Just watched the Boy Boy video on George Bush’s Masterclass, and they made me think about which U.S. President was actually worse.
Reagan. He set the conservative party and the USA on a dark path where Bush and Trump were the inevitable result.
Reagan for the USA and Thatcher for us in the UK. The things they did still have impact to this day.
I would argue Nixon really started that path with his Southern Strategy. Reagan, Bush 2, and Trump were all consequences of Nixon
Agreed, but Reagan popularized the ideas that it is elitist to expect a president to be competent, that complex legislative topics should make sense at the dinner table, and that government is the enemy of freedom. Both Nixon and Reagan were willing to trade in bigotry for political gain, and both were the sort of cynical “me-first” conservatives that taught boomers to mortgage the future. But Reagan had the charisma that Nixon lacked.
Watergate overshadows how Nixon’s Vietnam War inflation started the death of the American middle class. In 1968, a High School graduate with a union job could expect to buy a house and a car with one salary. By 1976, two incomes was the norm for lower income families, and it was enshrined by the time Reagan/Bush Sr. were done.
Great answer
Well said. A product of the past.
