On the Left or Right discord server, I said that Bill Clinton was a horrible president which is true, but then he said that Ronald Reagan was a worse president than Bill Clinton. That infuriated me because it is known that Reagan is better than Clinton. According to the CSpan Presidential Rankings, Ronald Reagan has a score of 681 which puts him in 9th place, while Bill Clinton has a score of 594 (in my opinion way too overrated), and that puts him in 19th place. That is a ten-place difference and here is the reason why.
Character- When you think of Bill Clinton what do you think about when it comes to his character. Extremely boring and a sexual harasser. Well, there you go. Reagan is known for his charm and how he connected to everyday citizens. Everyday citizens in America aren’t sexual harassers like Bill Clinton is. You could also say Bill Clinton is the reason that Al Gore lost in 2000 because of his scandals and his relation with Al Gore.
Crime- Reagan started the War on Drugs which has been beneficial towards keep communities drug-free and teaching people that drugs are bad for you. Clinton signed the 1994 Crime Bill which as you know put a lot of African-Americans in prison and distributed billions to special interest groups.
Economy- I can agree on one thing that Clinton did that was good, that was cutting the budget deficit from 7.5% to 4%. I believe he gets too much credit for the economy because Congress was controlled by the Republican Party. He couldn’t regulate markets and that led to problems in the future. Reagan reduced government spending, cut taxes, and saw an economic boom in his Presidency. Yes, I understand what he did with the federal debt and that is an issue, but that’s one issue that Reagan had compared to the others that Clinton had.
Foreign Policy- Clinton didn’t take action with what was happening in Rwanda. He gave China the most favored nation status even though we all know about their human rights violations. That was thinking in the interest of himself we can assume. Reagan had an amazing foreign policy, he ended the Iran Hostage Crisis, ended the Cold War, and had an amazing speech to “TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!” Now, I understand that Reagan had the Iran-Contra Affair which was a major failure in his administration.
NASA- Clinton cut funding towards NASA and this caused NASA to struggle because they didn’t have the money that they needed to succeed. In one of Reagan’s State of the Union addresses he announced the plans that would eventually become the International Space Station, and Reagan gave more funding towards NASA.
By: Ellis Savage
