Why is Ronald Reagan credited with being such a great president when we all know that for the last 2 or 3 yrs?

Question

......at least, it was Nancy that ran the whole show. Have we forgotten he had alzheimer's disease? Nancy helped him with all his speeches. They had a hearing device on his ears & she often even finished his sentences. She took care of every little detail & made all the decisions for him. Nancy successfully hid all this from the public until almost the end of his presidency. Yet she got no credit, go figure!

alvaro....I'm not saying he was or wasn't great....that is for others to decide. I'm only pointing out that Nancy got no credit for her part in "keeping it all together" in the last 2 or 3 yrs & that the GOP kept his condition hidden until the end of his term.

I was there & I remember. However, for all of you with short memories I will cite a source, his own Dr.:
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/147/story_14713_1.html
Alzheimer's disease overtakes a person very gradually, and for a while can be indistinguishable from such mild memory loss. But eventually the forgetting reaches the stage where it is quite distinct from an absentminded loss of one's glasses or keys. Fleeting moments of almost total confusion seize a person who is otherwise entirely healthy and lucid.

By 1992, the signs of Reagan's illness were impossible to ignore. At the conclusion of a medical exam in September, as the New York Times would later report, Reagan looked up at his doctor of many years with an utterly blank face and said, "What am I supposed to do next?" This time, the doctor knew that something was very wrong.

Sixteen months later, in February 1994, Reagan flew back to Washington, D.C., from his retirement home in Bel Air, California, for what would turn out to be his final visit. The occasion was a dinner celebrating his own eighty-third birthday, attended by Margaret Thatcher and twenty-five hundred other friends and supporters.

Before the gala began, the former President had trouble recognizing a former Secret Service agent whom he had know well in the White House. This didn't come as a total shock to his wife, Nancy, and other close friends, but it did cause them to worry that Reagan might have problems with his speech that night.

The show went on as planned. After an introduction by Thatcher, Reagan strolled to the podium. He began to speak, then stumbled, and paused. His doctor, John Hutton, feared that Reagan was about to humiliate himself. "I was holding my breath, wondering how he would get started," Hutton later recalled, "Then suddenly something switched on, his voice resounded, he paused at the right places, and he was his old self.

Back at his hotel after the dinner, Reagan again slipped into his unsettling new self, turning to Nancy and saying, "Well, I've got to wait a minute. I'm not quite sure where I am." Though the diagnosis and public announcement were both months away, Reagan was already well along the sad path already trod by his mother [and] his brother.”

Answer 1

Ronald Reagan was just a figurehead and as such, it didn't really matter who was "running the show".

Answer 2

Stephen Hawking has a machine say and do everything for him but that doesnt make him any less intelligent.

You'd better take a closer look at your "facts" and ask yourself if they are a sensational conspiracy theory or merely an exaggeration of the truth.

Fact is, Regan is popularized amongst presidents mostly for his unconventional yet highly successful approach to Economics, known as "Reganomics". Even if his original inspiration was drawn upon from his wife, because we all know that behind a great man is a great woman, he is still responsible for cultivating the idea and molding the consensus by which his plan was put through congress.

While he certainly wasn't the most profund, and maybe more credit is due to Nancy, you cant slight the fact that the person who chose to run for presidency was in fact Mr. Regan and not Mrs.Regan thus what occured as a result during his presidency, good or bad, is credited to him.

Answer 3

What is this sick, perverse pleasure that people take in trying to bring down every great person, whether he be a politician, actor, singer, or novelist?

I have read many books on Ronald Reagan, and I know for certain, from what his associates said, that President Reagan was still fully in command. He often needed to rest, but he kept a full schedule, something that would put a lot of young, healthy people in the hospital for shattered nerves. Yet Reagan handled it all with dignity and grace. You could try a little of that yourself, instead of trying to denigrate one of our greatest Presidents.

Nancy did not, by any means, run the show. Her role was protecting him. President Reagan did not seek his wife's advice on political matters; her role was limited to advising him about the people Reagan dealt with. Reagan trusted her judgment about people, not politics. On serveral occasions, those closest to Reagan saw him stop his wife's interjection short, with a curt admonishment to keep quiet.

I had the privilege to meet President Reagan. He had the most amazing energy about him, even though he was old at the time. He was vigorous and dynamic. His eyes revealed a quick wit, and awareness of all the nuances of what was happening around him.

If you think Nancy ran the show, you need to read a book or two by a truthful author. I suggest:

President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination by Richard Reeves. This is most definitely not a propagandistic book; he says a lot of things about Reagan I don't agree with, and withholds praise, but he has a lot of inside information.

Answer 4

unquestionably scholors reviewing Reagan era papers and letters have deternined that Reagan wasn't suffering any consequences from alzheimer's over the final years of his Presidency. They now have get admission to to personaly written letters Reagan wrote to distinctive heads of state, the place his good judgment and prepare of theory coach no signs and indications of alzheimer's in any respect. Like each and everything else related to politics, the parable that Reagan replaced into out of it over the final years of his presidency are in basic terms political mudslinging by way of his opponets.

Answer 5

Ronald Reagan will go down in history as one of the greatest presidents the country has ever had. You and other liberals hate this. You hate that Jimmie Carter had interest rates so high that almost no one could afford to buy a home. And that he let our country be held hostage by a few rag tag terorists in "man-dresses". Mr Reagan let them know he would rain hell down on them 15 minutes after being sworn in if they did not let our people go and they had them inthe air as he was sworn in. He had to fight Congress and the USSR as he threatened them with "Star Wars". In doing so he brought them to their knees without a shot, in spite of Congress's best efforts to stop him. He lowered our taxes and in doing so, brought more money into the US budget than ever before(and Congress promptly spent us into debt). Nancy was a loyal and loving wife who helped her husband until the very end, with dignity. But don't think for one moment that Ronald Reagan was not the greatest president in recent history, if not in all history.

Answer 6

Ron Reagan knew how to pick the right people to get the job done. He didn't pick based on the "good Old Boy" system, but chose the best qualified. He knew how to deligate and trusted in his choices. The Bushes, Clinton, and Carter didn't have this trait.

Answer 7

Personally I look at Ronald Reagan as one of the worst presidents in the country's history, the Iran/Contra affair was borderline treason and he should have been arrested and convicted for his role in it. .

Answer 8

This is sad to admit; but Mr. Reagan was a grade "B" actor- running a grade "B" country at the time. And the truth of the matter IS, things haven't changed much over the past 20 years. THAT's why we're having the problems we are- today. Maybe having a woman President- would eliminate the "middle-man" & get stuff done.

Answer 9

Ronald Reagan destroyed the industrial base of the United States of American by removing the tariffs that had protected it for the past 200 plus years. Clinton may have nailed the coffin shut with NAFTA and GATT but Ron cut it's throat by failing to defend our nation from its enemies foreign and domestic. Sun Tsu stated all warfare is based on economics, and in that light Reagan was at traitor and an enemy of the United States not it's greatest President.

The fact that he was an actor, acting on behalf of corporate masters is no honor, and while the tragedy of Alzheimer's is a horrific end for any human being and he and his family have my condolences, his Presidency was a terrible disaster for the American people. I know of no one who credits Reagan with greatness save neo-con wealth blinded fools.

Answer 10

If RR was still in control, he'd probably have blown up the world. So he wasn't a great president, and besides, the one that followed his last position as governor isn't exactly sweet either, because he'll be the final chess piece that will checkmate the people. But that's your own bloody fault, cause you guys keep believing lies. Anyway, isn't it funny (no) that Ronald "passed the torch" after his death to Arnold, which is an anagram for Ronald?

You're being fooled by the authorities...