He’s gone; I’m sorry I voted for him, but admire his commitment to public service; my extreme sympathies to Nancy (and every other family who has to deal with Alzheimer’s like my family did); and sure, he was likable and funny and a good story teller and all, but get a grip people, separate the person from the president and look at what that president did.
« David Corn summed it all up for us » way back in ‘98:
• The firing of the air traffic controllers
• Winnable nuclear war
• Recallable nuclear missiles
• Trees that cause pollution
• Elliott Abrams lying to Congress
• Ketchup as a vegetable
• Colluding with Guatemalan thugs
• Pardons for F.B.I. lawbreakers
• Voodoo economics
• Budget deficits
• Toasts to Ferdinand Marcos
• Public housing cutbacks
• Redbaiting the nuclear freeze movement
• James Watt
• Getting cozy with Argentine fascist generals
• Tax credits for segregated schools
• Disinformation campaigns
• ‘Homeless by choice’
• Manuel Noriega
• Falling wages
• The HUD scandal
• Air raids on Libya
• ‘Constructive engagement’ with apartheid South Africa
• United States Information Agency blacklists of liberal speakers
• Attacks on OSHA and workplace safety
• The invasion of Grenada
• Assassination manuals
• Nancy’s astrologer
• Drug tests
• Lie detector tests
• Fawn Hall
• Female appointees (8 percent)
• Mining harbors
• The S&L scandal
• 239 dead U.S. troops in Beirut
• Al Haig “in control’
• Silence on AIDS
• Food-stamp reductions
• Debategate
• White House shredding
• Jonas Savimbi
• Tax cuts for the rich
• ‘Mistakes were made.’
• Michael Deaver’s conviction for influence peddling
• Lyn Nofziger’s conviction for influence peddling
• Caspar Weinberger’s five-count indictment
• Ed Meese (‘You don’t have many suspects who are innocent of a crime’)
• Donald Regan (women don’t ‘understand throw-weights’)
• Education cuts
• Massacres in El Salvador.
• ‘The bombing begins in five minutes’
• $640 Pentagon toilet seats
• African-American judicial appointees (1.9 percent)
• Reader’s Digest
• C.I.A.-sponsored car-bombing in Lebanon (more than eighty civilians killed)
• 200 officials accused of wrongdoing
• William Casey
• Iran/contra.
• ‘Facts are stupid things’
• Three-by-five cards
• The MX missile
• Bitburg
• S.D.I.
• Robert Bork
• Naps
• Teflon