Talk:Ronald Reagan

Current consensus

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01. There is a consensus to call Ronald Reagan an American politician instead of an American statesman, in the first sentence of the lead section. (RfC December 2016)

02. Obsolete

There is a consensus against adding the proposed text to the Honoring German war dead at Bitburg, Germany section: In fact, some of Waffen-SS soldiers buried at Bitburg had been members of the 2nd SS Panzer Division, nicknamed "Das Reich," which had committed war crimes, although it has been estimated that none of the individual soldiers buried at Bitburg personally participated. (RfC April 2018) Since July 2020, the section no longer appears in the article.

03. There is a consensus to exclude Reagan's successful push for the United States Senate ratification of the Genocide Convention. (RfC July 2018)

04. There is a consensus to include in the Iran-Contra affair section, a very brief mention of the aspect of drug trafficking on the part of some Nicaraguan Contras. (RfC September 2019)

05. There is a consensus to add a subsection about Reagan addressing apartheid and a general consensus on the subsection's wording. (October 2019)

06. Superseded by #10

There is no consensus to include in the lead section, a clause in the sentence on Reagan's first term stating that during the said term, he largely ignored the burgeoning AIDS crisis. (RfC April 2020)

07. There is no consensus to include in the lead section, a sentence, immediately preceding the ones on the Soviet Union, stating Reagan resisting calls for stringent sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa and vetoed a sanctions bill but was overridden by Congress. (RfC April 2020)

08. Disputed

Beginning in July 2019, there was a discussion about the integration of Reagan's remarks in a 1971 audio recording with Richard Nixon in the narrative of the body, but the closure and outcome is disputed. A similar discussion beginning in June 2020 was archived without closure or a clear consensus. Furthermore, there was not enough discussion on specific wordings or placements for a consensus to emerge on those matters. (February 2020, RfC June 2020)

09. There is a consensus that File:Official Portrait of President Reagan 1981.jpg should remain as the lead image. (RfC May 2021)

010. Supersedes #6. There is a consensus to include in the lead section, a clause about Reagan's response to the AIDS epidemic. There is no consensus to include a full sentence there, including Reagan also headed a delayed governmental response to the AIDS epidemic during his tenure. (RfC May 2023)

Lede Image for Ronald Reagan

Which of the following images should serve as the lede?

• 
  A (Current Image)
• 
  B

Emiya1980 (talk) 03:42, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

@Rjensen, Drdpw, Neveselbert, Jaydenwithay, SNUGGUMS, GoodDay, GuardianH, Dimadick, Marginataen, and SPECIFICO: In light of the significant extent of your contributions to the "Ronald Reagan" page (as well as relatively recent evidence of your continued interest in said article), you are invited to participate in a discussion regarding the title of the article. Should you feel so inclined, please share your thoughts below. Emiya1980 (talk) 04:07, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

The current consensus (see above) is for "A".Rja13ww33 (talk) 03:47, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Both A and B have an odd red tone, which others noted here and here. Last year, I uploaded a retouched photograph, File:Ronald Reagan 1981 presidential portrait.jpg, which I believe has a more realistic skin tone. I also believe that the backdrop is supposed to be blue as opposed to green based on this and this. I added the retouch to Reagan article on the other languages and it has held up very well there. --Wow (talk) 03:59, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

I do not have a problem with the current image per se. That being said, I think there is a significant amount of empty space in the left side of the image that could be cropped out to provide a more centered view of the subject. Hence my support for B. Emiya1980 (talk) 04:15, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't see any meaningful difference between the two images. Pretty much the same details and the same coloration. Dimadick (talk) 07:46, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

I prefer A. Why retouch and crop an official portrait? SPECIFICO talk 08:59, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Didn’t retouch original image. Just cropped it. Emiya1980 (talk) 09:08, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Not seeing much difference aside from cropping, but I'd opt for B when it has a closer focus on Ronald's face. SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 11:51, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

I've uploaded a new version File:Official Portrait of President Reagan 1981 NARA (edited).jpg which comes from https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75856593. I cropped it and adjusted the levels. Frecsh (talk) 04:36, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 November 2024

