Saint Reagan? Read the truth If the beatification of Reagan makes you sick, try alternet.org. And I was sent heaving by today's NYT peons including the essay by Gorbachev. Remember, De Toqueville was among the first to point out how this then new democracy of ours had a penchant for mediocre leadership given its disdain of the intellect and image as a society of equals. While De Togueville's analysis smacks of elitism, he has certainly been proven correct by Reagan and Bush II. 66 (Unflattering) Things About Ronald Reagan By David Corn, The Nation June 6, 2004 Editor's Note: This list of "66 Things to Think about When Flying in to Reagan National Airport" appeared in the Nation on March 2, 1998 after the renaming of Washington National Airport after Ronald Reagan. As Corn says, "the piece remains relevant today – particularly as a cheat sheet for those who dare to point out the Reagan presidency was not all that glorious and was more nightmare in America than morning in America." 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. Reagan Redux By David Swanson, AlterNet June 6, 2004 Reagan is the source of a number of trends in American politics. Through the late 1970s, wages and working conditions were improving for ordinary Americans. From the day Reagan fired the air traffic controllers through eight years of his tax cutting and military spending, it became clear that a divide would be opened up between the rich and the rest of us, that public education and care for our young, old, and ill would be slashed in the name of militarism, and that – in short and anachronistically – Reagan would be the most radical approach toward a George W. Bush presidency prior to George W. Bush. Reagan is also the source of many of the relationships in Iran and Iraq that have troubled the United States since. Reagan's Politics of Passion, by John Nichols Kucinich Takes Roads Less Traveled in Bid, by Evelyn Nieves Reagan Legacy Looming Large Over Campaign, by Adam Nagourney Editorial: What Reagan taught us