Surely you mustt admit he was a great politician, if anything else..and that job began in California, as governor, in fact in the actors guild during the 50's.
Can anyone here provide more critical details about why Reagan was not a good president vs a good one? I would like to hear a bit on that.
========================================
will surely admit no such thing. was wise to the old doddering geezer from day one. Reagan was not a great politician. He was a great actor. He did have some clever handlers.
He got his start in politics when he managed to get himself elected president of the Screen Actors Guild. He had good relations with the management. Then, during the HuAC hearings, he ratted out many of his fellow actors to the investigators, and they used his testimony to intimidate other SAG members into 'confessing' every actor or director that has even a slightly leftist leaning. This resulted in getting him TV roles, and later he was hred by several right wing manufacturing lobby organizations to give something called 'the speech' to civic clubs first all over California, then all over the country. 'The speech' basically said that corporations should not be taxed at all, bcaue they pass it all on to consumers, and the government is incompetent. He never mentioned that General electric was so corrupt as to merit several officers thrown in jail for price fixing, or that Ma Bell was way behind the curve in improving services.
Eventually his handlers got him elected governor of California, where he pretty much ruined the excellent university system and suggested that it would be a good thing if the poor people who received the food that the SLA pressured the Hearsts to donate to the poor should be poisoned with ptomaine (the SLA was not going to eat the food, just some poor people who had to beg for it to eat). This was quite typical of his comments when he made off-the cuff remarks. He could read the material that was written for him very well and managed to convince most people of his sincerity (as they say in Hollywood, once you can fake sincerity, you've got it made), but when he had to wing it, everything from millionaire Oklahoma oil Indians to the threat of extraterrestrial takeovers of the planet to his witnessing the Holocaust came spewing out: there were all just the plots of movies he'd seen and scripts he'd read, and most people didnpt even hear about the otigin of his wacko remarks.
Then his handlers decided that he should be president. They couldn't get him nominated over Ford, but in 1980, after hey had successfully wrecked Carter who trusted the lying bastard Kissinger over the Shah in ran, followed by the hostage crisis, they got the old geezer elected
nce he was elected, about twelve seconds after the inaugration, the ran crisis was over and all the hostages were released. We were supposed to believe that there were no machinations involved, but this was less convincing than the tooth fairy legend.
He destroyed unions, took the solar panels off the White House to please big oil and more than doubled the budget deficit. But he reminded people of some kindly old grandpa, and he was forgiven his treachery, his incompetence and the incredible corruption of his various secretaries, particularly those who dismantled the NLB, the Dept of nterior and oSHA.
His term was an eight year photo opportunity. He was the most incompetent president that people actually liked. All because o0f his monumental capacity to fake sincerity, and even his Altzheimers.
He does not deserve a Presidential Library, but rather a huge, Washington Momument-sized Oscar near the reflecting pond.
