When was reagan a bad person?

the most notable problem was the Iran-Contra affair.

he also did much to widen the gap between the rich and poor.

Reagan was probably the second worst president we ever had. Dubya was the worst. But without reagan, dubya would have never happened. Reagans economic policies are a direct result of the economic melt down we are in now. He was the one who started the deregualtion of banks and big business, and this led to the greed and coruption that caused the worst economic turn since the great depression. And as russmon said, his policies led to a huge gap between the rich and poor.

Reagan pushed for the Comprehensive Forfeiture Act, which is probably the single greatest travesty undermining justice in the US.

This act allows law enforcement to seize property in any way merely suspected to be related to a drug crime. Countless innocent people have lost their homes, businesses, cars, boats, etc. to aggressive enforcement of this act when third parties whom they have no knowledge of nor any permission given, commit even the most trivial of drug crimes on their property. It’s gotten so bad in some areas, that you can no longer tell the difference between the authorities and organized crime.

For this act alone, Reagan would earn the title of “worst president in US history”. By the way, none of the subsequent presidents have pushed to repeal it, so they are complicit.

There is not much I can add to what jimahl, russmon and toadaly have stated… except that he named names during the McCarthy era and testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee. What a “swell” guy. Almost forgot…his “nazi-like” strong arm response to the park protest at Berkeley when he was governor of california.

Reagan is a polarizing politician. Loved by the right and hated by the left.

There is speculation that while running for president Reagan’ campaign already was negotiating with Iran convincing them to continue holding US hostages until after the election so that President Carter would not get credit for freeing them.

While there is no strong evidence for the charge above it is widely accepted that he illegally sold arms to Iran as part of the deal to secure release of US hostages and he as much as admitted this was the case.

The Reagan administration used the funds from the illegal arms sale to Iran to fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. To raise more money for the Contras the CIA assisted the rebels in smuggling cocaine in the United States. Considering that we were supposedly fighting a “war on drugs” our own government participating in the illegal drug trade should have been embarassing.

However, to most people Ronald Reagan was such a likable sort of fellow and as old as he was it added a lot of credibility to his claims that he did not remember taking part in any of the government’s dirty work during his presidency so he finished his presidency largely untarnished by all the corruption that occurred under his watch.

Reagan cut the top tax bracket from 70% to 28% so he was very popular with the rich and well connected. He also increased the debt more than all the presidents before him combined. He ended the cold war by basically making it so expensive that the Soviets went broke trying to keep up though he shouldn’t get all the credit for this since the Soviets already lagged well behind us financially before Reagan got into office.