Word: reaganized
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...inch below the lush turf of the Reagan prosperity, fault lines are already formed. While the elderly have grown more affluent, one-fifth of America's children live in poverty. While there was a legitimate need to increase defense resources, the Administration tolerated such sloth that blatant waste and scams eventually evoked an anti-Pentagon backlash. While Reagan celebrated deregulation as the key to a more creative economy, lax scrutiny of the savings and loan industry contributed to widespread failures that will cost taxpayers tens of billions. Wall Street's obsession with wasteful takeovers diverted resources away from constructive investment...
Many of these problems did not start with the Reagan Administration. And though the national conceit puts the presidency at the center of our political solar system, no President can shine so brightly that every shadow disappears. Reagan's failure was to deny frequently that the shadows existed. While incumbency rounded out some of his early one-dimensional ideas, Reagan clung tenaciously to his phobias concerning Government intervention and federal taxes. Even Bush has had to acknowledge that Washington must act more vigorously in some areas, but Reagan to the end fought that reality. In one of his several farewell...
Hayek, an economist Reagan admires, preached that the free market conquers all. During the first term, such nostrums were handy tools for trimming some obsolete domestic programs and reducing marginal tax rates. But when Reagan reached those goals, he lacked intellectual material for a second act worthy of the first. Here another of his weaknesses came into play with devastating effect. Throughout his career his detached management style made him depend heavily on his senior advisers. After his 1984 electoral triumph, his fatigued White House staff needed relief. Instead of reorganizing it himself, Reagan allowed his then chief of staff...
...Reagan went into his second term with a lackluster cadre of close advisers determined to "let Reagan be Reagan." The energy level dropped, and so did the level of expertise. Only after the traumas of the Republicans' 1986 loss of the Senate and the Iran-contra scandal upset the chessboard did Reagan put effective knights into play again. But he had lost two precious years in the interim, and with them the initiative in dealing with accumulating problems...
This Friday at noon, Bush inherits the challenges Reagan leaves behind. Eight years ago to the day, as the hostages were leaving Iran, Reagan had the pleasure of lighting the White House Christmas tree a month late; Carter had left the tree dark as a symbolic acknowledgment of the crisis. In the years that followed, Reagan sent a great deal of welcome electricity into the nation's circuitry. Now Bush must figure out how to pay the power bill...