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Five myths about Ronald Reagan’s legacy: The Washington Post has a good article about the reality of Reagan’s presidency, as opposed to the myth.

I have nothing against Reagan, in particular, but I do find the conservative cult of worship around him amusing.  His legacy is has become more revered than the reality of his term in office.

1. Reagan was one of our most popular presidents.
Reagan’s average approval rating during the eight years that he was in office was nothing spectacular – 52.8 percent […] In 1982, as the national unemployment rate spiked above 10 percent, Reagan’s approval rating fell to 35 percent. At the height of the Iran-Contra scandal, nearly one-third of Americans wanted him to resign. […]

2. Reagan was a tax-cutter.
Ultimately, Reagan signed measures that increased federal taxes every year of his two-term presidency except the first and the last.  […]

4. Reagan shrank the federal government.
[Reagan increased] the federal government’s size by every possible measure during his eight years in office. Federal spending grew by an average of 2.5 percent a year, adjusted for inflation, while Reagan was president. The national debt exploded, increasing from about $700 billion to nearly $3 trillion. […]

5. Reagan was a conservative culture warrior.
Although he published a book in 1983 about his staunch opposition to abortion (overlooking the fact that he had legalized abortion in California as governor in the late 1960s), he never sought a constitutional ban on abortion.

Even The National Review, that bastion of conservatism, calls out the legacy in an article that’s ultimately positive, but starts off brutally honest:

Ronald Reagan’s legacy is not one of ideological purity. He raised taxes and signed liberal abortion legislation in California. Despite his “evil empire” speech, he was not the preeminent Cold Warrior […]. It was Reagan, not George W. Bush, who set the precedent of a Republican piling up larger federal deficits than do many Democrats.

In their article, the National Review gets at the point that what Reagan was great at doing was making everyone feel good and secure.  He was blunt and to the point, and he was as likable a guy as you could ever find.

This comment, from the Washington Post article, sums it up (no way to permalink, sorry).

Courage. When he was shot on March 30, 1981, President Reagan seemed to spend most of his time reassuring everyone that he was not seriously hurt, although the bullet had stopped only one inch from his heart and the doctors were very concerned about his substantial blood loss. As he was wheeled into the operating room, he noted the long faces of his three top aides—James Baker, Ed Meese, and Michael Deaver—standing in the hall and asked, “Who’s minding the store?” When a distraught Nancy Reagan made her way to him, he lightly said, “Honey, I forgot to duck.”

Both conservative and liberal commentators lauded Reagan. “The president’s imperishable example of grace under pressure,” wrote George Will, “gave the nation a tonic it needed.” “Everybody knows,” wrote James Reston of The New York Times, “that people seldom act in the margin between life and death with such light-hearted valor as they do in the movies. Yet Ronald Reagan did.”

Once, when driving back from Chicago, my arm hurt from resting it on the door sill.  I stopped at a small town in Illinois to get a cheap pillow from a local Wal-mart.  That town was Rock Falls, which was apparently where Reagan grew up.  He was born just south in Tampico.

I couldn’t help but smile.  I mean, who doesn’t like Reagan?  He was like everybody’s favorite grandpa.