Weasel Word in Ronald Reagan § 1980 election, on the fourth paragraph, it says " Joseph Crespino argues that the visit was designed to reach out to Wallace-inclined voters,[183] and some also saw these actions as an extension of the Southern strategy to garner white support for Republican candidates." Please add a weasel word alert on that word to alert any reader of that article that it is a weasel word M.VIPSANIUS.AGRIPPA (talk) 02:15, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't know how else to put it....as we go on (with RS) to document that some/others disagree with that view.Rja13ww33 (talk) 04:58, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

@M.VIPSANIUS.AGRIPPA I added a tag, which I think is the best way to temporarily resolve this. –CWenger (^ • @) 05:24, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Lead claim

Reagan's policies also contributed to the end of the Cold War and the end of Soviet communism

This appears to be a pseudohistorical and negationist myth that conservatives have maintained for some time now. The first phase of the Cold War came to an end during Reagan's regime, and along with it Soviet communism, but there is no evidence whatsoever Reagan had anything to do with it, and when the Berlin Wall finally came down in 1989, Reagan wasn't even around. The precipitating event for the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Soviet communism was the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, not Reagan.[1] Viriditas (talk) 22:28, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Do you have a concrete "change X to Y" to propose? Drdpw (talk) 22:39, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Isn't that implied by my comment? Viriditas (talk) 23:03, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

No, you just state that you think that the sentence is biased and needs to be changed. Propose a concrete change, for, as you know, this is not a forum for general discussion on the topic. Drdpw (talk) 23:28, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

How odd. I don't see a general discussion. I have proposed that the article is biased, repeatedly, for many, many years. And it is. Viriditas (talk) 23:31, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

What source citation in the article supports the claim that "Reagan's policies also contributed to the end of the Cold War and the end of Soviet communism"? Viriditas (talk) 23:45, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Text describing the role of Reagan's policies in the Cold War is in two subsections, "Escalation of the Cold War" and "Soviet decline and thaw in relations". I agree that this sentence in the lead paragraphs is not accurately supported by, and does not accurately summarize, those subsections. The subsections themselves look to me to be reasonably close to neutral, but this sentence needs to be adjusted to properly summarize them. Do you want to propose a revised wording here in the talk page? Bruce leverett (talk) 00:36, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Just a note, there's more material in the Legacy > Historical reputation section, which is where I think the statement in question comes from originally. Viriditas (talk) 01:23, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Still working on it. I have to review a lot of literature and that will take me several days. Viriditas (talk) 00:46, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

If you can think of a better wording that represents the section, have at it. Viriditas (talk) 00:48, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

In 2008, British historian M. J. Heale summarized that scholars had reached a broad consensus in which "Reagan rehabilitated conservatism, turned the country to the right, practiced a 'pragmatic conservatism' that balanced ideology with the constraints of government, revived faith in the presidency and American self-respect, and contributed to critically ending the Cold War",[389] which ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.[390]

This quote, as it turns out, is not Heale's words as it suggests, but rather that of professor David Henry writing a larger book review of Ronald Reagan and the 1980s: Perceptions, Policies, Legacies (2008), of which he summarizes the epilogue of the book, which was written by Heale. This ignores the wider scope of the same review of a book which Henry suggests in a balanced manner "is neither universally positive nor reflexively skeptical of Reagan’s intellect, political skill, or influence in foreign and domestic affairs"; Henry also notes that Niels Bjerre-Poulsen contributed an essy "on the conservative 'crusade' to install Reagan in the pantheon of the greatest presidents", an effort I've commented about here in the past. While it is of course, accepted academic style to cite a source about another source, particularly when it's one academic in the same field commenting about another, one could also argue that this quote is used in a misleading way, perhaps even cherry picked. Viriditas (talk) 01:44, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Not many totalitarian polities have collapsed overnight as USSR all by themselves--a strong outside push is typically involved. Reagan led the strong outside push. There is a lot of discussion among scholars. see for example Jeffrey W. Knopf, "Did Reagan Win the Cold War?" Strategic Insights, Volume III, Issue 8 (August 2004) online who states: "My own conclusion is that Reagan was neither decisive nor irrelevant. Reagan contributed positively to the end of the Cold War, but his role was just one of several essential factors and his positive contributions were not always the result of taking a hard-line stance." Rjensen (talk) 02:03, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing to the Legacy section; I had forgotten to look there.

