1 June 2010 Reagan deserves more blame

1 June 2010 Reagan deserves more blame


The legacy of 'drill, baby, drill'

By Julian Zelizer, Special to CNN

June 1, 2010 9:53 a.m. EDT

“For over four decades, some conservatives and centrist Democrats have waged war on the environmental infrastructure that was put into place during the 1960s and 1970s (including under Republican President Nixon).



At first, President Reagan hoped to directly overturn as many environmental regulations as possible. He appointed James Watt as secretary of Interior and Anne Gorsuch as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, both of whom opposed many aspects of the environmental movement.

Yet Reagan's efforts to eliminate the regulatory apparatus largely failed. He ran up against an environmental movement that was far more powerful than he expected. His efforts against the regulations in fact stimulated the movement to become even more active.



The next strategy for his administration was to start weakening oversight, using administrative decisions to protect industry and undermine the quality of the agencies responsible for these programs. Watt and Gorsuch, for example, didn't fight against proposed budget cuts that would clearly strain the capacity of their employees and accepted cost-benefit analyses that favored industry.



Gorsuch boasted that under her leadership, the EPA reduced the size of the clean water regulations manual from six inches to half an inch The EPA didn't make sure that companies were complying with regulations such as requirements to use modern pollution control equipment.



This pattern continued under President George W. Bush. As the contributors of my forthcoming book, "The Presidency of George W. Bush: The First Historical Assessment (Princeton University Press)" have argued, Bush administration officials frequently rejected scientific expertise when making decisions and staffed bureaucratic positions with people who were not sympathetic to the goals of their own organization.”



http://us.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/06/01/zelizer.deregulation.oil/index.html?hpt=T1

The rest of the article bears reading.

I’ve always held Reagan to be one of the worst three or four men to ever hold the office of POTUS. While his acting ability and appearance allowed him to sell his image to many of the voter base, he was ready to sell the nation’s assets to anyone who would plunk down enough cash. Even the national parks were up for sale. Watt would have sold every square inch of land and every living organism in the national park system if he could have gotten by with it.

Like Nixon before him, his campaign strategy called for him to court the southern states, playing to racism, evangelical Christianity, the myth of “states’ rights” and social conservatism. Reagan, and advisors, are largely responsible for the rapid spread of HIV infection in the U.S. because they saw it as disease which infected only homosexuals. Their homophobia combined with the hatred and misinformation spewing from televangelists was instrumental in assuring the rapid spread into the heterosexual populace. The idea that AIDS was divine retribution and punishment dovetailed into the negation of science in favor of religious mythology in public health and education.

Many of the people I’ve fished with lionize Reagan. They firmly believe that he ended the Cold War by outspending the Soviets. We outspent them, but savaged our own economy in doing so. There was no need to wage that economic war; the Soviets were already doomed by the time Reagan took office. These same acquaintances credit Reagan with the return of the Iranian hostages. They are all too willing to overlook the fact that his advisors and cronies negotiated their release to take place only after Carter left office. To keep our troops in captivity even one hour longer than necessary is treason and I firmly hold the belief that Reagan behaved in a treasonous manner with regard to our troops.

When others tell me how “great” he was, I see only a senile man, never qualified or fit for the office, willing to sell the nation, savage the middle class, destroy the social, economic, public health, and other regulatory agencies that made us a modern nation rather than a third world pit like Mexico. I thought he was displaying senility when first elected and there was no doubt when he was re-elected. He deserves much of the blame for the economic mess we are dealing with today. The rest falls to Bush/Cheney.