Ronald Reagan, The Man the Myth

CNN: An interesting article that looks at how Republicans and Democrats view Reagan, how they cherry pick in some respects the Reagan record to attack the opposition. Regan was very pragmatic he would do deals with Democrats, he would go for a majority of a policy aim and then come back later to get the rest, thus Democrats argue that Reagan was willing to deal on policy, while modern Republicans just say NO. On the Republican side the Republicans point out that Reagan was a hawk on National Security, and called on President Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall when the State Department didn’t want to offend the USSR. But Reagan and Gorbachev came close to the removal of ALL nuclear weapons in 1986, they got to that level of trust, Reagan was willing to deal up to a point. The NYT and the Guardian would have jumped for joy if Reagan had accepted the USSR demand that SDI was restricted to the Lab. But Reagan could see the threat of a rogue nation getting the bomb thus his instance that the US had a missile defence. The greatness of Reagan was the ability to know when to be strong and when to deal, also to allow the US to believe in itself again, that was worth more than all the gold in the world.