Why all the adulation for Ronald Reagan?

[WI_DEM]

Today is the 25th Anniversary of the Assassination attempt on Reagan and one article on MSN that I read begins, "His presidency reshaped the world..."

I think his reputation is much greater than it deserves to be. Yes he was president when Communism started to crumble and the right wing and others tend to think it was his military spending which did it--what about Mikhail Gorbachev? I think he had a lot to do with it. And if we are going to look at military spending and our cold war policies of containment then don't we have to "thank" all US presidents from Truman onward? Why does St. Ronnie get singled out?

What are some of his other legacies? Oh yeah, he wanted to make Ketchup a vegetable in a school lunch, he wanted to cut social security and Medicare and did cut tons of social programs. He ignored the plight of the homeless and AIDS victims and only seemed to understand AIDS was a problem when his buddy Rock Hudson got the disease. His administration publically proclaimed it wouldn't negotiate with terrorists yet he approved the Iran/Contra arms for hostages deal.

So why is there so much slobbering over Reagan?