8 Reasons Why Ronald Reagan Was a Horrible President : Romney & Newt Listen Up!

Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum – throughout this GOP Primary it seems like each of these Republican candidates is scrambling to associate themselves with Ronald Reagan. But why? Why would Romney or Newt try to align themselves the with the memory of one of the worst Presidents that the Republican Party has fielded since its birth. Not only was the guy a bad President, but also a bad actor (when he could remember his lines)!

Since there’s been a lot of reminiscing about the “Great Communicator” I got to thinking: was he really that great of a President? Actually, was he even that great of a person? Sure, I could take shots out his age or intellect, but that’s far too easy. Instead, here’s eight reasons that Ronald Reagan was a horrible person.

8. Not That Great of a Family Man
Let’s be honest. Most of us aren’t perfect perfect people, especially in the family man role. Presidents aren’t excluded either. Thomas Jefferson liked sleeping with his slaves. Bill Clinton liked to get busy in the White House. And yes, even Ronald Reagan was no saint. He divorced his first wife, Oscar-winner Jane Wyman, in 1948. This made him the only President to be divorced, which really isn’t the issue. He quickly hooked up with Nancy Davis after she asked for his help to remove her from a Hollywood blacklist, since he was President of Actors Guild. The two began dating, but Reagan continued to play the field. They only got married after he knocked her up with their first child Patti. OK, so these events don’t exactly make him a jerk, but what does is that he had strained relationships with his children. He showed them little affection and had little communication with them. This included not talking to son Ron until he apologized for hanging up the phone on the old man, not supporting daughter Maureen during her first go at politics and pretty much not addressing the fact that his son Michael was molested as a child.

7. Removed Solar Panels
Over thirty years ago Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House. Think about that. It was a great example of America being at the forefront of a green movement that had hardly taken off. With solar panels on the White House this would be an example to the rest of America, and the world, that we could actually do something to fix the environment. Then Ronald Reagan became president. Reagan didn’t seem to care about the environment, or our image, because he took the solar panels down. Since green is “in” President Obama is reinstalling solar panels on the White House, which would have already been there and saved us some dough if Reagan didn’t take them down in the first place.

6. Reaganomics
Conservatives boast about the success of Reagan’s economic policies, commonly refereed to as Reaganomics. Unfortunately, his policies simply put us in the hole. When Reagan took office in 1980 the government spent $591 billion. By 1986 government spending rose to 68% to $990 billion. Reagan even ran up the deficit from about $40-$50 billion to $200 billion. By the time he left office the national debt was up around $3.5 trillion. Besides the increase in the national debt, Reaganomics established a trend that would continue to inflate the national debt to somewhere over $14trillion today. His administration also gave big corporations tax cuts, which not only decimated the economy, but also sent jobs overseas.

5. Closed Mental Hospitals
As governor of California, Reagan had many odd moves, like sending the National Guard into the University of California’s Berkeley campus to break-up that terrible terrorist organization known as hippies. He also helped close mental hospitals in California during the 70’s. When he became president he cut federal spending for mental hospitals and put that burden on the states, which he did by rescinding President Carter’s Mental Health Systems Act of 1980. Without federal funding mental hospitals closed throughout the nation and psychiatric wards in private hospitals grew. The result was big money for the private sector and mentally ill patients left without proper institutions and care.

4. Supported Apartheid South Africa
While pretty much everyone in the world thought that apartheid in South Africa was a pretty bad deal, Reagan supported it. During his presidency some 3,000 people were killed, and another 20,000 arrested in South Africa’s struggle to end apartheid. When Congress finally decided that economic sanctions on South Africa in 1986 would help end that injustice Reagan vetoed it.

3. Silence on AIDS
The first cases of AIDS began in 1981
. Year after year the number of cases climbed. In 1983 there were over a thousand reported cases. A year later it was over 4,000, with 1,807 deaths. One of these victims included actor and friend to the Reagan, Rock Hudson, who had actually been to the White House while infected. By the time Reagan finally mentioned that such a disease existed in 1987, 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed and 20,849 had died. Representative Henry Waxman said it best in 1985 by stating, “It is surprising that the president could remain silent as 6,000 Americans died, that he could fail to acknowledge the epidemic’s existence. Perhaps his staff felt he had to, since many of his New Right supporters have raised money by campaigning against homosexuals.”

2. The Iran-Contra Affair
This has become one of the worst scandals in American history. The Iran-Contra Affair was simply selling weapons to a known enemy, Iran, in exchange for hostages. The money that was obtained was then used to fund the Contra, which were a right-wing guerrilla organization in Nicaragua. This transaction was not only illegal, it was also contrary to the United States official policies on dealing with terrorist groups. Of course Reagan denied knowing what was going on, which is expected when someone gets caught doing something horribly wrong. The end result of this scandal was that Iran received weapons, Hezbollah kidnapped more people and The Contras killed a lot of people. Even more disturbing is that it was Dick Cheney who came up with the plan for the president to use his executive power to bypass Congress in these types of matters, which he would employ during the Bush administrations “War on Terror”.

1. Butcher of Central America
Reagan launched a secret war on Central America while president because he believed that several of these countries had ties to the USSR. Behind closed doors Reagan’s actions lead to 300,000 deaths in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala during his two terms. The UN even called the CIA’s actions in Guatemala as “perpetrators of genocide”. After Reagan’s death in 2004, Father Miguel D’Escoto from Nicaragua had a lot to say about the Republican savior. “I pray that god in his infinite mercy and goodness forgive him for having been the butcher of my people, for having been responsible for the deaths of some 50,000 Nicaraguans,” he also stated, “More perhaps than any other U.S. President, Reagan convinced many around the world that the U.S. is a fraud, a big lie.” He also added that Reagan’s lies helped Americans to “be the most ignorant people around the world.”

