My friend is a big Reagan fan and sent me this:

january 1981: unemployment: 7.6%
dow jones: 900
inflation: 10.4%

january 1989: unemployment: 5.3%
dow jones: 2,200
inflation: 4.5%

not too shabby, even for a guy who was:
president of his high school class
president of college class
captain in u.s. army corps (his eyesight kept him from combat missions)
president of the screen actors guild
governor of california
and won
49 out of 50 states in 1984 (jordan scored 63 that night -- greatness comes in spurts)

oversimplified? maybe.
detatched? possibly
stubborn? probably
admirable, legendary, honorable, compelling, successful, great? definitely

Some facts about Reagan in bullets ... Not intended to be complete

The good
-B actor turned governor turned president
-Reagan was the oldest president ever elected (69)
-Appointed first female justice Sandra Day O’Conner
-“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall…”
-Took soviet president around in his ranch
-He enjoyed feeding squirrels
-Considered an active positive president who survived an assassination attempt and later lived through Alzheimer’s (something the baby boomers empathize with)
-With America’s “new found nationalism” post 9/11, Reagan’s death marks the first former president’s state funeral in three decades…

The bad
-He never mentioned AIDS in his addresses to the nation (due to pressure from the Christian right whose belief in AIDS was God’s punishment to the gays)
-Spent money not on poverty, healthcare and education, but on defense initiatives (see Reaganomics)
-Wealth gaps were large
-Reaganomics (emphasized low taxes, low social services spending, and high military spending).

The ugly
-Poverty levels
-No federal funding for AIDS research
-Iran Contra Affair
-multi-trillion dollar SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative)
-helped create Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden

The end of the Cold War?

-Reagan didn’t win the cold war, everyone lost … instead of a democratic socialism for all of the Soviet Union, which the left had envisioned (both in the US and the USSR) had the then-soviet president dealt with an enlightened American President, the defense spending initiative by Reagan made an internal change of communism by way of peaceful transition impossible… (The defense of America was used to put pressure on Moscow … ironically for a “peaceful” solution) Unfortunately, Gorbachev was removed from power, and the Soviet Union disintegrated due to lack of money resulting in nuclear weapons in the hands of war lords, civil wars in the smaller states, and needless human suffering (genocide) …

Later it was proved that it was an offensive American foreign policy starting back in the latter stages of the Truman administration, which gambled that the soviets did not want to fight … Reagan just happened to be President when the War ended.