All things considered, who was worse- Reagan or George W Bush?

[Nye Bevan]

All things considered, comparing Ronald Reagan and George W Bush:

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	Ronald Reagan was worse
	6 (32%)
	George W Bush was worse
	13 (68%)
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[tblue]

1. Ray Gun, because he made selfishness cool

and greed and racism and union-bashing, etc. He fundamentally re-engineered America's zeitgeist and turned us in exactly the wrong direction, and I don't know if we'll ever fully recover. Poppy, and therefore probably W too, would never have been POTUS if not for RR.

[yeoman6987]

28. Reagan took away widow pensions and the aided the retirement age to 67

Effects everyone. Bush tried to be worse but was not quite there.

[arcane1]

2. Without Reagan, we would not have Bush. And Reagan invaded entire hemispheres! n/t

[hifiguy]

31. This.

[Starry Messenger]

3. Without Reagan, the Bush coalition would not have gained power.

Reagan was a HUAC fink, a hypocrite, an eater of souls, and he unleashed a force of hatred, nationalism and racism on the country that is only just abating somewhat.

[Gormy Cuss]

11. Reagan set the stage for certain. n/t

[Gman]

4. Bush hands down

In terms of dead people, in terms of wrecking the economy, in terms of war, and about every category I can think of. Bush was worse than Reagan or Nixon. I said many times I'd rather have Nixon. And if you lived through Nixon you know how powerful that statement is. Reagan was a pussycat compared to Nixon. .

[Dawgs]

8. Dead people and wars yes. Economy no. Reagan started the decline of the economy over 30 years ago.

The recession was the result of what he started. It's not even close. You can't only go by what happens while they are in office.

[gwheezie]

5. I'm going with bush

But I loathe Reagan, I hated the guy.but Bush wins for the iraq war.

[deutsey]

13. That's how I feel as well

Add to Bush's hit parade his theft of the 2000 election, 911 (whether you think it was a conspiracy or his oil-greedy administration's indifference or incompetence that led to it, it happened on his watch), and the 2008 economic collapse.

[tblue37]

17. Bush gave us shadow president Cheney. That's hard to top. nt

[Paladin]

22. Yeah, the Cheney factor throws it to Dubya, as far as I'm concerned. (nt)

[Uncle Joe]

6. Bush was the culmination of Reagen's wet dream.

Reagan created the fetid, toxic swamp from which Bush slithered forth.

Bush was the worst in regards to total corruption, evilness and incompetence but if he hadn't come along something else would've taken his place, the environment to breed such a national travesty was set in place by Reagan's policies and actions.

With apologies to "Field of Dreams" "build it and they will come," Reagan built it, so in that regard he's worse.

If you're asking me who was the worst President that would be Bush, but Reagan left the worst legacy, while Republicans can't run on the former, they most certainly will on the latter, but the end results will be the same; a salute to corruption, governmental dysfunction and incompetence.

Thanks for the thread, Nye Bevan.

[deutsey]

12. +1

[H2O Man]

18. Well said.

[GoCubsGo]

24. Exactly right.

Not only did he lay down the groundwork for the economic disaster culminated during the Bush, Jr. administration, he and Lee Atwater also dragged racism, xenophobia, the demonization of poor people, the demonization of intellectuals/science, and all the other ugliness out from under their rocks.

[Glorfindel]

27. "Reagan created the fetid, toxic swamp from which Bush slithered forth.

Wonderfully well said!

[Nay]

9. That's a rough one, because Reagan caused long-term damage and Bush caused more

immediate damage.

The adoration that many people have for Reagan is inexplicable -- he seemed like a lying, senile old jerk to me. But that adoration led to a large change in how the people in this country acted. They did become more selfish and greedy.

Bush, on the other hand, with his ridiculous war and his ignoring of the evidence that bin Laden was about to strike, has caused innumerable deaths of absolutely innocent people for no reason.

So I hope both of them burn in hell.

[CanSocDem]

10. The BFEE...

...owned Ronald Reagan.



.

[Javaman]

14. reagan created the medium. george w. moron* turned it into an art form. nt

[bemildred]

15. I object to the notion that either one was better, they were both worse. nt

[tblue37]

16. W, because he handed the reins to Darth Cheney. nt

[Motown_Johnny]

19. Short term, W. Long term Reagan. n/t

[Amishman]

20. Reagan, no question

Reagan had the rare charisma to completely shift the course of our country almost single handedly. The damage done may never be undone.