Leave a Comment

  1. radii says:

    you could add 880 more and make it 888 reasons

    – shifted the US from a creditor to a debtor nation
    – made consumer credit readily-available, hooking consumers on credit-cards (to spend our way out of his recession)
    – tax-cuts for the rich really started in the modern era with him
    – running elections with drugs as a crime issue rather than a health issue
    – kissing-ass to the religious-right, giving them decades of power vastly disproportionate to their numbers in the population
    – all he and Nancy’s Hollywood friends were gay yet his public tough-guy persona for the unwashed masses compelled politics that were anti-gay
    – was totally beholded to jewish Hollywood mobster Lew Wasserman – who rescued him from B-movie obscurity and made him president so long as he did whatever israel wanted (he did show a rare human moment of backbone when he called Sharon and told him to stop bombing children in a Lebanese refugee camp)

  2. Lakawak says:

    Yeah…I know I get my politics from a bunch of virgins without real jobs that make a shitty blog with “Loookkk! Purrrrty girls! Boy am I lonely!” links all over the place…written by people who were not alive when Reagan was president.

  3. fairlyUnbalanced says:

    oh, there you go again! You forgot to mention catsup is a vegatable and that I used the cia to introduce ni-, er minorities to crack. Hey, as long as this mike is on don’t forget that I took a national debt of 1 trill and added 3 trill more so that our guns were bigger the the red penis, er guns. It was like the heady days Fitzgerald wrote about… the Charleston Rag for everybody(no not that everybody, just everybody on my list for jesus’ birthday).

  4. Mitchell says:

    This article is b.s. Reagan turned the economy around plane and simple. Going from Carter to Reagan was probably the only thing that saved this Country then. Increasing government spending and social welfare programs does not work economically. Reagan had to make hard decisions, like any other president, you highlight those difficult decisions, but you do not point out any of the good Reagan did for this country. Like turning around our economy. During the end of Carter’s presidency inflation was at 12.5% Reagan brought inflation down to 4.5% and the unemployment rate went from 7.5% to 5.5%. Hopefully Mitt turns out to be half a president that Reagan was, since he’s the only person we have to save us from Obama now. Obama is Jimmy Carter on steroids and America is in trouble if Mitt Romney can’t beat Obama. Remember: $1 Trillion dollar stimulus admittedly did nothing to help the economy thus increasing debt by $787,000,000,000. Obama Care now projected to Cost almost $2 Trillion Dollars over ten years. Obama has outspent every president in history and he’s only been in office for 3.5 years even Bush was in office for 8 years and didn’t spend as much as Obama. The economy will collapse, we cannot sustain our spending, NO ONE CAN BAIL OUT THE U.S LIKE GREECE

  5. AstridAir says:

    It’s very frustrating the GOP has a great spin team that hides these facts so well from the “liberal” media. What is worse, voters have short term memories and most don’t remember any 2 of these 8 topics.

  6. Jim Norcal says:

    As a kid during his terms, I really knew nothing of what was really happening. Now that I’m older, wiser and can tell the difference between bullshit political agendas and what really matters, I see that reagan was just another evil dictator among many. His war on drugs alone has cost us dearly and increased our prison populations beyond anything we’d ever believe possible. And for what? Nice job reagan.

  7. Tom says:

    I have never seen so much Bullshit complaining in my life. Half truths are simply lies either tell the real truth and leave your feelings out of the information or just shut the hell up.

  8. David says:

    If Reagan was so bad why did Obama, who more closely resembles Carter, try to portray himself in 2008 and continues to this day to present himself as a Ronald Reagan, which he in fact is the antithesis of. As a power hungry, egocentric, narcissist,, pathological liar, Obama resembles Carter’s winning campaign for Georgia’s Govenorship in 1971. He ran as a devout segregationist accepting their financial and volunteer contributions. Then after taking the Oath of Office he declared his intention to integrate and enforce the Civil Right’s Act in Georgia. Jimmy Carter and BHO are power hungry racist con artists. Both cloth their amoral actions and racist policies of lies, manipulation, egocentric narcissism and insatiable need of attention and power in a holier then thou, elitist champion of the little guy for whom both only see as a means to their ends. Carter brought the fall of the Shaw, America’s disgrace as our diplomates were held hostage by a violent, fascist, theocracy. His weakness brought the Soviet invasion of Aphganistan. Obama has embraced anti American regimes and organizations that promote tyranny, theocratic fascism, genocide and the abandonment of our nations intrinsic values, security, deterrence, commitments, belief in law and attacks on our most loyal democratic allies and support for their and our existential enemies. His abandonment of democratic freedom loving allies and support for extremist, antidemocratic states and organizations to make his corrupt kingdom of a super rich corporate oligarchy which no longer finds the cost of democratic philosophy, organizations and nations essential to their continued rule of the media manipulated, hatred driven, illiterate, driven by irrational but conditioned and addicted to consumerism, media obscurement of reality by sensationalizing fluff, ideological myths and lies and censorship of Free Speech, a truly free press, law and our constitution. One nation under Gaultier with truth and justice for none.

  9. voiceofreal says:

    Hindsight is always 20-20…when evaluating the Green movement, a prudent individual will weigh the costs against the benefits. It is over 30 years after Carter installed the solar panels on the White House and the cost benefits of solar power are STILL not proven. At the end of the day, it’s always about the bottom line….as it should be.

    We were in an arms race, whether we initiated it, continued it or ended it is irrelevant. We had to stand-up to the Communist Bloc and no one else was going to do that for us.

    You bring up AIDS like it was understood back then….it simply was not. As far as most of the developed world knew, HIV could have come from Mars.

    This is an awfully bad take on the times of Reagan’s presidency and comparing era to era is like comparing apples to oranges.