Codger
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First off, I am not starting this thread to start any arguements or allow anyone to DIS someone else's choice. What matters in this thread is your own opinion of your favorite and why. Difficult though it may be, please refrain from hurling insults and disparaging remarks about other folks choices. Add your own choice if it is different, or add your positive reasons if you choose the same but for a different reason.
My favorite is Ronald "Ronnie Ray Gun" Reagan. I think he did the whole world a service when his persistance in persuing SDI led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union, and the freeing of many nations. His political constituants viewed him as *"an airhead who has lived a charmed life. Diplomat Clark Clifford has called him an "amiable dunce," and Nicholas von Hoffman said it was "humiliating to think of this unlettered, self-assured bumpkin being our president." Tip O'Neill flat out said in public, "He knows less than any president I've every known." Anthony Lewis of the New York Times claimed he had only a "seven-minute attention span." Author Gail Sheehy declared he was "half asleep" while he was president.
With great courage and moral clarity, and ignoring the advice of many "experts" even in his own administration, Reagan personally mapped out a four-part plan – not just military, but economic, political and psychological – to crush the Soviet Union once and for all. This will be news to most people, many of whom still think the "amiable dunce," the "cowboy actor" with the "million-dollar smile" just happened to be in the right place at the right time, and reaped undeserved credit for winning the Cold War.
Reagan had kept Congress in the dark about SDI and gone directly to the American people – and Congress never forgave him for that. SDI was immediately derided as "Star Wars" by Teddy Kennedy, and the rest of the establishment elite picked up that label, using it to this day to mock the idea of missile defenses.
And yet, it was SDI that broke the back of the Soviet empire. When Reagan and Gorbachev were on the world stage at the Reyjkavik summit, Gorbachev offered to eliminate all nuclear weapons from the earth within 10 years, if only Reagan would give up SDI. When Reagan said no, the media and the world's know-it-alls gasped at this stupid, warmonger cowboy actor who blew the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rid the world of nuclear weapons. "Reyjkavik Summit Ends in Failure" blared headlines the world over.
But Reagan, guided by the courage and moral clarity the rest lacked, knew exactly what he was doing.
Three years later, we turned on our TV sets to watch the evening news and saw something unimaginably wonderful. The Berlin Wall – the hated symbol of totalitarian brutality Reagan had visited more than any other president – came tumbling down. Not only the Berlin Wall, but the entire Soviet Union was tumbling down! Nation after nation was set free from the Evil Empire. The "Other Great Superpower" was imploding.
And who did Time magazine honor as its "Man of the Decade" in 1990? Ronald Reagan? No, it was Mikhail Gorbachev, who just a few years before had been dropping little bombs shaped like toys so as to cripple Afghan children in the Soviet Union's war of aggression against that country.
The real man of the decade was Ronald Wilson Reagan. And yet, even now, Reagan is denied the credit for winning World War III – the Cold War."*
*From a World Net Daily review of a new documentery about Reagan, "In the face of evil".
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42763
My favorite is Ronald "Ronnie Ray Gun" Reagan. I think he did the whole world a service when his persistance in persuing SDI led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union, and the freeing of many nations. His political constituants viewed him as *"an airhead who has lived a charmed life. Diplomat Clark Clifford has called him an "amiable dunce," and Nicholas von Hoffman said it was "humiliating to think of this unlettered, self-assured bumpkin being our president." Tip O'Neill flat out said in public, "He knows less than any president I've every known." Anthony Lewis of the New York Times claimed he had only a "seven-minute attention span." Author Gail Sheehy declared he was "half asleep" while he was president.
With great courage and moral clarity, and ignoring the advice of many "experts" even in his own administration, Reagan personally mapped out a four-part plan – not just military, but economic, political and psychological – to crush the Soviet Union once and for all. This will be news to most people, many of whom still think the "amiable dunce," the "cowboy actor" with the "million-dollar smile" just happened to be in the right place at the right time, and reaped undeserved credit for winning the Cold War.
Reagan had kept Congress in the dark about SDI and gone directly to the American people – and Congress never forgave him for that. SDI was immediately derided as "Star Wars" by Teddy Kennedy, and the rest of the establishment elite picked up that label, using it to this day to mock the idea of missile defenses.
And yet, it was SDI that broke the back of the Soviet empire. When Reagan and Gorbachev were on the world stage at the Reyjkavik summit, Gorbachev offered to eliminate all nuclear weapons from the earth within 10 years, if only Reagan would give up SDI. When Reagan said no, the media and the world's know-it-alls gasped at this stupid, warmonger cowboy actor who blew the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rid the world of nuclear weapons. "Reyjkavik Summit Ends in Failure" blared headlines the world over.
But Reagan, guided by the courage and moral clarity the rest lacked, knew exactly what he was doing.
Three years later, we turned on our TV sets to watch the evening news and saw something unimaginably wonderful. The Berlin Wall – the hated symbol of totalitarian brutality Reagan had visited more than any other president – came tumbling down. Not only the Berlin Wall, but the entire Soviet Union was tumbling down! Nation after nation was set free from the Evil Empire. The "Other Great Superpower" was imploding.
And who did Time magazine honor as its "Man of the Decade" in 1990? Ronald Reagan? No, it was Mikhail Gorbachev, who just a few years before had been dropping little bombs shaped like toys so as to cripple Afghan children in the Soviet Union's war of aggression against that country.
The real man of the decade was Ronald Wilson Reagan. And yet, even now, Reagan is denied the credit for winning World War III – the Cold War."*
*From a World Net Daily review of a new documentery about Reagan, "In the face of evil".
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42763
He won world respect as the leader of the Free World, such as the war with the Soviet Union. He was also a war hero, for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Demands for equal rights for African Americans became the major domestic issue during the Kennedy administration in 1961. 
