#144 - Legacy

We can't pretend otherwise: if we had the Internet twenty years ago, we would have been working on 525 Reasons to Dump Reagan. It would have been in vain, but we would have done it anyway, and it would have looked something like this:

#517 - Safety, Schmafety: He Just Fired 11,000 Striking Air Traffic Controllers

#492 - He Fights Communism by Supporting Islamic Extremists in Afghanistan and Dictators Like Saddam Hussein

#431 - Savings & Loan Deregulation: This is Going to Bite Us in the Ass

#389 - The War on Drugs: Just Say No to Treatment Funding

#328 - The Federal Education Budget Has Been Slashed, but We Can Still Enroll in the School of Hard Knocks

#262 - Out of the Hospital and into Homelessness: Cutting Funding for the Mentally Ill

#153 - One Word: Reaganomics

If we carried on into his next term (possibly renaming the site 525 Reasons to Regret Reagan) we could have added:

#521 - Inattention to AIDS

#436 - Dismantling the Fairness Doctrine

#358 - After Five Years He Finally Gets Around to Dealing with Apartheid

#391 - "Star Wars" Missile Defense: Expensive and Ineffective

#270 - Ideology on the Bench: His Court Appointees Scare the Hell Out Us

And, of course,

#145 - The Iran-Contra Affair: Implausible Deniability

We understand respect for the dead and have sympathy for those who lost a loved one, but we also respect history, and we don't understand the amnesia and overblown mythologizing that gripped so many media outlets earlier this week. Assessments of Reagan's legacy are finally starting to focus on his actions and policies rather than subjective praise his social skills, and naturally comparisons between Reagan and George W. Bush abound.

Reagan's mantle is likely to be publically draped on Dubya's shoulders at the Republican National Convention in September. It doesn't fit perfectly - after all, Reagan did get a majority of the popular vote, and he tended to kept his military incursions quick and theatrical - but it fits well enough.