The sentence in the lead has at least two obvious problems:

• It cites the article about Reagan in Britannica. We aren't supposed to be citing other encyclopedias; and in the lead section, we aren't supposed to introduce new material that needs to be cited, as everything here is supposed to summarize, and be supported by, the main body of the article.
• The second phrase, "... and the end of Soviet communism", is not supported even by the Britannica article. The quotation from Heale doesn't mention the dissolution of the Soviet Union either, although the text in which we quote Heale also states that the Cold War endied with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Without having handy access to Henry and Cannon and/or Brands, I cannot tell if we are doing WP:SYNTH here. In that sentence in the lead section, I would suggest just removing the last part, "...and the end of Soviet communism". It is actually neutral to say that Reagan's policies contributed to the end of the Cold War, specifically because he signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and generally because, as president of the United States, he couldn't help but contribute to whatever was happening at the time in the Cold War.

The idea that Reagan's policies somehow brought about the dissolution of the Soviet Union several years after Reagen had been president is something that we have to mention, since it is widely circulated, however little or however much it is supported by serious historians. But the lead paragraphs are not the place to assert controversial ideas like that. Bruce leverett (talk) 04:30, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

A few more comments, because this kind of illustrates the problem:

1. Reagan rehabilitated conservatism. Why was conservatism in need of "rehabilitation"? Is this a reference to Nixon and Watergate? It's an odd idea, that a political philosophy was in need of rehabilitation. I have trouble accepting this. How was conservatism rehabilitated? I ask because I don't know the answer and I suspect it doesn't make sense to our readers either.
2. Turned the country to the right. I don't think there is a rational argument against this, as the facts show that Reagan turned the US rightwards. Anyone who disputes this is living on Earth2.
3. Practiced a 'pragmatic conservatism' that balanced ideology with the constraints of government. This is an assertion that appears questionable and far from neutral.
4. Revived faith in the presidency and American self-respect. See no. 1. This is clearly a reference to the Nixon administration. This may be what conservatives believe, but it sounds like an assertion of faith in conservatism, not a neutral statement.
5. Contributed to critically ending the Cold War. This is an accepted tenet of conservative philosophy. But is it true?

Just wanted to show what I thought was also problematic. Viriditas (talk) 02:05, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

We do source (at several points) this. At one point later in the article, it says "Many proponents, including his Cold War contemporaries,[395][396] believe that his defense policies, economic policies, military policies, and hard-line rhetoric against the Soviet Union and communism, together with his summits with Gorbachev, played a significant part in ending the Cold War.[397][287] Source #397 says exactly that: "A dedicated anti-communist, he reached out to the Soviet Union and helped end the cold war." Source #395 quotes Gorbachev directly saying: "He has already entered history as a man who was instrumental in bringing about the end of the Cold War". We can add more if necessary. In 'Restless Giant...' for example (by: James Patterson, a heavyweight historian whose work is already cited in the article) he acknowledges that there is debate on this point (more on that in a minute) but ultimately says (on p.216): "Many evaluators nonetheless correctly concede Reagan's contributions [to ending the Cold War]." John Lewis Gaddis (maybe the most highly regarded historian of the Cold War) also says Reagan played a important role in the end of the Cold War (in works like 'The United States and the End of the Cold War...')

So there is sourcing to say this.....however, I do acknowledge that there is debate on this in numerous other RS sources. Ergo, acknowledging that, maybe something more appropriate for the LEAD is to say something like ..."[his] policies are also believed to have contributed to the end of the Cold War by [some/many; or just put it like it is put later in the article]..."Rja13ww33 (talk) 05:52, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Everyone wants to claim credit for ending the Cold War. Wikipedia must carefully avoid choosing between many claimants. Bruce leverett (talk) 19:22, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

US bias?

Critics have felt that the administration ignored the human rights violations in the countries they backed, including genocide in Guatemala and mass killings in Chad.

