General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Professor Paul Krugman gives the President an A-; says he's the most consequential since... [View all]NealK
(7,418 posts)January 2008:
"I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not."
He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like, you know, with all the excesses of the 60s and the 70s, and government had grown and grown, but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people just tapped into -- he tapped into what people were already feeling, which was, we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing."
"I think its fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10, 15 years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom."
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/us/politics/21seelye-text.html
I don't see a lot of accountability in terms of how the Government is now operating. Ex. The NSA.