On Friday night I turned on the TV to find a familiar looking person on Steve Paikin's show The Agenda on TVOntario. It took me a while to figure out it was Michael Dukakis, former governor of Massachusetts.
Dukakis was the Democratic Party's candidate in the 1988 U.S. presidential election, which was won by George Bush, vice-president from 1981 to 1989 and father of George W. Bush (president from 2001 until 2009).
On The Agenda, Dukakis was commenting on the legacy of Ronald Reagan, the U.S. president between 1981 and 1989 who was born 100 years ago, and died in 2004.
There is some debate about whether Reagan was senile during his final days in office, and Paikin asked Dukakis about this.
Dukakis, who is no fan of Reagan, said whenever the state governors met with Reagan, he "was involved in what he was doing. Dukakis said whenver they would meet around 11 in the morning, he "got the sense that at time of day he wasn't focussing."
But Dukakis added, "in general I don't think it's accurate to say he wasn't in control."
After Paikin finished interviewing Dukakis, he moderated a panel discussion that included Craig Shirley, author of Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America.
The other panelists were columnist Theo Caldwell, University of Toronto political science professor Janice Stein and David Frum, who was speech writer for former U.S. President George W. Bush.
The panel discussed Reagan's approach to economic and foreign affairs.
Although Reagan was criticized for cutting taxes and increasing the deficit, Frum said the spending increase was in large part due to health spending. Frum said despite criticisms of private health care in the U.S., when you add up Medicare, Medicaid and veterans' benefits, the American government actually spends more per capita on medical benefits than governments in Canada.
Caldwell and Frum said U.S. government revenues increased significantly, due to the growth of the economy, while Reagan was president, despite the fact that tax rates decreased.
The discussion got out of control at one point when Paikin claimed that Reagan tried to illegally overthrow a democratically elected government in Nicaragua. Frum called Paikin on this point, which Paikin retracted, conceding that when the Sandinistas took power in Nicaragua, it was the result of a rebellion, not an election. Strangely, no one pointed out the fact that the Sandinistas were elected to power in 1984, which was two years before the Iran Contra affair came to light. In 1986, it was revealed that the U.S. government secretly sold weapons to Iran and diverted money to the contra rebels in Nicaragua.
Frum argued it was "not clear" that a U.S. law during the 1980s forbidding the funding of the rebels was constitutional.
In the end, Reagan's support for the Contras was unsuccessful. Daniel Ortega, who led the overthrow of Somoza government in 1979, was re-elected president in 2006. As for Iran, Reagan decided to pay them ransom money to arrange the release of hostages. Reagan may have caused the downfall of the Soviet Union but today we're dealing with the results of his covert support for the Ayatollahs ruling Iran.
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