It's strange how outside the US, there's no "critics have felt" fudging and hedging. "Heavily supported by the Reagan administration, local forces wrought catastrophic violence in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Meanwhile, in Guatemala, US-supported military regimes carried out genocide in the name of fighting communism." Tanya Harmer, London School of Economics, author of Allende's Chile and the Inter-American Cold War which won the Latin American Studies Association Luciano Tomassini book award. In support of this claim, Harmer cites historian Stephen G. Rabe, The Killing Zone: The United States Wages Cold War in Latin America. It's so weird how this critical consensus is reduced to "critics have felt" by Reagan devotees. Viriditas (talk) 23:30, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Again, propose a concrete change to the sentence, this is not a forum for general discussion. Drdpw (talk) 23:34, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't see any general discussion. I have proposed that the statement from the article "Critics have felt that the administration ignored the human rights violations in the countries they backed, including genocide in Guatemala and mass killings in Chad" is biased and factually inaccurate, and I've cited two well known, award winning academics that say otherwise. Firstly, this has nothing to do with "critics". Is someone a "critic" if they write "US-supported military regimes carried out genocide in the name of fighting communism"? I don't think so. This reframing of history as that of critics and supporters is highly suspect and indicative of bias in itself. More to the point, it's laughable that a featured article uses language such as "critics have felt that the administration ignored the human rights violations in the countries they backed", a revisionist form of bias if there ever was one. This has nothing to do with what "critics have felt", it has to do with the US supporting regimes which carried out genocide to fight communism. That's it. But for some reason, we can't actually say that. Viriditas (talk) 23:43, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

The sentence needs to be rewritten. This issue has nothing whatsoever to do with what critics felt or whether the US ignored or did not ignore human rights violations. This is a subtle form of misdirection. The issue is that genocide by regimes the Reagan administration supported was carried out; whether they ignored it or not is besides the point. They supported it, they funded it, and in many cases, they apparently trained the people who committed the genocide. This kind of editorial misdirection and bias is overt. Viriditas (talk) 23:50, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Then propose alternate language, and see if it gains consensus. Cullen328 (talk) 00:00, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. The first thing I'm doing is looking at the current sources that allegedly support this wording. Viriditas (talk) 00:06, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Critics have felt that the administration ignored the human rights violations in the countries they backed

This passage is sourced to Geoffrey Wawro, professor of military history, on p. 381 of his book Quicksand (2010). Looking at the page, we find the following: "Reagan largely ignored the human rights violations that had troubled the Carter administration. His "Reagan Doctrine" sought anticommunist guerrillas wherever they cropped up, whether in Angola, Nicaragua or Afghanistan." There is no criticism of Reagan by Wawro in this book or anywhere else for that matter. Yet, a Wikipedia editor describes him as a "critic". This is the problem I'm talking about. I should note in passing that Salem Media Group has chosen Wawro as a featured author over at their Conservative Book Club. Viriditas (talk) 02:25, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm confused. You say Wawro offers "no criticism of Reagan"....while simultaneously providing the quote (on p.381) where Wawro says "Reagan largely ignored the human rights violations that had troubled the Carter administration.". Saying someone "largely ignored the human rights violations" sure sounds like criticism to me.Rja13ww33 (talk) 06:24, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

I will try to keep this brief, but I could easily write 20,000 words on this subject. It's not a criticism, it's a fact based, historical observation based on the Reagan Doctrine. It's not a subject of dispute or controversy. What would be a "criticism" is interpreting the result, such as making a critique arguing that the implications of ignoring human rights abuses to prevent the communists from winning the Cold War lessens the standing of the United States at home and abroad, particularly in upholding its core values to promote democracy and human rights. This kind of critique comes up a lot. By analogy, we saw it widely discussed during the Bush 43 admin in the context of John Yoo, the Torture Memos, and enhanced interrogation methods. The critique in this case, is not that the US under a Republican administration engaged in these acts, those are historical facts. The critique is that such acts led to a weakening of American values at home and abroad and made foreign policy more difficult to achieve, as it "decreased the feasibility of counterterrorism policies, alienated traditional allies, and weakened the influence of American soft power around the globe" (Lal 2023). To conclude, Geoffrey Wawro should be attributed as a military historian who observes or notes that the Reagan administration ignored the human rights violations in the countries they backed. This is not in dispute by anyone. Note, there is no reason to call Wawro a critic here, as there is no critique (By ignoring human rights violations, the Reagan admin did x, y, and z to American a, b, and c.). The underlying problem here, is that calling a military historian a "critic" for simply stating facts about military history is a form of bias. This is because "critic" in the specific context of politics, implies not just the simple definition of "a person who expresses an unfavorable opinion of something", but more importantly, a critic in political discourse is often assumed to be at odds with the subject, such as a "critic" of Ronald Reagan. In conservative discourse, this leads to loyalists treating critics as the opposition. This is very subtle. By calling a military historian a critic here, you are using loaded language that sets up pro-Reagan readers to dismiss his POV because it isn't "loyal" to Reagan. This is an easy way to psychologically dismantle anything you don't like in this biography and promote a hagiography in its place. Viriditas (talk) 08:47, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

