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Nothing at all. People in tech have this need to bring up how Reagan is the devil. It's very odd because it was a sitting duck presidency, if there ever was one

Nothing at all. People in tech have this need to bring up how Reagan is the devil. It's very odd because it was a sitting duck presidency, if there ever was one. Hardly a Senate majority for some of the time, no house majority at any point.

hga 13y ago
Heh, I've never heard of a "sitting duck" presidency, but the name fits. It was the first post-Watergate Republican one, and the first to which criminalizing of normal politics was applied. The number of high administration official who were prosecuted on totally bogus grounds was appalling, from Department of Labor Secretary Ray "Which office do I go to get my reputation back?" Donovan (a singularly honest man if the prosecutors couldn't make anything stick to a New York City construction firm (!!!)) to the head of NASA, indicted by a team that didn't have a single expert on the subject in dispute (federal contracting by the team that made a working DIVAD; when they asked to dismiss the charges, the judge wouldn't let them do it without prejudice, i.e. they could not try again). In 20/20 hindsight he says he wouldn't have forced the launch of Challenger ... certainly disrupting the leadership of NASA is going to be without consequences. ADDED: And the press lied through their teeth. E.g. we were constantly regaled with horror stories of vicious budget cuts ... but in the rarefied lingo of the Beltway, a decrease from the automatically rising baseline, even if more nominal or real dollars are spent than last year, is a "cut". But most of all I think they hated how successful and happy he was, even with the Democrats holding so much power. Of course, back then enough of them realized we were facing existential threats from the two areas I've remarked on; the same in terms of threats is true today, but it's less in your face for the moment. But wait until we can no longer run "trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see" because we can't maintain zero percent interest rates (which by themselves are crushing so many, especially retirees).
_delirium 13y ago
It's relevant because Reagan renewed the Nixon-era drive towards assertions of executive power to advance national security. You might even think he did it for good reasons, e.g. because the threat of communism was sufficiently dire that it really did justify a suspension of the usual legal niceties in order to defend the U.S.'s national interests. The point is not "Reagan was wrong", but rather a more descriptive one: Reagan pushed the boundaries of executive power. Maybe that's good, maybe it isn't. But as a descriptive matter, Reagan is an important link in the modern chain of presidents broadening executive power on national-security grounds. I don't think this is particularly controversial even among conservative historians. The debate is over whether Reagan's general tendency towards a strong-executive, law-and-order-via-military-if-necessary position (shared with folks like Edwin Meese) was justified, not over whether it was the case. Even going back to his pre-presidency days, for example, conservative historians typically argue that Reagan's declaration of martial law in Berkeley in 1969, in which he sent in the national guard to put down a series of protests, was necessary to maintain order and prevent subversive elements from gaining a foothold. Nobody actually argues that he didn't do so, or that it was some kind of situation where he was tricked into it. He was pretty explicitly a national-security hawk in favor of a strong executive.

hga 13y ago

Heh, I've never heard of a "sitting duck" presidency, but the name fits. It was the first post-Watergate Republican one, and the first to which criminalizing of normal politics was applied. The number of high administration official who were prosecuted on totally bogus grounds was appalling, from Department of Labor Secretary Ray "Which office do I go to get my reputation back?" Donovan (a singularly honest man if the prosecutors couldn't make anything stick to a New York City construction firm (!!!)) to the head of NASA, indicted by a team that didn't have a single expert on the subject in dispute (federal contracting by the team that made a working DIVAD; when they asked to dismiss the charges, the judge wouldn't let them do it without prejudice, i.e. they could not try again). In 20/20 hindsight he says he wouldn't have forced the launch of Challenger ... certainly disrupting the leadership of NASA is going to be without consequences. ADDED: And the press lied through their teeth. E.g. we were constantly regaled with horror stories of vicious budget cuts ... but in the rarefied lingo of the Beltway, a decrease from the automatically rising baseline, even if more nominal or real dollars are spent than last year, is a "cut". But most of all I think they hated how successful and happy he was, even with the Democrats holding so much power. Of course, back then enough of them realized we were facing existential threats from the two areas I've remarked on; the same in terms of threats is true today, but it's less in your face for the moment. But wait until we can no longer run "trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see" because we can't maintain zero percent interest rates (which by themselves are crushing so many, especially retirees).

_delirium 13y ago

It's relevant because Reagan renewed the Nixon-era drive towards assertions of executive power to advance national security. You might even think he did it for good reasons, e.g. because the threat of communism was sufficiently dire that it really did justify a suspension of the usual legal niceties in order to defend the U.S.'s national interests. The point is not "Reagan was wrong", but rather a more descriptive one: Reagan pushed the boundaries of executive power. Maybe that's good, maybe it isn't. But as a descriptive matter, Reagan is an important link in the modern chain of presidents broadening executive power on national-security grounds. I don't think this is particularly controversial even among conservative historians. The debate is over whether Reagan's general tendency towards a strong-executive, law-and-order-via-military-if-necessary position (shared with folks like Edwin Meese) was justified, not over whether it was the case. Even going back to his pre-presidency days, for example, conservative historians typically argue that Reagan's declaration of martial law in Berkeley in 1969, in which he sent in the national guard to put down a series of protests, was necessary to maintain order and prevent subversive elements from gaining a foothold. Nobody actually argues that he didn't do so, or that it was some kind of situation where he was tricked into it. He was pretty explicitly a national-security hawk in favor of a strong executive.