I don't think it was Reagan's intention to prove that deficits don't matter. That some some people (Cheney prominent among them) drew that conclusion from the economic facts of his term can't be blamed on him.
Reagan's record on AIDS would be an example of one of those "social policies I abhor".
I don't see how Gorbachev deserves credit for the fall of the Soviet Union. He introduced glasnost and perestroika in order to preserve it, not dismantle it. I give him a lot of credit for managing its demise so well--I'm still amazed it was such a relatively bloodless affair--but I don't think he ever would've been pushed to do that without Reagan. (Would he even have come to power if the USSR hadn't been in the crisis it was?) In fact, I think Reagan deserves a great deal of credit for recongising Gorbachev as someone we could work with (back in the early years when many old-line anti-communists considered him another slick deceiver) and changing his tack in order to do just that.
Shackled markets aren't especially efficient and the political one strikes me as particularly unfree. There are all kinds of barriers to entry and restrictions on competition, not to mention perverse incentives and lack of transparency.
Re: Legacies
Reagan's record on AIDS would be an example of one of those "social policies I abhor".
I don't see how Gorbachev deserves credit for the fall of the Soviet Union. He introduced glasnost and perestroika in order to preserve it, not dismantle it. I give him a lot of credit for managing its demise so well--I'm still amazed it was such a relatively bloodless affair--but I don't think he ever would've been pushed to do that without Reagan. (Would he even have come to power if the USSR hadn't been in the crisis it was?) In fact, I think Reagan deserves a great deal of credit for recongising Gorbachev as someone we could work with (back in the early years when many old-line anti-communists considered him another slick deceiver) and changing his tack in order to do just that.
Shackled markets aren't especially efficient and the political one strikes me as particularly unfree. There are all kinds of barriers to entry and restrictions on competition, not to mention perverse incentives and lack of transparency.