I have no issue with getting specific as to who the "critic[s]" are/is. It was probably just the writer's way of rolling a number of people into one term (as there are multiple cites). I doubt there was any POV-pushing intent. After all, if someone was to ID them based on the sources....that would imply just Person X or Y takes issue with Reagan here.....when in fact, it is much more than that. I cannot think of a source that combines everyone under that banner however.Rja13ww33 (talk) 17:48, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Done.[2] Viriditas (talk) 20:29, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

There's two other things here that shed additional light, but I'm not sure how easy it is to add. First, the notion that human rights should be ignored in favor of winning the war with the Soviets appears to greatly predate Reagan according to Wawro, going back at least 20 or more years to the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Second, it needs to be made clear that Reagan, unlike Carter, de-prioritized human rights to play the kind of hardball that was talked about in the Eisenhower admin. This explains some of the mechanics behind the Reagan Doctrine and how it ties into older policies and activities. Wawro has an interesting quote about this, in regards to the Russian influence in Iran under Mosaddegh, before he was overthrown in the 1953 coup: "The Soviets were ruthless operators who needed, as CIA agent Miles Copeland put it, to be 'matched perfidy for perfidy' in a program of 'crypto-diplomacy' that would add steel to America’s 'romanticized' public diplomacy of freedom, democracy and human rights." This draws a line from anti-Soviet US policies in the 1950s directly to Reagan, which appear never to have changed. Viriditas (talk) 22:18, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

These are interesting, but the topic is straying from a biography of Reagan. Bruce leverett (talk) 22:56, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

My overarching point is that so-called human rights violations by the Reagan administration reveal a trans-epochal nature at their root. While we can say the Reagan administration was responsible, and that is indeed true, a closer look reveals that this idea, that human rights are not important or essential but are just a talking point to "sell" soft power, goes further back to the 1950s. I think this reveals something important about the long-range policymaking, indicating that it doesn't exist in a vacuum and it didn't just pop up overnight in 1980 but had been around for many decades, and continued as a guiding policy at some level from administration to administration regardless of who was president. This also reveals an idea that is often glossed over in historical biographies like this one, that there are policy blueprints and decisions being made that don't originate in a specific time or place associated with the subject under discussion but precede it over long periods of time. In this regard, there should be a way to take this into account and reframe it, to show that Reagan was carrying out older policies and guidelines for fighting the Soviets that had been resurrected after Carter was voted out of office. Wawro emphasizes the difference between the two admins as a matter of fact. Viriditas (talk) 23:14, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

That's a point I've made on this talk page quite a few times....but there wasn't much support for putting that in the context of the Cold War. (I heard a lot of stuff about "this page is about Reagan".) And really Carter didn't have completely clean hands in this regard either, despite his rhetoric on human rights. (The realities of the Cold War forced him into things that he probably wasn't too keen on doing.) But really it predates the Cold War too. (After all, in WW II (for example) we partnered with one of the biggest mass murderers in history (as well as the biggest colonial empire ever).)Rja13ww33 (talk) 03:59, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Good points. I will revisit the second part ("Other human rights concerns include the genocide in Guatemala and mass killings in Chad) tomorrow. Viriditas (talk) 09:09, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Introduction in lead

I propose that the first lead paragraph be rewritten to read as follows:

Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was the 40th president of the United States, serving from 1981 to 1989. Prior to his presidency, he was a career actor. A member of the Republican Party, he became an important figure in the American conservative movement. His presidency is known as the Reagan era.

This is consistent with the intro for the bios of previous U.S. presidents. Векочел (talk) 21:31, 29 December 2024 (UTC) Векочел (talk) 21:31, 29 December 2024 (UTC)