Refreshing | Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future |...

Mather Strikes Again | Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future | Will Bunch

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	• Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future Will Bunch Free Press, 2009 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 66 reviews view larger image
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Exposing Ronald Reagen....

A very good read and well documented book exposing Ronald Reagan for what he was and not what people think he was all about.

Refreshing

I'm so sick of hearing everyone say what a great president Reagan was, and how loved he was during the 1980s. Well, I remembered it quite differently, and this book documents the reality quite well. The book is especially effective in demonstrating, contrary to the myth, that Reagan in many ways was quite pragmatic. Conservatives today portray Reagan as an uncompromising ideologue. The reality was quite different. The great irony of the man is that if he were running for office today, he'd be rejected as impure by the very politicians and the very base who so champion his legacy.

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Mather Strikes Again

This book changed my mind about Ronald Reagan. Before I read it, I considered Reagan's presidency an unmitigated disaster to everyone other than arms manufacturers and financiers looking to destroy America's industrial base for fun and profit. But this book, along with others, made me rethink Reagan's cold war legacy. Admittedly, this old man almost got us all killed during his first term (google Able Archer if you doubt this); but he did go against the advice of his more atavistically suicidal advisors during his second term to engage Gorbachev in a constructive and ultimately successful dialogue that did indeed accelerate ending of the cold war. SALTII and the elimination of intermediate range ballistic missiles in Europe were major achievements. A more limited, less pragmatic man would not have changed course like that.

Another aspect I liked about the book is the way it emphasizes how pragmatic Reagan was. He may have signed into law the biggest rich man's tax cut by far in our nation's history, but when it became apparent that what he had done was bad policy he reversed himself and almost immediately signed into law the biggest tax increase in our nation's history. He also showed considerable ideological flexibility in how he approached social security reform, again a second term accomplishment.

So, if you're looking for a book that completely trashes Reagan (I was looking for that) then don't buy this book. If you're looking for another hagiography of Reagan, don't buy this book. But if you're looking for a book that's fair in the way it approaches Reagan's accomplishments and legacy, good points and bad, get this book. It will make you think.

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Reagan: The Myth Revealed

I was selected to attend Naval Officer Candidate School in the early 1980s thanks to Ronald Reagan's Maritime Strategy, a deliberately biased, half-baked military doctrine whose aim was to siphon billions of military dollars against a non-existent Soviet Seapower threat. You will recall that $2 billion were dedicated to refurbishing four WW II battlewagons, resulting in an explosion of 16 inch gun on USS IOWA, killing 44 American sailors. Thank you Sec Navy John Lehman. I was present in Beirut when 244 U.S. Marines were killed by a suicide bomber on Oct 23, 1983 because of the ill-considered deployment of U.S. troops in a hot war zone. And I was on my way home from deployment when Reagan decided to invade Grenada in order to distract America's attention from the tragedy in Beirut. I was present when Reagan spoke at the memorial service of 31 sailors from the USS STARK who were killed in an accidental launch of two Exocet air to surface missiles in the spring of 1986. I am a die-hard fan of Harry Truman and understand that Truman (creator of NATO) is the REAL reason for the demise of the USSR. Reagan actually should rank somewhere around the middle of all Presidents who have served their country, and even this is generous. The book TEAR DOWN THIS MYTH is especially timely with the recent attempts by conservatives to replace U.S. Grant on the fifty dollar bill with Ronald Reagan. To this day I wonder how anyone with any sense of civil rights history can forgive his kicking off his 1976 bid for the Republican Presidential nomination in Philadelphia, Mississippi, site of the murder of three civil rights activists in the 1960s. Ronald Reagan presided over the Iran-Contra scandal, he initiated the greatest shift of wealth from the middle to higher upper class individuals in America (emulated by Bush I and Bush II), and he decimated social services in America in the 1980s. All the while Nancy Reagan was spending $250 K on White House China while both Reagans presided over their dysfunctional family unit: ask Ron Reagan or Patti Davis for details. This book is easily read and well documented. Reagan deserves little respect for his contributions (???) to history. He was a paper mache leader. Gorbachev has repeatedly admitted the USSR was fated to implode even if Krusty the Klown was President (Gorbie does not refer to Krusty, that is my own embellishment). Read this book. It tells the sordid truth about the "Great Communicator," who was in fact a cruel, indifferent man with no regard for the common American. PS. Why the hell is a national airport named after this guy?

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In this provocative new book, award-winning political journalist Will Bunch unravels the story of how a right-wing cabal hijacked the mixed legacy of Ronald Reagan, a personally popular but hugely divisive 1980s president, and turned him into a bronze icon to revive their fading ideology. They succeeded to the point where all the GOP candidates for president in 2008 scurried to claim his mantle, no matter how preposterous the fit.

With clear eyes and an ever-present wit, Bunch reveals the truth about the Ronald Reagan legacy, including the following:

Despite the idolatry of the last fifteen years, Reagan's average popularity as president was only, well, average, lower than that of a half-dozen modern presidents. More important, while he was in office, a majority of Americans opposed most of his policies and by 1988 felt strongly that the nation was on the wrong track. Reagan's 1981 tax cut, weighted heavily toward the rich, did not cause the economic recovery of the 1980s. It was fueled instead by dropping oil prices, the normal business cycle, and the tight fiscal policies of the chairman of the Federal Reserve appointed by Jimmy Carter. Reagan's tax cut did, however, help usher in the deregulated modern era of CEO and Wall Street greed.

Most historians agree that Reagan's waste-ridden military buildup didn't actually "win the Cold War." And Reagan mythmakers ignore his real contributions -- his willingness to talk to his Soviet adversaries, his genuine desire to eliminate nuclear weapons, and the surprising role of a "liberal" Hollywood-produced TV movie.

George H. W. Bush's and Bill Clinton's rolling back of Reaganomics during the 1990s spurred a decade of peace and prosperity as well as the reactionary campaign to pump up the myth of Ronald Reagan and restore right-wing hegemony over Washington. This effort has led to war, bankrupt energy policies, and coming generations of debt.

With masterful insight, Bunch exposes this dangerous effort to reshape America's future by rewriting its past. As the Obama administration charts its course, he argues, it should do so unencumbered by the dead weight of misplaced and unearned reverence.

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