Absolutely, I have to agree with you.

Seriously, as much as I loathe Reagan, and I do believe there was significant pain generated during his administration, it does not even begin to touch what has come about under George W. Bush.

Thanks for the reality check. When I read Matt's piece, it was so contrary to my own impressions that I had to wonder if I was missing something huge. You articulate very clearly just why Bush is so much worse than Reagan--and why Matt is so wrong.

I have trouble compartmentalizing these administrations for the sake of comparison/contrast, while the whole trend of movement conservatism has done so much damage to the notion of serious public service.  The cult of privatization hit its stride in the Reagan-BushXLI era, waged a largely unnecessary war on the Clinton administration, and spewed its cynical guts on the threshold of the 21st century.

Mark,

An excellent, well thought-out, and well put together post. Matt's post may have been designed simply to provoke discussion; if so it might have been better if he had distilled it to read

***********************

Worst. President. Ever.

Discuss.

***********************

rather than peppering it with a few remarks that, if they were thought out at all, weren't supported by anything except pure opinion. I put it down to overblogging.

I agree as well. Wouldn't it be nice to have the old liberal/conservative discourse about our nations issues and coming to some sort of consesus on how to deal with them.

Although I agree that Reagan was a little more flexible on some issues, he had a mostly Democratic Congress to deal with not a lock step  Republican one that has control of both houses. That more than anything kept him in check. What would he have been like with this crowd? Who knows and I'm glad we won't find out.

I never thought we'd see somebody as bad as Reagan again in my lifetime and I never thought we'd invade another country on a false pretext either. I was wrong on both counts.

Mark: I'm with you completely. One of the strangest things about life under Bush has been the fact that I have become nostalgic for Reagan. I cried when Reagan was elected. I disliked more or less everything about his presidency. I wasn't aware that nostalgia for him was so much as a conceptual possibility for me. And yet here I am, going all misty-eyed at the thought that once upon a time, when a conservative President let the budget get too far out of whack, he raised taxes.
 
I'm not sure I can convey how unnerving this is. 

What I find interesting is that we are quoting Harry Reid, who was actually quoting Helen Thomas.  And Helen didn't have the benefit of the last couple of years of Bush-o-rama when she said it like it is.  I wonder if Reid was actually thinking about Thomas' declaration for the past two years, each repugnant month making her case stronger and stronger in his mind?

Neoboho

Well this is amusing...

To me, the best part of the Reagan Administration is that its now been out of office for 17 years.

Aside from that, one nice thing I can say about Reagan is that he got where he did as a result of his own effort, and while he did duck military service, in the face of personal danger, he actually showed guts. 

To me, Reagan was a sort of "everyman"; Bush on the other hand shares none of Reagan's better qualities. As a consequence, where Reagan took some steps to make corrections, Bush tries to pretend that nothing is wrong. 

-Dave Adams-

My objection was that it was a pointless question.  It was manipulative, as one of the above posters commented, designed to snag us into commenting.  This tactic does not gain my respect.  It's shallow.  You were right not to read the comments (including mine!) -- there was virtually nothing to discuss.  TPM Cafe deserves better than what Matt wrote.

Maybe off topic a bit, but with Bush's approval ratings trading in the low 30s, just where is his fanatical base?

Republican moderates, real conservatives, got off this train a year or more back, if not more. These days the suggestion mostly seems to be that Bush's base is the religious right. And all those bible readings in the White House seem to bear this out.

So what happens when the religious right, all those crazed Christian fundies and End-Timers, find out that Bush is no more a Christian than he is a conservative? After all, he hardly ever attends church (in case nobody has noticed).

And worse, Bush got asked a day or so back whether he believed we were living in the End Times (or maybe fulfilling the Book of Daniel or something), and he said that he Hadn't Really Thought About It, or something.

Now I'm no Christian fundie (and that, of course, might be a lie), but I somehow don't think that'll go down too well on Fundie Street. He may almost as well have said he didn't believe in God.

Now if Bush starts losing the religious right, they won't just be saying they'll not vote in November, & stuff like that. No, they'll start calling Bush the Devil Incarnate. These guys don't do half measures. They're either right behind you, or dead agin you.

Could be fun - real popcorn time - when the religious right finally turn on BushCo.

That is an excellent and important point.

Bush is the face of the modern conservative movement and there are others who would hold his position if he was not here - and who will hold his position after he is gone.

But if you switch Bush with Reagan, put Bush in power in 1980 and Reagan in power in 2000 then there would be no difference in how we describe the 40th president or the 43rd president today.

It is a disheartening fact to face, but the difference between Bush and Reagan is not the personal qualities of either but the increased pervasiveness and effectiveness of the conservative movement that supports them. 

Whew!  Back to sanity! 

But do we have to feel better about Reagan in order to be able to dump on Bush2? 

I don't know where it all started, this business of feeling dirty when thinking about our presidents, turning them off when they pop up on TV because they're somehow disturbing, disgusting. But as to which -- Reagan or Bush2 -- was worst?  Well Bush 2 of course, because he is now.  But I remember Central America too well.  Oliver North still creeps me out.  So  Reagan is no less vile though he didn't seem terrified, angry, and volatile as Bush2 does.  But pretty much just as clueless.

"Nightprowlkitty" sums up the earlier discussion very well.  And "Piotr" is right about the degeneration of the GOP,  responsible now for almost three decades of decline.  I'd even give up "Idlex's" popcorn for a decade or so of just chugging along, doing our best, arm-in-arm with the rest of the world.

