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Comment by bjoli | Hacker News Reader

This is unrelated, but how in the world can he be held in such high regard in the US? Over here (Europe) he was widely regarded as a clown during his presidency, and the whole Iran/contra deal, together with the pardons by Bush senior, didn't really do his legacy any favours.

Just a week ago a friend of mine (who does not share my views, and is generally positive of Reaganomics) said something along the lines of: "not only was Reagan a clown, he surrounded himself with crooks"(regarding Bush and Meese).

Can someone explain it like I'm 5?

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It's been a while so nobody actually remembers him or what he did, except for the Republican personality cult. Also, the economy did pretty well while he was president, although it was a coincidence because it was so bad under Carter.

What Reagan and Nixon mainly ran on, which is still the current Republican strategy, is making white people feel good about being white by telling them that all black people were criminals, and proving it by taking away their welfare and putting them all in prisons.

Charisma and those who benefited. I've heard Regan was a popular actor at that time, and you need only look to the massive defense projects and 'support for farmers' to see how popular that would make such a president among the more rural base that tend to vote Republican in the US.

Something I'm curious about is what was the inflow/outflow of highly qualified professionals during that period between the USA and Europe.

It's really simple - Americans approach politics as if it's a football game. If a guy is from their "team" then he gets support since being on the "correct" side is more important than the actual merits. So there's a LOT of people in US who have respect for someone like Reagan or Bush purely because they were on the "correct" team.

Funny comparison. When I watch sports (mostly e-sports but) I'm always asked "which team are you rooting for?" and I always answer "I'm rooting for a good game.". Wonder if there's a parallel between that attitude and "moderate/centrist" learning in politics.

> Over here (Europe) he was widely regarded as a clown during his presidency

Over here in Europe he is praised for liberating us from communism.

Apart from supporting Solidarity (and then help the economic bullying to make sure they didn't get any chance what so ever to have their own economic policies), I don't think much was achieved that the Soviet Union wouldn't have managed without US "support".

> When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can’t be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989. ~ Lech Walesa (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan#/media/File:Lech...)

Like Trump, he was an actor that told a story about America that helped people feel good about themselves, and talked up the fight against the designated enemies: Iran, communism, and unions.

Loyalty politics beats actual accountability. That's why the man who illegally sold arms to an enemy of America ended up as head of the NRA selling arms to America.

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