How will they be remembered?

[dazzleman]

Reagan was simply one of our nations best Presidents right up there with Lincoln, Washington, Truman, FDR, and Eisenhower. Clinton will be remembered as a good President but I don't think he'll be remembered as one of the greats.

I think that Clinton will probably be remembered as an inconsequential president.  He presided over 8 good years economically and in terms of peace, but he did not really bring most of these conditions about.  And he failed to confront developing problems that would bring an end to the good times soon after he left office.

Presidents are remembered more for their effect on the future than for what conditions were when they were in office.  Things were miserable while Lincoln was president, and yet he is remembered as a great president.  Does anybody know, or care, what the economic indicators were in the 1861-65 period?

That's why Reagan wins out solidly over Clinton.  He delivered a better world as a result of his term in office.  Clinton milked the accomplishments of others, including Reagan and Bush, to bolster his own popularity, and left little for his successors.

[dazzleman]

Reagan will be remembered as the better president, but, I think both were perfect for their respective eras.

The 1980's were a time of war and fear, and Reagan successfully won the Cold War.  It took a strong character to stand up to the Soviets, as Reagan did.

The 1990's were an era of good times.  Jobs boomed, the dotcom industry grew, the economy grew, etc.  Clinton was the Eisenhower of the 1990's; he governed in between two storms.  Eisenhower was in the intermission between the Nazi threat and the Communist threat; Clinton was in between the Communist threat and the Muslim Fundamentalist Threat.

I think you're right about Clinton, but Eisenhower was president during the height of the communist threat.  There really was no in-between period between these two threats, though you could say that in the 1950s, the Soviets had not yet developed into a global superpower, but were more of a regional one, in Europe and Asia.

Clinton in fact was the perfect reflection of the America of the 1990s, in both a good and bad way.  He possessed strong optimism and ingenuity, and the ability to make chicken salad out of chickensh**t.  On the other hand, his self-involvement and refusal to accept any responsibility for his actions also reflected some very alarming trends in our society.

The funny is that during Reagan's term, liberals denied that there even was a communist threat.  So I guess it's progress that even some liberals will now admit that Reagan helped rid us of the Soviet threat.  Maybe they'll be hailing Bush in 20 years.  But as Konrad Adenauer (postwar West German premier) said to a political opponent, who had opposed West German alignment with the west but later admitted that Adenauer had been right about the Soviet threat, "the difference between you and me is that I was right in time."  That's the problem with liberals with respect to Reagan.  He was right in time and liberals were wrong, and the attempt by liberals to rewrite history, casting themselves as Reagan supporters, is proof that they know it.  It's too bad they can't draw the obvious conclusion that they may be wrong today too.

[dazzleman]

In my mind, the Cold War went inot full force during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but you can argue it was during the Korean War.

I would actually say it went into full swing at the time of the Berlin Blockade in 1948.  The Korean War was an escalation of it, and it peaked (for the time) with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

After the scare from the missile crisis, both countries elected other means to pursue the cold war.