Overall, an HP. He began the process of radicalizing the Republican Party and made the Religious Right a force in American Politics, it was on his watch that Income Inequality started to become an issue, he began the notion of "Deficits Don't Matter" (except when Democrats are in the Presidency of course), and it seems like ever since 1981, the tax burden has shifted from the Wealthy to the working class and what's left of the Middle Class. His response to the AIDS epidemic was a disgrace, the Reagan Cabinet was more criminal than even Nixon's, he sold Weapons to an enemy state to skirt the Boland Amendment and fund the Contras, and brought the Cold War tensions to dangerous highs in his first term.
Reagan does have a few bright spots though. He worked with Gorbachev in his Second term to wind down the Cold War, and while Reagan didn't single handily win the Cold War, I don't think it would've ended as smoothly as it did if he, Bush Sr., and Gorbachev hadn't done what they did from '85-'91. Reagan also, after the country was rocked by the events of the '60's and '70's, made everyone feel good about America again. Also, the fact that he served two full terms also gave people the perception that the Presidency worked again as for the two decades prior to Reagan, Presidents were either defeated (Ford, Carter), assassinated (JFK), declined to run again (LBJ), or driven out of office due to Scandal (Nixon). Also I will say that despite how misguided and even pig headed his views were, Reagan did seem like a decent human being.
I agree with most of this, though I have a more positive opinion overall. Given my opposition to abortion and some other "pro-family" views I see bringing in the Religious Right as a good thing in some important ways, though a bad thing in a lot of ugly stuff toward gays and identity politics distractions that arose out of the movement. The way various social and cultural politics have increasingly polarized along partisan lines is a harmful development, though I'm not sure how much Reagan had to do with that.
Reagan was at a basic level an idealist, a believer in American exceptionalism and the power of free market economics, which served him well in some areas and led him astray in others.
Growing up with his Presidency and seeing the fall of the Berlin Wall leading up to the end of the Cold War adds for me some significance to his tenure. Reagan talked of an "Evil Empire," while too much ignoring the evils committed by America and her allies. He enlarged the nuclear arsenal at first, but his ultimate goal was for a world without nuclear weapons. He offered to Gorbachev to cooperate in anti-ballistic missile defense technology. I read an account where the question came up whether if the Russians struck first with a nuclear attack would Reagan respond in kind; this author came away with the distinct sense that Reagan would not, and it isn't hard to believe.
His attitude toward immigrants, coming out of that American idealism, was much more positive than the more narrow nationalism put forward by Republicans throughout much of the 90s and today. The free "Shining city on the hill" is a worthy aspiration, even if we need to be cognizant of our limits in order to preserve it.
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