Talk Elections

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I have to say that I like Bush much less than I like Reagan, albeit all I have is hindsight and history in regards to Reagan -- I was only 3 when his two terms finished.

I like Reagan.

It's hard to say....Bush has been worse in terms of what he has actually enacted, but who knows what Reagan would have done with a Republican Congress.

Reagan, although that maybe is just because I wasn't old enough during his presidency to remember any of it.

The Reagan administraiton was far less corrupt than this administration. It was also far less totalitarian.

Reagan was worse than Bush or better?

Reagan was far better.  Not just because of the fact that he had a Democratic Congress to contend with some of the time, but because Reagan was generally just a better guy. He was a man whom I could respect, and whose actions I could understand.

Oops, I forgot what the question was.  I meant that Reagan was better.  I voted correctly, though.

I'm not liberal but Reagan was far better and I'm able to remember about seven last years of his presidency.

GWB is definitely worse.

At least Reagan came across as a good guy.

GWB won with a much less convincing margin than Reagan but acts like he has a greater mandate than any previous president.

At least Reagan didn't get into college (and get elected) solely because of his father.

At least Reagan wasn't as openly religious.

At least Reagan was more intelligent.

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I can think of two things I like about Reagan:

-he kept a good relationship with Gorbachev (the REAL man responsible for ending the Cold War) and handled international relations far better than Bush.

-"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" was a nice line.

The only good thing I can say about Bush is Do-Not-Call.

Reagan ran from the right and governed from the center right.
Bush ran as the center right and governed from the extreme right.

Reagan wasn't perfect, but he easily far surpasses W.

Then again, even Grant surpasses W.

I wouldn't go that far.

I just think it's so funny that so many of the same criticisms that are currently being leveled against Bush were thrown at Reagan during the 80s.  They've just all been washed away by the passage of time.  I wonder if in twenty years, when we have another conservative president the liberals will be looking back and saying things like, "At least George W. Bush was smarter than this moron" and "George W. Bush didn't govern nearly as far right as this guy."

People have a tendency to vastly overreact regarding the implications of having such-and-such a leader in power.  When Clinton was in power, there probably were many conservatives who were absolutely convinced that this meant that the Apocalypse was near and that he will bring about the downfall of America.  The popular view of pretty well every ex-president gets inevitably more favorable with time.

They're the same.  A pair of smarmy, stupid, vicious bigots. The only difference is Bush is more open about his religion, and is therefore more repulsive.

Also the damage done by the new GOP is getting truly pernicious in 2004, while back in Reagan's day it was just beginning.  So Bush seems worse, but he's only carrying on with what Reagan started.

It annoys me when libs say Reagan was better than Bush, simply because he was so much more conservative.

GWB

Dave

Well, if I count as a liberal... ;)

I voted for Bush as the worse president. The difference between the two lie in two things. Firstly, Reagan wasn't that socially conservative, he just used that to get votes, which is understandable. Bush is more frightening to me in that respect. Secondly, Reagan was a statesman who knew when to compromise. Thirdly, Reagan was a lot more talented as a politican and as an orator.

Uh, Reagan wasn't really a social conservative? And you know this how?

Bush is Bush, Reagan was much nicer at least.

He was less socially conservative than economically. However, anyone who considers him a Libertarian is overdoing it.

He was conservative on abortion and education, but more in the center on immigration. Nonetheless, he wasn't Libertarian on any major social issues that I know of.

I have to say Reagan, because he had 8 years to mess up the country, and Bush has only had four so far. Also, Reagan didn't seem to me to be as much aligned with the religous right as Bush is.

Religion is the key difference between the two.

So you're saying Reagan is better or worse?

Right now, worse, but in four years, better.

Couldn't have been more right on the money than this prediction. Bush has definitely had a bit of a reappraisal, now that Trump is the new comparison point, in the twenty years since.

Though Reagan was definitely less criticized by democrats and especially the media than Bush 2004-08 and especially Trump . Like much of the media definitely liked Reagan and many Democrats seemed to like Reagan more than Nixon or even HW Bush

I like both of them. 8)

Difficult. Reagan was worse domestically, Bush was worse on foreign policy. Probably Bush all things considered. His presidency was a complete disaster.

Lol why did you guys necro a 20-year-old thread?

LOL didn't realize this was 20 years old at first.

Anyway, recently we've had quite a few Bush>Reagan takes from Democrats. W has higher favorability among Dems in national polls and he's beaten Reagan in Atlas polls before. I'd love to know why. Anything bad you can say about Reagan is also true of Bush but that's not the case the other way around. It's like they think it's only ok to cut taxes as long as you get us into two wars and a financial crisis.

It’s cause it’s become cliche among online liberals to blame Reaganomics for everything. At the end of the day the 2008 crises was more caused cause :

- Bush trying to expand home ownership above levels that were financially sustainable

- The federal reserve fueling the housing bubble to help the country get out of the early 2000s recession faster

- repeal of Glass-Stegall which happened nearly 10 years after Reagan left office

If you blame Reagan for the 2008 recession then you also have to blame FDR for the 1970s stagflation crises .

I wouldn't blame Reagan personally, though the neoliberal economic policies he estbalished helped to create the crisis in the first place. In all fairness though, the Republican congress in 1999 and Bill Clinton passing and signing the repeal of Glass-Steagall turned out to be disastrous decision.

Maybe but by that definition you also have to blame the Keynesian Consensus FDR established lead to the 1970s stagflation crises . Any policy program taken too far will lead to negative consequences as well as not dealing with the downsides of any policy program as all policy programs have downsides . I would say that would be unfair as well .

The best analogy would be that Reaganomics was treatment/medicine  for the 1970s but like any treatment there are side effects you have to watch out far . What we did instead was we decided not to watch out for any of the side effects and overtime the side effects started to become major problems that needed to be treated too . The same thing happened with the old Keynesian consensus , where we didn’t watch out for the side effects and it then created whole new sorts of issues that needed to be treated .

Lastly I would say people always have a more gloomy mind of the present. There are many things that were better for the median person after 3 and a half decades of neoliberalism then there(or now nearly 4 and a half depending on whether you think the consensus broke in 2016 or not ) were before it and you can argue better overall.

The contemporary western world inarguably has the highest standard of living that has ever existed in human history. The 40's and 50's nostalgia you see from some corners of the left is just weird.

A lot of it is there is an obsession by the left with “wealth inequality” which while yes was lower in the 50s and 60s , it’s an extremely misleading stat to use . The reason is a huge part for this has to do more with the stock market has grown way faster in the past 40 years than it did in the 40 years before that .

It does not mean though median wages were higher then , home ownership was higher then , or basics such as cost of food was more affordable then .