Ronald Reagan and the far left

I got a chuckle this morning when I looked at Salon.com, a gathering place on the web for the far left. They are running a retrospective on the occasion of ronald Reagan's 100th birthday to show how truly terrible things were under Reagan. Even Reagan's best attributes are looked at as liabilities; they ran a piece on false optimism put forth by Reagan. I guess none of the writers truly remember what the country was like when Jimmy "Malaise" Carter was in office and how the mood of the country brightened amazingly once Reagan had been there for a bit. It was the difference between a can't do and a can do attitude. According to the press at the time, Carter was brilliant and Reagan was dumb, but somehow the Carter Administration could get nothing done while Reagan accomplished essentially all of his goals. Salon also tells us that the REagan boom was a false prosperity. Apparently, they think that creating a boom that led to 25 million new jobs is not nearly as good as the current Obama policies that last month pumped out an amazing 38,000 jobs. True, Reagan's 25 million is not a number for one month, but, I know that if I looked at Obama's two year number of losing around 5 million jobs, folks would protest that I was not being fair. The point is that Reagan, more so than any other president of the last 50 years was a job creator.

Salon also talks about Reagan's high deficits. What a joke. the dificits during Reagan's entire eight years are a rounding error compared to just Obama's first year in office.

The truth is that Reagan deserves credit for a lot of things: bringing the cold war to an end, creating conditions for sustained economic growth, restoring the American spirit, moving America away from government dependence (something that needs to be done again), and making Americans feel as if the government truly spoke for them (remember the Challenger sppech). But Reagan left office 22 years ago. We are no more required to follow his precepts than the Democrats are required to follow those of Franklin Roosevelt. Nevertheless, it would be nice if the lefties at Salon would try honesty just once. But then again, they are after all lefties, so who would expect honesty?