As Paul Harvey would say...And now, the rest of the story.
Reagan campaigned in 1980 on balancing the budget and cutting the national debt which stood at $900 billion when he took office. While the national debt at that time had been slowly creeping up it had taken 25 years for that debt to double from $257 billion in 1950 to $533 billion in 1975...it would grow to $900 billion in 1980. Eight years later Reagan left us $2.9 trillion in debt.
Ronny was likable no doubt but his economic policy (cut taxes, increase spending) set in motion the ever mounting tsunami of debt we have today and made economic dependents of the military industrial complex that now nobody can touch because of the 100,000's of jobs tied to it. And just as invading Iraq proved to be a mistake, busting up the Soviet Union also created great instability in the region and resulted in millions of old soviet military weapons reaching the black market and getting into the wrong hands. We traded an "enemy" we knew for 1000's who now lurked in the bushes. Better the devil you know.
Bush 1 knew that "trickle down" was voodoo economics and tried to adjust the Reagan tax rates and was crucified by his own party for doing so. He made the mistake in making his "Read my lips..." statement. He had the good judgment to drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait and keeping Saddam in his box. Ultimately Bush 1 was undone by the presence of Ross Perot in the '92 election. Had Perot not entered the race Bush 1 most likely would have been re-elected. The policies that Bush 1 would have followed and what Bill Clinton did follow were very similar.
Despite all the scandals with Clinton, Clinton left office with the highest approval rating of any POTUS since the end of WWII. Clinton was far from the first POTUS to like the ladies but he was the first to serve at a time that an industry existed with the sole intention of criticizing everything that a Democratic POTUS would do.
It didn't matter that he was more of a Republican than most Republicans. Yeah, he signed NAFTA...a Reagan idea that was negotiated by Bush 1.
Oh, and Islamic terrorism had begun long before Clinton got to office. Remember Beirut? 241 dead US servicemen, 58 French soldiers and a few others...injured 100's more. That was 1983 and was perpetrated by a group that called themselves "Islamic Jihad". Reagan's response was to withdraw our remaining troops.
Bush 2 was a puppet that was controlled by Dick Cheney and others. Had he sought out advice from his dad and followed it we all would have been much better off.
Obama like Clinton has had to deal with an industry that only exists to criticize Democrats. The ridiculous claims that he was/is a Muslim, that his birth certificate that has been verified countless times is somehow fake. That this was obviously all a conspiracy from the time of his birth when the Honolulu newspaper wrote his birth announcement the day after he was born.
Yes, he deserves criticism over expanding the Patriot act...I'm not sure how you criticize the drone attacks? You prefer we put our soldiers in harm's way? It's funny that he is criticized because the drones result in too many civilian deaths yet most of those criticizing would like to see somebody nuke the region. And they support someone who says he would "bomb the hell out of them". ISIS doesn't separate themselves from the civilian population. If we bomb them there will most likely be civilian casualties...but that's ok because that would be your guy's bomb.
Yeah, ObamaCare is a bad program but it's the necessary evil first step to get us to universal care. We will end up at universal care some time in the next 20 years regardless of who controls the White House.
The bailouts while setting bad precedent have been successful and have had a net result of little real costs as most of the money has been repaid. The economic turmoil that would have occurred had the bailouts not happened may have rivaled the Great Depression.