To make a comparison, W was the child who scribbled on the all walls. Reagan was the child who set fire to the garage.

[hunter]

21. Empty headed venal puppets, both of them.

The same creepy puppet guild animated both of them, so there is no difference.

[GoCubsGo]

23. Reagan laid the groundwork.

It all came to fruition under Dumbya. His actions, such as weakening unions, made it easier for Village Idiot, as well as his filthy, criminal father, to do their dirty work. (Not that Bill Clinton's hand are clean here...)

[DawgHouse]

25. Reagan is to False Prophet and Bush is to Antichrist.

[Runningdawg]

26. I would say its a dead heat

except for the fact RR closed all the mental institutions. Lack of adequate mental health care is one of the most dangerous problems facing the US today.

[JI7]

29. in terms of long term damage it would be Reagan

Just their time in office would be Bush.

[Octafish]

30. Bush was continuation of BFEE...as were Reagan and Nixon...

How Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush became boss while Ronnie could get blame, er, "credit"...

George Bush Takes Charge: The Uses of ‘Counter-Terrorism’

By Christopher Simpson
Covert Action Quarterly 58

A paper trail of declassified documents from the Reagan‑Bush era yields valuable information on how counter‑terrorism provided a powerful mechanism for solidifying Bush's power base and launching a broad range of national security initiatives.

During the Reagan years, George Bush used "crisis management" and "counter‑terrorism" as vehicles for running key parts of the clandestine side of the US government.

Bush proved especially adept at plausible denial. Some measure of his skill in avoiding responsibility can be taken from the fact that even after the Iran‑Contra affair blew the Reagan administration apart, Bush went on to become the "foreign policy president," while CIA Director William Casey, by then conveniently dead, took most of the blame for a number of covert foreign policy debacles that Bush had set in motion.

The trail of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDS) left by the Reagan administration begins to tell the story. True, much remains classified, and still more was never committed to paper in the first place. Even so, [font color="red"]the main picture is clear: As vice president, George Bush was at the center of secret wars, political murders, and America's convoluted oil politics in the Middle East.[/font color]

SNIP...

CovertAction Quarterly no 58 Fall 1996 pp31-40

Err. Well. Uh. I'm not elected yet. Uh. Mommie. Mistakes were made. Whirr. Zip. CHUCKA CHUCKA.

Reagan and the NSC also used NSDDs to settle conflicts among security agencies over bureaucratic turf and lines of command. It is through that prism that we see the first glimmers of Vice President Bush's role in clandestine operations during the 1980s.

SNIP...

NSDD 159. MANAGEMENT OF U.S. COVERT OPERATIONS, (TOP SECRET/VEIL‑SENSITIVE), JAN. 18,1985

The Reagan administration's commitment to significantly expand covert operations had been clear since before the 1980 election. How such operations were actually to be managed from day to day, however, was considerably less certain. The management problem became particularly knotty owing to legal requirements to notify congressional intelligence oversight committees of covert operations, on the one hand, and the tacitly accepted presidential mandate to deceive those same committees concerning sensitive operations such as the Contra war in Nicaragua, on the other.

[font color="red"]The solution attempted in NSDD 159 was to establish a small coordinating committee headed by Vice President George Bush through which all information concerning US covert operations was to be funneled. The order also established a category of top secret information known as Veil, to be used exclusively for managing records pertaining to covert operations.

The system was designed to keep circulation of written records to an absolute minimum while at the same time ensuring that the vice president retained the ability to coordinate US covert operations with the administration's overt diplomacy and propaganda.

Only eight copies of NSDD 159 were created. The existence of the vice president's committee was itself highly classified.[/font color] The directive became public as a result of the criminal prosecutions of Oliver North, John Poindexter, and others involved in the Iran‑Contra affair, hence the designation "Exhibit A" running up the left side of the document.

CONTINUED...

CovertAction Quarterly no 58 Fall 1996 pp31-40

Here's then-Sen. Prescott Bush, father and grandather of GHWBush and GWBush, straigtening then-Sen. Richard Nixon's hat before heading onstage for some Senate function.

