MexicanHotChocolate writes:
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I am personally sick of all the idolatry on behalf of Ronald Reagan.
I am too. The coverage devoted to him last week should once and for all lay to rest the myth of the "liberal media", but of course it won't.
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He spent us into debt to defeat a nation that wasn't really our enemy while schools went into decline.
I agree to a point. Just as he has to share credit for those few things he deserves some measure of credit for, he gets to share the blame here. Congress did its part.
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As far as AIDS is concerned when one is the President of the United States one does not ignore an epidemic for six years.
His is perhaps the most ignominiously bad performance in a medical crisis of any president ever. If there is any question as to what the administration's true feelings were, it was revealed in that one act that Rrhain mentioned earlier: not allowing HIV+ delegates to enter the country for an international conference on the disease. That showed beyond question that the reason there was no funding for research was because the administration felt that gay men were disposable.
One of Reagan's appointees does deserve a great deal of credit for doing what he could: C. Everett Koop. His appointment as surgeon general had been controversial because he was opposed to abortion. He turned out to be one of the best SGs we could have possibly had at that time. He used what he could of his budget to fight AIDS and pushed relentlessly for more funding. He was at least able to get approval for a report on the disease. He used that report to inform the public, in clear, concise and controversially frank terms what HIV and AIDS were, how they were spread and how one could protect oneself. He even went so far as to squeeze enough money from his budget to send a summary version of the report, in brochure format if I remember correctly, to every household in the US.
I don't think anyone could have performed better than Koop did at that time, given the attitude of the administration for which he worked.
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