The problem is that the U.S. government is what he calls a "swamp," and has been since Reagan. Both political parties promote neoconservatism and neoliberalism for the benefit of Wall Street bankers. It needs to use the military and foreign policy to control other countries and make sure that they remain dependent on the U.S. and the dollar. Both parties, the government, the military, and even consumers are funded by the same rich, which also own large banks and businesses, including those in pharma, food processing, and media (including social media).
This.
Reagan had a number of admirable personal qualities and policies. But he also squandered many opportunities, especially when he could have resisted the first major amnesty of its kind, the Immigration Reform and Control Act. Every subsequent official or de facto amnesty is either the child or grandchild of the IRCA of 1986.
Fittingly, given the current presence of Biden, some respected historians give high credence to the idea that Reagan was semi-mentally incapacitated with the beginnings of Alzheimer’s in his final two or three years in office. I would say we can assume that Reagan was close to significantly railroaded/manipulated in his last years as President, hence the domestic political failures he unleashed in the field of immigration/half-open borders and the increased spending that contradicted his earlier mantle of being a fiscal conservative.
The later Reagan years are probably a parallel to these present early Biden years - advisors pushing a hitherto more “rightwing” elder politician (even with Biden it is true) to the left or just walking over him as he stands around bewildered.
People often retort that Reagan did not have the benefit of eight years of a Republican-dominated Congress, or even four. Yet in reality, there were plenty of Southern Democrats who could and should have been shamed (or just politely convinced) into vehement opposition to the IRCA, along with the GOP.
Up until the late 1990s or early 2000s, many Democrats were as rightwing or more rightwing than half of the GOP is today, including Northern Democrats. In the 1970s and 1980s, this was even more so.
Jimmy Carter was an aberration because of the beat-up over Watergate and fatigue over Vietnam (funny since Nixon scaled it down after Kennedy and Johnson). The average Democrat voter choosing the moron Carter in 1976/80 was more rightwing than the average Trump voter in 2016/2020.
Trump was amazing in the sense that he managed to achieve policies, with majority GOP support, that Reagan could not achieve with hundreds of Congressional Democrats who actually did not hate America in the 1980s.
People spend too much time focusing on whether Congresses of the past were Democrat or GOP-controlled. Excuses are made for the state of America long-term by pointing out that Democrats essentially owned Congress from the end of the Hoover Administration until Newt Gingrich arrived as Speaker in the mid-1990s. What utter codswallop. America walked in its sleep for decades and should have used decidedly pro-American Congresses to close the border and severely limit immigration. The chief problem with American Exceptionalism is that conservatives are apt to see this Exceptionalism as self-regulating. This is how the GOP lost the border and lost the culture war - complacency.
Barry Goldwater, a better conservative than Reagan at his most conservative (but less personable/charismatic), had massive blindspots as well. Conservatives falsely assumed that America would endure as America without the implementation of what we easily see today as commonsense social policies.
