Ronald Reagan, 1911-2004: Goodbye and Good Riddance

"Last year, in a stunning act of cowardice, CBS canceled its much-publicized "docudrama" about Ron and Nancy, The Reagans, caving in to a campaign by the Republican National Committee, right-wing radio hosts, Fox News and conservative Internet sites. The movie was instead shown later to a much smaller audience on the Showtime cable network. . . .
Conservatives also criticized the movie for what it did not include. "Does it show he had the longest and strongest recovery in postwar history?" asked Reagan's White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater.
But Reagan's economic policies were a disaster for working-class Americans. Reagan presided over the worst recession since the 1930s, and economic growth in the 1980s was lower than in the 1970s, despite the stimulus of military Keynesian policies, which created massive federal budget deficits and tripled the federal debt. By the end of the decade, real wages were down and the poverty rate had increased by 20 percent.
The real problem with The Reagans was not that it was too critical of the Reagan presidency, but that it was largely uncritical. According to The New York Times, the movie "paints [Reagan] as an exceptionally gifted politician and a moral man who stuck to his beliefs, often against his advisers' urgings."
Reagan was many things, but "gifted" was not one of them. "Poor dear," remarked British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, his closest international ally, "there's nothing between his ears." As for a "moral man," Reagan's morality included union busting--beginning with his dismissal of striking air traffic controllers in 1981--an unprecedented war on the poor, opposition to civil rights and support for apartheid South Africa. The "moral" Reagan trained and supported terrorists, including the Nicaraguan contras ("the moral equal of our Founding Fathers") who killed over 30,000 people, and Islamic radicals in Afghanistan who later formed the al-Qaeda network.
Reagan was also a liar. In November 1986, he publicly denied that his administration had been illegally selling arms to Iran and using the proceeds to fund the contras. One week later he was forced to retract this statement, but denied that the sale was part of a deal to free U.S. hostages. The following year, Reagan admitted that there had been an arms-for-hostages deal, but denied he knew anything about it."