Saint Reagan

I remember Ronald Reagan as the 1950s' host of "Death Valley Days," with Rosemary Clooney. I remember saying at that time, "What a Nice Man!." He was ingratiating, a character which came through on TV and in person. That is the Ronald Reagan I prefer to remember.
 

His Place In History

There is no doubt Ronald Reagan will be remembered for a long time, if only because of the controversies he invoked during his political career. As my title shows, political conservatives, especially, have elevated this man to near immortal status, a god in the political pantheon. The present President, George W Bush, and his party glorify all Reagan did, pledge allegiance to him, and claim to be the true heirs of his political patrimony.
 

I, on the other hand, have been bedeviled by Reagan and his disciples most of my adult life. Although I have spent a day thinking about it, I cannot identify a single good thing any of those folks have done for me, other than provoke my political writings (which scarcely anyone reads). Here are some of the problems Ronald Reagan created for me:

Injustice: As California's Governor, he elevated Alameda County Assistant DA Edward Meese to AG. I had encountered Meese on my 2^nd day as an Alameda County employee, in July, 1964, when he ordered us to follow him in defiance of a Federal Court Order. Meese was no friend of minorities or the poor.
 

Inquisition: Governor Reagan politicized the University, a blow from which the University of California still has not fully recovered. But, maybe it was a good thing to give academia a dose of the real world, thereby making it less academic.
 

Inhumane: Governor Reagan made a deal with the ACLU and the mental health lobby to release patients from the State Hospitals. This saved the State a great deal of money by reducing the mental health budget. On the other hand, the cities and counties were supposed to provide "community" facilities, services and support for those people. None of California's local governments were prepared for that, or had the funds for it. Then a San Francisco social worker charged with providing services to mental health patients, Ronald Reagan made my job impossible. Suddenly, we had former mental hospital patients on the streets, and nothing we could do about or with them.
 

I was bailed out for a while, when the Nixon Administration moved Aid to the Disabled to the Social Security Administration. The effect of that "conversion" was fewer people qualified as disabled, and I had less resources to do my job. Frustrated, I quit social work in 1972.
 

Later on, during the Reagan presidency, the rules were tightened to make getting Social Security Disability a daunting task. Basically, you have to hire a lawyer to appeal and plead your case after you are routinely denied. Reagan created a class of disability lawyers who advertise a lot on TV. They make a living by getting a share of your benefits, if you get any. (This is the type of lawyer the Right attacks, and wants to shut down. That way, neither the parasites nor the applicants would get any benefits.)
 

Insane: President Reagan suggested, in an unplanned speech, that we could end the nuclear missile curse by having a defense against it. Thus was born the Strategic Defense Initiative, or "Star Wars." I followed this matter closely, as the key element of Star Wars was computer software. (There was no doubt several systems could be built that would destroy ballistic missiles; the hardware would work. But, how to control it?) Eventually, a panel of America's top computer scientists determined that the software required to control Star Wars hardware would take all of America's programmers about 50 years to develop and test. Now, 20 years later, software has progressed faster than thought, but we are still nowhere near producing the sort of codes required by Reagan's Star Wars paraphernalia. Key problem: When is a blip on a radar screen a blip, and when is it a missile? To this day, no one knows the answer, not even the Generals in charge of our early warning nuclear defense systems.
 

Incompetent: President Reagan approved of Prof Laffer's "Supply Side" economic theories, derided by George HW Bush as "Voodoo Economics," but lately reincarnated by George W Bush in his tax cuts. (Apparently, like Godfather, like son.) Both have had the same effects: increasing the national deficit and debt by huge amounts, making the rich, richer, and the poor, poorer. Prof Krugman calls this the Dooh Nibor economics (as in reverse Robin Hood). It took the Bush I and Clinton Administrations nearly 10 years to fix Reagan's profligacy.
 

Illegal: President Reagan was in charge of operations designed to support the "Contras" in Nicaragua. To fund them, he authorized deals with the Iranians; thus, the Iran-Contra affair. It is not clear what role Reagan's team had in arranging the release of the Iranian hostages in 1980-81, but apparently a lot of back-channel dealing went on with Khomeini's government.

It goes on and on. For those in the bottom half or two-thirds of the United States' households (by income and wealth), President Reagan instigated two decades of unmitigated disasters. President Clinton, whose autobiography is to be released soon, only slowed down the continuing suffering and demise of the poor, the needy and the disabled. Since Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, median income and wealth in America (adjusted for inflation) has declined. This is his enduring legacy, one result of the on-going demolition of the New Deal and the Great Society which he started.
 

Reagan, Gorbachev and the USSR

But all those things are mere quibbles beside Ronald Reagan's greatest accomplishment: destroying the Soviet Union. President Reagan is famous for his Berlin speech, in which he cried: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Lo and behold, soon after the great wall in East Berlin crumbled, and so did the USSR. Thus Reagan conquered all.
 

More sensible analysts say it was Reagan's huge military buildup that defeated the USSR. The Soviets simply could not keep up with American spending, and destroyed their economy trying. Reagan's foreign policy, based on a strong military, worked. He brought back the pride in America, which was lost in Viet Nam.
 

I believed the foregoing theory for a while, but not now.

In my opinion, The USSR was undone by a series of unexpected misfortunes. For example, after Leonid Brezhnev's death, several Soviet Premiers died in office in quick succession. Gorbachev was made the unexpected ruler of Russia, but he was not prepared to follow in the footsteps of his very authoritarian predecessors. Unfortunately, one cannot just disentangle a Medieval, Stalinist system overnight; Gorbachev's failed Glasnost and Perestroika policies prove that.
 

Then, there was defeat in Afghanistan. That had just as depressing an effect on Russian society as U.S. defeat in Vietnam had on American society. The Russians lost the will to rule, just when a newly aggressive, Imperialist tone took over Washington.
 

I do not doubt American military spending was one factor in the USSR's collapse, but I believe it was only a minority factor. The USSR fell apart because it was made ready to do so by prevailing "internal" conditions.
 

Spectacular, even revolutionary, changes have taken place in countries that were not hostile to the United States; e.g., South Africa, South Korea and Indonesia. Where American national pride (ego) is not at stake, and the country is far enough away, we are ready enough to attribute these social and political changes to "other factors." When Mexico's PRI finally lost an election, this was not the doing of the U.S., even if the U.S. government preferred the change.
 

So, the USSR fell apart. The United States did not defeat the Soviet Union; it merely survived it. In this case, at best, the Russian people won one for the Gipper and themselves.