Although I hold my colleagues at the Standard-Time in high regard, I was disappointed to read their editorial, “Today, Reagan’s words ring hollow.”  The late President Ronald Reagan deserves much better.

What apparently drew the ire of the Standard-Times were these words, which President Reagan said 27 years ago,
"In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price."

Of course President Reagan was neither arguing that government should end its all-important oversight role, nor advocating an elimination of taxes.  But Reagan did understand that government had gotten too large and that it was drowning the American economy with excessive taxes and regulations.  Reagan postulated that unshackling the American people would allow the economy and the country to flourish. 

History has validated his wisdom. 

The Standard-Times listed a litany of disasters supposedly caused by Reagan’s policies, ranging from the Savings and Loan crisis, to the Enron collapse to the recent Bear Stearns bailout.  

A more balanced view of the S&L crisis is available on the FDIC website which catalogs a series of events that began in 1966 and ended in 1989.  By the year Reagan took office, 3300 out of 3800 S&Ls lost money, largely as a result of regulatory changes enacted before he took office and astronomically high interest rates under President Jimmy Carter. 

While the Standard-Times holds his predecessors innocent in the S&L crisis, they blame Reagan for the Enron default, which occurred 12 years after he left office.  Even the Bear-Stearns collapse, which happened nearly 20 years after he left office, is apparently Reagan’s fault.

The same editorial pronounced with distain that under Reagan, “The wealthiest Americans saw their tax rates slashed from above 70 percent to a little above 30 percent, and middle-class families got stuck with the bill.”   In the eyes of some, not confiscating over two-thirds of an individual’s income is a give-away.

Fortunately, the majority of middle class Americans (or as the Standard-Times referred to them, those “poor slobs”) see past this unabashed class warfare and hold President Reagan in high regard.  Why is this?

Could it be that, under Reagan, every American, regardless of income level, received a tax cut?  Could it be that the Reagan tax cuts ushered in a prolonged and unprecedented peacetime economic expansion, which followed President Jimmy Carter’s train-wreck economy (double-digit inflation, 21% interest rates and 7.4% unemployment)?

Perhaps it is because Americans remember how Reagan restored American prestige in the world after inheriting a weak and demoralized military from Carter.  It only took the thug dictator in Iran one day to realize that there was a new sheriff in town before releasing the hostages. 

Maybe America remembers these Reagan words, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”   While many in the media declared that he was naïve, Reagan prevailed in a cold war victory.  Americans also remember Reagan’s consistently positive and optimistic message, which he used to build a broad-based coalition that transcended the labels of liberal or conservative and Democrat or Republican. 

Ronald Reagan’s legacy speaks for itself:  He won the Cold War and he unleashed the greatest peacetime expansion in the country’s history by reducing taxes and government regulation.  Following Vietnam, he restored America as a respected nation in the world.  Most of all, President Reagan made Americans believe in America once again.

Yet with all of his successes, Ronald Reagan remained a humble man, believing that the credit belonged to the American people who only needed freedom from excessive government to prosper.

More than anything, the Standard-Times attack on President Ronald Reagan reminded of his words to Jimmy Carter in the presidential debate, “Now there you go again.”