You wrote the following:

"As for dismantling the New Deal, Reagan rallied the nation against big government but did little to shrink it, instead ballooning the budget deficit from $74 billion to $155 billion. About this, Buckley said at the close of Reagan's presidency, "most cool observers now realize that the deficit is a problem not curable by any means as easy as voting for one or another presidential candidate." Meanwhile, Buckley praised the tax cuts that helped create those deficits as "a revolution not merely in economic thought but in ethical thought as well."

In fact, the tax cuts actually increased revenues to the federal government during the Reagan years (2.7% +). Please give credit where credit is due in terms of the ballooning budget deficit. The Democrat-held congress increased social spending exponentially during the same timeframe. We spent more federally on education than we did the military, even after Reagan's military ramp-up. Not to mention the other social spending that went down the bureaucratic drain. We still spend more on education and social spending than the military.

That is my only point of contention. Your assessment of Bush 1, is spot on.

p-diddle wrote: "In fact, the tax cuts actually increased revenues to the federal government during the Reagan years (2.7% +)."

Ah, no. For example see Paul Krugman's blog

Actually, federal revenues rose 80 percent in dollar terms from 1980 to 1988. And numbers like that (sometimes they play with the dates) are thrown around by Reagan hagiographers all the time.

But real revenues per capita grew only 19 percent over the same period — better than the likely Bush performance, but still nothing exciting. In fact, it’s less than revenue growth in the period 1972-1980 (24 percent) and much less than the amazing 41 percent gain from 1992 to 2000.

Is it really possible that all the triumphant declarations that the Reagan tax cuts led to a revenue boom — declarations that you see in highly respectable places — are based on nothing but a failure to make the most elementary corrections for inflation and population growth? Yes, it is.