Compare And Contrast Reagan And Matthew Dalek

Historians Philip Jenkins and Matthew Dallek offer differing views on the achievements completed during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. While both historians do not seem to have liked president Ronald Reagan much, they base their suggestions about his presidency’s results on at least partially historically defensible claims. Although I understand why both historians said what they did based on historical facts from Reagan’s presidency, I find myself agreeing with Philip Jenkins’s statement of Ronald Reagan from 2008. Due to events such as the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the anti-government trust statements he made, and his tax reduction plan, I agree with Philip Jenkins that president Reagan was joining a revolution which was already in progress and only gave form and direction to …show more content…
Matthew viewed Reagan’s controversial increase in spending on national security as a problem for our nation which lead to what Matthew views as a mistake by Bush and is now beginning to unravel 20 years later, according to Matthew’s statement, that “at least some of Bush’s biggest failures are traceable to Reagan’s controversial approach to national security, . . . “. Matthew saw the over one trillion dollars spent on defense as something which had a more damaging effect than we realized. Reagan was one of the first to overspend and run up the national deficit, something which Bush and almost all of the other following presidents continued to do. It has led to the United States having more federal debt than any other country in the world. The repercussions of Reagan’s spending are still being felt today, leading to the historically defensible point Dallek has, that as the debt increases, “the 20 year consensus about Reagan’s achievements is slowly beginning to unravel” as we learn the serious effects of the trend Reagan