Reagan Derangement Syndrome, the granddaddy of all leftist mental conditions.

(Daily Kos) — His genial Irish confidence-man’s twinkle served him well in movies, as a pitchman, and finally as a deliverer of political homilies almost every one of which was false in some major particular. The unrepentant public liar that Republicans accused Bill Clinton of being, Reagan had already been. His most famous comments were astonishing in their irrelevance. “I paid for this microphone” helped him get nominated in 1980, even though the dispute was over the agreed rules, not the payments. “Tear down this wall” was as hubristic as if Gorbachev had told Reagan to stop imprisoning so many black people.

Reagan craved credit for winning the Cold War though his major achievement was that he was standing around when the peoples of Eastern Europe, for reasons of their own, chose economic and political change. His overexpenditure on space warfare gadgetry fleeced a generation of American schoolchildren of adequate disbursements. And he did it with a such a grin.

Equally he sought plaudits for preventing where possible, or rolling back where available, significant social, political or economic progress in America. The real thrust of his punitive and parsimonious “smaller government” mantra was to spend less on ordinary people and more on corporate welfare in the form of tax breaks or military spending. His contempt for the American government is the direct ancestor of Timothy McVeigh’s, though Reagan’s damage hit all American urban areas, not just Oklahoma City. But he always looked so friendly.

Via Newsbusters