Valid points, and I'm not suggesting any President was completely good or completely bad. They all make good and bad decisions. Carter made some doozies too.
I'm no fan of Regan because of the drugs, lying to Congress, undermining our social safety net, racist policies, AIDS policy, getting into bed with Christian hifundamentalists and Evangelicals (religion being separate from politics was supposed to be a cornerstone of govt here. We were warned by the founders about what would happen), undermining the EPA and terrible policies on protecting wildlife, deregulation of the financial industry which has shackled us predatory capitalism, and the Iran Contras scandal, amongst others.
It was a steep price to pay for the iron curtain to fall a little earlier in my opinion. Because with the economic collapse of the USSR, it was going to anyway.
Regarding the Paris Accords, I realize they're not perfect and are, in fact, problematic in certain regards. In retrospect, I don't know why I mentioned them specifically as I meant we would be ahead in addressing climate change more generally of we had had more environmentally minded leadership then. So I should.habe worded that differently, but I stand by the sentiment.
It makes a difference who your leader is as a population tends to adopt a leader's traits. Maybe it's more correct to say that whatever qualities and characteristics a leader displays tends to draw those same things out of a population. Reagan was a racist and a homophobe so we had a revitalization of racism and violence against LGBT, including state violence with AIDS policy. He was also aggressive and played cowboys on TV so the population became more aggressive and individualistic. W was a dufus so we had a rise in Peter Pan complex in young men and a backlash against education and intelligence. His war mongering and lying led to the slaughter of millions of Iraqis, Americans ready to burn and threatening death to a band exercising their constitutional right to free speech amongst other. You saw a shift in a lot of meanness and then playing dumb and that kind of thing.
We calmed down during the Obama years because he was measured, soft spoken, respectful, cooed at babies, and was really good with children. Those were good years.
Trump, *sigh* . You know. It shouldn't be a shock that we Americans are in a slow recovery from being our worst selves. It doesn't feel like we're going to make it intact most days.
The personality and ideals of who is leader matters. It seems like in America it matters more than in other nations, perhaps because we are so diverse to start off with.
