Did Ronald Reagan do any good during his presidency?

He killed a lot of brown people. By selling them arms after they agreed to not release U.S. citizens they held hostage because to do so would've destroyed his chances at being president (people tend to forget that Reagan really had absolutely no chance until the Iranian hostage crisis seemed to stall right before Carter's eyes for no reason). And then put a lot more in jail for drug offenses, after his government colluded with drug cartels to get the products in the inner cities of the U.S..

And if that weren't enough he preached fiscal responsibility to the working class and poverty stricken, while his administration borrowed $3 trillion to get itself out of a recession. And then shifted tax burdens from the top earners to the bottom earners in the country by lowering the marginal rates for the rich and raising the rate on everyone earning less than $50,000.

For some, shifting blame and responsibility not just in the U.S., but worldwide, away from whites and away from the rich and shifting it entirely to the poor and to brown-skinned people makes him the greatest of U.S. presidents.

When asked that question in Germany in 1982 while in the military by German friends I quoted the exchange rate under Carter & Reagan 1.56 vs 2.5. The German people trusted Reagan. As a vet I respect Reagan.

He took some really good naps.

He did raise taxes several times so that he only tripled the debt, instead of increasing it ten fold.

Edit - Damn, somebody already got in the nap joke. But what is really astonishing is the claim that 1980 was a worse economic mess than 2008. What kind of delusional stupor are these people in???

He deregulated the crap out of the banks, and you saw the result of that back in 2008. He cut taxes, and raised military spending to the point of absurdity., and started the US on the debt spiral that it's now. He taught people that ethics actually get in the way of business. He sent weapons to jihadists in Afhanistan, and made an illegal deal with Iran and sold them weapons, and then used the money to fund the Contras in Nicaragua.

Sure - he did a WHOLE lot of good for America.

Yeah, he did. He brought home the hostages from Iran. Many other things also. Unfortunately, people only seem to want to remember negative things like the C.I.A. selling drugs to buy guns from Iran to support war in South America. No one remembers the across the board tax cuts he passed. Probably because soon as he signed it into law, the congress erased it with a new tax and an increase in the Social Security tax. Or the wage increase that got erased with new state taxes.

Not enough to redeem his sorry butt, but yeah, he did---near the end he became something of a pacifist, and encourage total global nuclear disarmament. I wasn't sure if he had gone completely bonkers or if he had one last moment of clarity in his otherwise black, cold heart. I hope the latter, as all the blood on his hands by funding central American death squads, and all the shame of his impeachable offense in Iran-Contra, and his reckless spending and driving up of the national debt to record levels, as well as his utter contempt for the environment on god's good earth, would require a great deal of penance.

to hold up such a man as a national hero explains quite precisely why America is now in a ditch. Reagan appealed to everything base in the human spirit. All he was, was a small empty man with a jingle and a smile. I'm sure at the end of his life he must have had a sense of this.

He got us out of stagflation, gew the economy, end the Cold War at the expense of poor people, the middle class, government services, and the deficit.

Manufacturing Jobs were destoryed and outsourced under his admistration.

He allowed more corporate mergers to form oligophies with new FTC rules.

Started the trend of wealth inequality and started religious conservatism for 30 years until 2008.

Grew the military budget to extreme proportions.

Eisenhower was a better president than Reagan. Reagan is overrated.

He stood in front of a wall and said tear it down...That's about it

His war on drugs....Failure

Debt reduction....Failure...100% debt increase

Deregulation of the financial sector... failure...led to the 08 crash

Ending the cold war. ..inevitable... The soviet system was heading that way regardless

Inflated the military - good for the military industrial complex.

Shipped all jobs and machinery not elated to the military industrial complex overseas where his buddies could profit from nimble third world fingers - good for third world economies and his buddies......

He was President through a significant economic recovery for the US. He also was instrumental in ending the Cold War.