Who was the better president: Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan?

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Reagan had Iran Contra and started Fracking, Teddy Kennedy should of been Prez had he beaten Carter

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

What about Iran Contra he sold weapons to our enemies in this era he would have been impeached

I hate Ronald Reagan so much it's unreal.

Reagan is obviously the more libertarian of these two presidents

Even when accounting for inflation, Reagan grew the debt by more in terms of raw dollars than FDR did. Oh, and he was only in office for ~2/3rds the amount of time. FDR had a multiple-front war to fight and a depression to dig us out of. What's Ronnie's excuse for the big price tag?

The debt grew by 1048% under FDR vs  186% under Reagan

https://www.thebalance.com/us-debt-by-president-by-dollar-and-percent-3306296

Ronnie also had to rebuild our military after the disastrous post Vietnam cuts and the one sided nature of post Vietnam detente.

I said in raw dollars. FDR grew the debt by $236 billion, equivalent to $1.08 trillion in 1980 dollars. Reagan grew it by $1.86 trillion-- almost $800 billion more than Roosevelt. Focusing on the percentage-of-debt figure is unfair because Roosevelt's spending at the time was without precedent. But that makes sense given the circumstances he found himself in. Again: What is Reagan's excuse?

Uh Reagan also had a major economic crises to deal with even if it wasn’t as big as FDR’s and his policies did get us out of that mess and started arguably the best 15 year economic period in our history .

Also like I said Reagan also had to deal with the fact that post Vietnam detente had left our military weaker and allowed the communists to make un checked gaisn in nearly every region of the planet . Most of the Reagan’s deficits were from fixing that mess as well

I don't think Carter left the military in such bad shape. Of course some capabilities were lost in the 1970s because they were no longer needed after the Vietnam War ended.

I know that Reagan's massive increases in defense spening are often credited for bringing down the USSR, but that's pretty much a myth in my opinion. The USSR collapsed for domestic reasons primarily and the West just played a moderate role (the biggest issue here being the lack of economic cooperation for the Soviets).

Reagan increased the deficit so much because he cut taxes too much while increasing defense spending. While it had an economic impact, the boom of the Clinton years and even during and after Obama's second term lasted longer. To his credit, Bush senior realized he needed to agree to tax increases in 1990, laying the groundwork for the successful Clinton years.

I do think the west did play a huge part in winning the cold war as the cold war did put pressure on the Soviets and forced them to spend a lot of money their economic system couldn't handle. The problem with post-Vietnam Detente is that we kinda let the Communists make gains in every region of the world without much pushback .

Reagan when he became President implemented a policy which not only ended detente but brought back a policy that we more or less hadnt done since the 1950s which is instead of just defending the noncommunist world from the communists, we actively tried to roll back communism where it existed. Doing so forced the Soviets to spend money to actually defend their territory and that exposed problems in their economic system as well