Here you go stacilu:
Reflecting On Reagan's Life and Accomplishments
By Andrew Coffin
Santa Barbara News Press, February 6, 2001
On the occasion of Ronald Reagan's 90th birthday, the nation might do well to reflect on his life and accomplishments. After all, Reagan has, in recent years, achieved a lionized status -- particularly among conservatives.
But Reagan's admirers are not limited to the far-right faithful. The former president fares extremely well among the American public, achieving a 78 percent overall approval rating in a recent Gallup poll. Perhaps more significantly, Reagan is also steadily gaining respect among academics and historians, the same classes who scoffed at his economic and Cold War policies in the 1980s.
Last year two lists ranking the presidents, one compiled by C-SPAN, the other by The Wall Street Journal, placed Reagan near the top of the presidential heap, at 11th and 8th respectively. This puts Reagan in the "near great" category on the Journal's list.
Both of these rankings mark a major shift from Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s widely known 1996 ranking of the presidents, which placed Reagan in 25th place.
In contrast, Bill Clinton fell right in the middle on both of the lists, ranked at 21 by C-SPAN's historians, and at 24 by the Journal's panel, which placed Clinton in the "average" category. He has the lowest ranking of any two-term president aside from Ulysses Grant.
What accounts for this disparity? Both are two-term presidents of the modern era, but why does one find Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt as his peers, while the other takes his place with Martin Van Buren and Chester Arthur?
There are fundamental differences between Clinton and Reagan that make the latter one of this nation's greatest leaders, and the other doomed to be remembered in a much different light.
These differences run much deeper than divergent political philosophies. Although perhaps too commonplace a refrain in a post-Lewinsky world to be said with much effect, the greatness of a president is a question of character, not politics.
Clinton's character is well known; no good is done by yet again slogging through the scandals and failures of his eight years in office. It is far better to focus on the positive example, to look at the characteristics that made a great leader great. Three stand out.
Reagan's presidency -- and Reagan's life -- is characterized by principle. Without exception, for Reagan, politics fell second to principle. Reagan wasn't naive -- he knew that he was elected to a political office and knew how to win over enemies and strengthen the resolve of friends. But he knew too that only principles are enduring, as political questions fade into obscurity and irrelevance.
A commitment to principle characterized, for example, President Reagan's dealings with the Soviet Union. He knew he went to the summit talks with Mikhail Gorbachev not only representing the political interests of a nation, but also the principles on which a nation was founded.
Jack Kemp, a key ally in Reagan's early tax cuts, described Reagan's approach this way: "Most politicians talk about policies and the changing issues of the day. Ronald Reagan talked about principles -- deeply held beliefs ... Policies shift with the breeze of public opinion, but principles are anchors, even in a storm."
A president must be an anchor for the nation; a president without steadfast principles is no anchor, and in the long run does no great service to his country.
President Reagan's life and political career demonstrated too that he was a man of honor. He is the product of Midwestern values, honed in the Depression: honest, hardworking, fair -- and committed to his religious faith.
It is the combination of a strong work ethic (disbelieved by a skeptical press but common knowledge among his friends and associates) with a solid value system that helped place Reagan among the great figures in American history. His faith was not the watered-down, publicly acceptable version of evangelicalism professed by many politicians today, but a true expression of heartfelt belief.
"When our struggle seems hard," said Reagan in 1981, "remember what Eric Liddell, Scotland's Olympic champion runner, said in 'Chariots of Fire.' He said, 'So where does the power come from to see the race to its end? From within. God made me for a purpose, and I will run for his pleasure.' If we trust Him, keep His word, and live for His pleasure, He'll give us the power we need -- power to fight the good fight, to finish the race, and to keep the faith."
The public face of Reagan's principled, honorable life is his undying sense of optimism -- of the three qualities mentioned, perhaps the one for which his was most often mocked. Yet, with what many mistook as naïveté, Reagan was able, in the face of adversity, to communicate a hopefulness and resolve that inspired others.
The way he approached his own life was the same way he approached the life of the nation. When America struggled through a recession in the early '80's, or faced such national tragedies as the Challenger explosion, Reagan was not a leader who merely responded with weak words of sympathy or tear in his eye.
He didn't lack compassion; on the contrary, he was compassionate enough to point the nation to higher ideals, a greater good that transcends immediate hardship.
"My optimism comes not just from my strong faith in God," Reagan once said, "but from my strong and enduring faith in man."
Greatness. It is, without a doubt, a question of character -- it cannot be measured in economic or political currency. Reagan, in giving a charge to the graduating class of the Citadel in 1993, in his own words best encapsulates the thing that separates him from other modern presidents: "The character that takes command in moments of crucial choices has already been determined by a thousand other choices made earlier in the seemingly unimportant moments ... It has been determined by all the day-to-day decisions made when life seemed easy and crises seemed far away -- the decisions that, piece by piece, bit by bit, developed habits of discipline or of laziness; habits of self-sacrifice or self-indulgence; habits of duty and honor and integrity -- or dishonor and shame.
Try to imagine those words coming from the mouth of an "average" president, like Bill Clinton. It's not easy.
(MY own 2 cents on President Reagan):
Revived the economy and spirit of this nation after the Carter :increible years
Rebuilt our military and defense which were crucial to winning the cold war
Stood up to the Soviet Union, but avoided WWIII
His economic policy i.e. TAX CUTS worked!!!
but I did carry it with me every day until I got on the plane to return to England. I didn't mail the letter because I didn't see, in the end, how my going in the army and maybe going to Vietnam would achieve anything except a feeling that I had punished myself and gotten what I deserved. So I came back to England to try to make something of the second year of my Rhodes scholarship. 