Bush and Cheney: The Republican Party Dumps Lincoln and Nixon - Becomes A Closely Held Family Corporation

Every other year is an off-year in the federal election calendar. But on Election Day, 1975, Gerald Ford, the first president in United States history to be directly appointed by Congress without the interference of the voters, reshuffled his cabinet and White House Staff.

Dick Cheney, the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee, was nominated to be President Ford's Chief of Staff. General Brent Scowcroft was nominated to be head of the National Security Council when Henry Kissinger became Secretary of State. And George H. W. Bush, father of this year's Republican presidential nominee, was nominated to become Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Cheney, Scowcroft and Vice-President Bush would all reappear in prominent roles during the Iran-Contra scandal during Ronald Reagan's second term. But more significantly, these Ford partisans in the Republican party were significantly responsible for forcing President Nixon from office and contributing to the pattern of politically motivated presidential impeachments and threats of impeachment which culminated in President Clinton's impeachment in 1998.

Throughout American history, the U.S. House of Representatives has tried to choose the president, in direct contradiction of the constitutional intent of having the president chosen by the states. This unconstitutional choice mechanism has been institutionalized in campaign finance reform, where the House, which appropriates the funds, pays for the presidential campaigns of the major party candidates. Why McCain's campaign finance reform proposals were anathema to the authoritarians who don't trust the voters to choose the president. Now that Bush is the Republican nominee, comparisons are being made with the only other son of a president to become president, John Quincy Adams. John Quincy Adams was also chosen by the House of Representatives. Adams received only one-third of the vote in the 1824 election to Andrew Jackson's 40%. But Jackson didn't get a majority in the electoral college. So Henry Clay, the third major candidate, threw his support to Adams in exchange for becoming Secretary of State, considered at the time to be a stepping stone to the White House. Instead, Andrew Jackson was elected president in 1828 with just under 56% of the vote, which was the biggest popular vote margin in history until Theodore Roosevelt's election in 1904.

It's clear that by joining the cabal that urged Nixon to leave office, the elder Bush and Cheney are not faithful to the will of the voters. They know better. George W. is cut from the same piece of cloth. Nixon, one of only 7 Republicans to be elected president twice, and one of less than half a dozen presidents to receive electoral votes in more than two elections, has not been mentioned at the 2000 Republican national convention. George W. Bush says his priorities are faith, family, and country. That does not hold out much hope for democracy or the voters, not to mention separation of church and state.

The Bush Family, and the Houston oil constituency that President Bush represented in the House of Representatives, is America's link to national interests in Iran, specifically the Shah of Iran. Not surprisingly, Dick Cheney was Chairman of Halliburton, an oil exploration company, when he was selected as Bush's Vice-Presidential running mate. In 1953, the United States supported the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government and the installation of a hereditary ruler in its stead. At that time, President Bush was a "businessman" in the oil industry. More likely, Bush was a cut-out for the CIA. Who would be more reliable than the son of a Senator. (Prescott Bush, the father of President George Bush, and grandfather of George W. Bush, was a United States Senator from Connecticut from 1953 to 1963.) It is more than likely that President Bush was America's Yuri Andropov, the intelligence aparatchik who rose to the top of the heap.

Desert Storm was the liberation of Kuwait from Iraq, but it was also the restoration of hereditary rulers to their assets. In the 1950's and '60's, when Israel was the target of an Arab boycott, Iran surreptitiously supplied Israel's oil. So, it may not be entirely a coincidence that the Israeli-Palestinian peace summit collapsed on the day Dick Cheney was announced as George W. Bushes Vice-Presidential nominee. Nixon was alleged to have offered South Vietnamese President Thieu a better deal if he won, prompting Thieu to obstruct the Paris Peace talks in advance of the 1968 presidential election.

CONTINUED...

http://www.leinsdorf.com/bush-cheney.htm

So I say Bush as that family has used Reagan and Nixon for their sulfurous purposes -- as well as the American people, for that matter.

[BillZBubb]

32. reagan, hands down.

bush was an incompetent boob who did a lot of damage to the country. But his failures, other than the Supreme Court, won't give conservatives any advantages going forward. He was a failure and everyone knows it.

reagan ushered in decades of bad policy and to this day, even with failure after failure, his philosophy still has people believing. reagan has been totally discredited by history. Yet, still the right and many others still believe the underlying nonsense.