Pretty bad, here's a few quotes from those who knew him...
"I never knew anything above Cs."
--President Reagan, in a moment of truthfulness, describes his academic record to Barbara Walters, November 27, 1981
"They told stories about how inattentive and inept the President was.... They said he wouldn't come to work--all he wanted to do was to watch movies and television at the residence."
--Jim Cannon (an aide to Howard Baker) reporting what Reagan's underlings told him, Landslide: The Unmaking of the President: 1984-88
"Reagan's only contribution throughout the entire hour and a half was to interrupt somewhere at midpoint to tell us he'd watched a movie the night before, and he gave us the plot from WarGames, the movie. That was his only contribution."
--Lee Hamilton (Representative from Indiana) interviewed by Haynes Johnson, Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years
"This President is treated by both the press and foreign leaders as if he were a child.... It is major news when he honors a political or economic discussion with a germane remark and not an anecdote about his Hollywood days."
--Columnist Richard Cohen
"What planet is he living on?"
--President Mitterand of France poses this question about Reagan to Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau.
"During Mr. Reagan's trip to Europe...members of the traveling press corps watched him doze off so many times--during speeches by French President Francois Mitterrand and Italian President Alessandro Pertini, as well as during a one-on-one audience with the Pope--that they privately christened the trip 'The Big Sleep.'"
--Mark Hertsgaard, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency
"He demonstrated for all to see how far you can go in this life with a smile, a shoeshine and the nerve to put your own spin on the facts."
--David Nyhan, Boston Globe columnist
"an amiable dunce"
--Clark Clifford (former Defense Secretary)
"Poor dear, there's nothing between his ears."
--British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
"...like reinventing the wheel."
--Larry Speakes (Reagan's former press secretary) describing what it was like preparing the President for a press conference, Speaking Out: The Reagan Presidency from Inside the White House
"The task of watering the arid desert between Reagan's ears is a challenging one for his aides."
--Columnist David Broder
"He has the ability to make statements that are so far outside the parameters of logic that they leave you speechless"
--Patti Davis (formerly Patricia Ann Reagan) talking about her father, The Way I See It
"This loathing for government, this eagerness to prove that any program to aid the disadvantaged is nothing but a boondoggle and a money gobbler, leads him to contrive statistics and stories with unmatched vigor."
--Mark Green, Reagan's Reign of Error
"President Reagan doesn't always check the facts before he makes statements, and the press accepts this as kind of amusing."
--former president Jimmy Carter, March 6, 1984
"Ronald Reagan is the first modern President whose contempt for the facts is treated as a charming idiosyncrasy."
--James David Barber, presidential scholar, On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency, Mark Hertsgaard
"His errors glide past unchallenged. At one point...he alleged that almost half the population gets a free meal from the government each day. No one told him he was crazy. The general message of the American press is that, yes, while it is perfectly true that the emperor has no clothes, nudity is actually very acceptable this year."
--Simon Hoggart, in The Observer (London), 1986.
...and not all of them were his bfs...
...were they!
To gauge how bad he was, here is what he did for us...
...except in the minds of some of his stooges.
But with apologies to George W. Bushwhacker, this is what made Reagan the worst president in the history of the United States.
"Reaganomics killed America’s middle class."
 |
| Ronald Reagan (Credit: AP/Doug Mills) |
"THOM HARTMANN, ALTERNET
"History shows how important high taxes on the rich are for creating a strong middle class.
"If you compare a chart showing the historical top income tax rate over the course of the twentieth century with a chart of income inequality in the United States over roughly the same time period, you’ll see that the period with the highest taxes on the rich – the period between the Roosevelt and Reagan administrations – was also the period with the lowest levels of economic inequality.
"You’ll also notice that since marginal tax rates started to plummet during the Reagan years, income inequality has skyrocketed.
"Even more striking, during those same 33 years since Reagan took office and started cutting taxes on the rich, income levels for the top 1 percent have ballooned while income levels for everyone else have stayed pretty much flat.
"Coincidence? I think not.
"Creating a middle class is always a choice, and by embracing Reaganomics and cutting taxes on the rich, we decided back in 1980 not to have a middle class within a generation or two. George H.W. Bush saw this, and correctly called it 'Voodoo Economics.' And we’re still in the era of Reaganomics – as President Obama recently pointed out, Reagan was a successful revolutionary.
"This, of course, is exactly what conservatives always push for..."
Some say that the reason for his attack on America was because he was a crazed, mean old man - for good reason, of course...
"Ronald Reagan's Speech Patterns May Reveal Early Signs Of Alzheimer's Disease."
 |
| Repeating words and substituting "thing" for a more specific term could indicate the slide into dementia. Reuters |
"The findings hail from Arizona State University and are published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. They give credence to a method of disease detection that relies on analyzing speech patterns for irregularities, such as the repetition of certain phrases or forgetting them altogether. Alzheimer’s disease carries no reliable diagnostic tool, as scientists have yet to find a way to unlock the so far impenetrable black box of the brain...
"...In their analysis, Visar Berisha and Julie Liss, professors of speech and hearing science at ASU, compared Reagan’s transcripts to those of President George H.W. Bush. The two men acted as a reliable comparison for analyzing speech because they were around the same age during their presidency and served in the same decade. This proximity was important for Berisha and Liss because people speak differently across various time periods and at different stages in life.
"In parsing both presidents’ many transcripts, they discovered some key differences. Compared to Bush, who has exhibited no signs of dementia, Reagan began relying on crutch words more often toward the end of his presidency, such as using the word “thing” instead of a more specific term. He also repeated himself more often, the researchers found..."
...because he was nuts...
...at least to the more discerning of today's Tea Baggers.
But getting back to our question, the Reagan Administration was possible the most corrupt in history.
But for all his nuttiness, we have to admit that he was really, really dumb...
...and when you combine that with his evil mind, it makes him The Worst President...ever.
********************
Reagan WAS our worst president ever if "worst" means that he governed through fear, theft, lying, and murder.
Typical of today's Conservatives, he proudly boasted of his Conservative credentials as he stripped everything the middle class had achieved - while boiling the poor in the same oil while comitting treason at every turn.
Fear, theft, lying, and murder are the Conservative way and we think it's high time that we...
...criminalize Conservatism.
Joyce, Jnr.
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"Reagan's only contribution throughout the entire hour and a half was to interrupt
somewhere at midpoint to tell us he'd watched a movie the night before, and he
gave us the plot from WarGames, the movie. That was his only contribution."
Lee Hamilton.
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