Holy Hannah on a cartwheel, how quickly people forget!

Reagan was President during the worst of the AIDS epidemic. His indifference and his complete lack of leadership in addressing the bigotry, the panic, the cruelty, inflicted on AIDS sufferers by healthcare institutions, RW religious leaders, and in driving any kind of helpful governmental response, was a towering moral failure. I'm boggled that people have forgotten all that.

In general terms, while the damage Reagan did was not as complete as the damage Bush has done, to my mind it's not so much a comparison as a continuation. Bush continued many of Reagan's egregious policies, and with many of the same people (the Iran-Contra gang, Rumsfeld, Cheney, etc.):

1. It was during Reagan that "spin" became an essential part of political coverage, in that newcasters no longer analyzed policies factually, but focused instead on how people perceived policies. Bush II - hell, the GOP generally - have 'governed' ever since on perceptions, on spin, on red-meat agitprop. And the news media is even more supine about repeating it uncritically than during the Reagan years.

2. Iran-Contra. Abrams, Negroponte, and many other alumni of that squalid foray into US-sponsored terrorism are now employed by Bush II, bringing more torture, terror, and death squads to more victims of US foriegn policy. Iran-Contra was a test case, a template, that Bush II has taken to new and greater depths of depravity.

3. Politicization and theocratization of public policy. From James Watt to Gale Norton, from malign neglect of AIDS patients to malign interference in reproductive and end-of-life issues, Bush II represents another metastasization of what Reagan began.

Bush isn't 'worse than' Reagan, and Reagan wasn't 'better than' Bush. Bush is the end-game of what Reagan started.

Mark: "I have a certain - limited - respect for Reagan, some of it developed after his presidency.

I have no respect for Reagan, limited or whatever, but we have to be pratical and results-oriented.  Presidents ought to be judged by the condition they left the country in at their departure.

We don't even have to wait till '08 to figure out how well Dubya has done in this regard.

Independent Illinois Grassroots: IllinoisDemNet.com

Uh-oh, I'm going to get blasted for that last post.  But think about it, it is always important to know ones enemy.  Bush inspires faith and trust in many people (fewer these days), and these people are not all dishonest dupes and criminals and fools.

 Thank you for busting through the nostalgia with some facts.  I do recall very well the Reagan era.  Reagan was the one who started the "greed is great" movement too.  And, I lived in San Francisco during that time, as AIDS grew from an isolated, strange, undiagnosed malady to a national epidemic, as Reagan refused to even once mention it, let alone work to get the National Institutes of Health the funding needed to figure out what was happening.  I despised Reagan then, and despise him now, plus being totally disgusted with the historical whitewash job that was done on him.

The Republicans picked him as their candidate knowing he was an old man beyond his capabilities, falling into Alzheimers.  He, like Bush, just looked and sounded the way the ignorant voters wanted a president to appear.  My biggest fear now is that somewhere in the country an equally without-a-clue person is in the wings as the next Republican candidate. 

Hoppy in Sacramento

Calling the vote for 'worst president ever' (or in this case, whether Bush II surpasses R. Reagan in badness)...is a difficult task.

I suggest we call it a draw...Certainly, Reagan's dishonesty in blaming Carter's 'massive  deficits and high national debt'   for high unemployment, high interest rates and high inflation, was disingenuous in the extreme.  The cost of energy (oil, again) rose from $2.70 per barrel to over $39.00 per barrel during the decade which encompasses Carter's term...and that was the cause of the high inflation, high interest rates, etc.

Ronnie's duplicity in cutting taxes primarily for the upper-wage and income brackets in the fall of 1981 and then engineering the largest tax increase (to that date) on the common working family in March, 1982, is an example of his sell-out to special interests which began in his mind when he was sponsored by GE. in the 1950's.

Carter left a national debt of around $900-Billions...when Reagan turned it over to Bush I, the national debt had sky-rocketed to over $3.5-TRILLIONS.  And, please keep in mind, that the move to 'privatize' government by contracting everything possible to private contractors (read...big corporations) really grew apace during Ronnie's watch.

As someone already pointed out, the Bush II cabal of crooks is but an expected continuation of the sell-out to corporate America begun under the Reagan presidency...and the results from both regimes is equally bad for America.

I hear what you're saying Casey, and I agree. My thoughts are that after those 12 long years, things got better with Clinton/Gore. Those 8 years were a sanity break. But with George W., his term in office has almost been traumatizing by comparison.. I think it's because so many more people are cognizent of the damage he's doing and have been sharing more of the pain than under Reagan.

Wow…  As I read Mark’s post and subsequent response thread I can’t help but recall the old cliché about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  Is an intellectual discussion about who is worse relevant as this ship we call America seems to be slipping below the waves? 

“We need to make sure we have a way to speak about this awful episode in our political history - not just Bush but the entire edifice of one-party rule - in a way that shows the marked distinctions between this and both a liberal/ progressive vision of society and an actual conservative one.”

But how do we do that when we remain focused on who’s worse, or even singularly just how “bad” Bush is?

“The GOP will win in 2008 if George W. Bush is the focus of the election.  Why?  First and foremost, Bush will be a thing of the past.  Not only that, he will have been in lame duck status for two entire years already.”

Pardon the naiveté of my post and lack of specific examples.