the West. The Berlin Wall lasted 28 years.

In 1962, JFK precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis by basing short-range nukes in Turkey. In response, the Soviets sought a country to base missiles a similar distance from the USA: Cuba. In turn, JFK ordered the US Navy to blockade Cuba and search all incoming shipping for nuclear missle-related parts.

At the resolution of this stand-off, the USSR agreed to dismantle its missile facilities in Cuba, and the USA agreed to remove its missiles from Turkey. While the Soviet withdrawal was immediate, the Americans secretly withdrew their nukes from Turkey six months later (could have been more), allowing JKF’s administration to publicly claim the withdrawal was not associated with the Cuban crisis.

So the Soviets got what they wanted, JFK made a big miscalculation and gained nothing, and many Americans were left with the thought they or their children might one day end up as small piles of radioactive dust.

In summary, JFK made repeated foreign policy screw-ups which are still talked about four decades later.

Maybe he shouldn’t have spent his spare time cheating on his wife with Marilyn Monroe!

AL

[p.s. sorry if this comment appears twice]
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February 9, 2005 5:56pm
tim barclay

I agree kruschev did regard Kennedy as a callow youth so he took the gamble and put the nukes in cuba. I do not agree that he (Kennedy) put the nukes into Turkey, I think Ike did that, he regarded them as obsolete, though I regard that comment as a figleaf to get them out, which he did secretly. But I do not agree that Kennedy was a boy amongst men on the Cuban missile crisis though he might have been thought of that way. Everything I have read on it has convinved me that Kennedy had a cool head, excellent judgment and ultimately prevailed and enormously enhanced his Presidency as a result. But I do agree that he probably caused Kruschev to gamble on this but Kruschev blinked and was ultimately replaced.
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February 10, 2005 7:15am
Kimble

“But I do agree that he probably caused Kruschev to gamble on this”

If this is so then surely his “resolution” of the Cuban Missile Crisis was simply fixing his own fuckup.

Everything you read would definitely lead you to believe that he prevailed, (as he did), but what exactly were your sources? Were they written AFTER his assassination?
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February 10, 2005 8:56am
baxter

Kimble…Kennedy’s heroism was beyond dispute he was decorated for saving the lives of his men under fire. Kerry’s heroism was disputed by the men he served with both superiors and subordinates.He was in Viet-Nam for only a few months before returning to the states and writing a self serving book about excesses committed by the men he served with.Kennedy on the other hand joined up as a ordinary seaman in 1941 and served until 1945. He also wrote a book ‘Profiles in Courage’ which won a
Pulitzer prize….It is tragic that his presidency was cut short by assassin’s bullet after only a little more than two years ,yet his impact was such that his detractors are as trenchant as you and GPT while those of us who lived through the period lament the premature loss of a great statesman
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February 10, 2005 5:31pm
tim barclay

I do not accept his “fixed his own fuckup”. Kruschev gambled and lost because the US had missile superiority and could have leveled the Soviet Union but the US would have had an arm or two torn off as well.
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February 10, 2005 5:58pm
Antarctic Lemur

Tim:

The agreement with Turkey was indeed signed in 1959, soon after a similar agreement with Italy.

But JFK was responsible for giving the go ahead as he was in office from January 1961. The Turkey Jupiter missile base was publicly declared operational in April 1962.

The submarine-launched Polaris missile was successfully tested (with a real nuke warhead! in the Pacific!) in early May 1962.

The first U2 flight revealing SS-4 missile silos in Cuba was on October 15 1962. I think its fair to say the USSR felt pressured to compete thus leading to their construction of the SS-4 base.

The Jupiters were recalled in January 1963 from both Italy and Turkey, less time than I thought after the crisis.

You could claim the recall of the Jupiters gave Kruschev a political weapon against his own internal enemies, with few downsides for JFK. JFK would have known Polaris production was being ramped up and knew that in the near future he could park nuke-armed subs in the Arctic circle.

Still, I don’t think averting a catastrophe partly of his own making qualifies JFK as one of United States greatest presidents. But then the politics of nuclear weapons were poorly understood back then.

These sorts of fun and games which distort international politics are exactly why we don’t want Iran (etc) building nukes.

No more MAD!

AL
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February 10, 2005 9:27pm
Kimble

I love having the Antarctic Lemur on my side. 🙂
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February 11, 2005 9:25am

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