The Reagan Legacy

I've read a decent amount of literature about the Reagan Administration, and to be honest I don't know what to think about it. I get extreme anti-Reagan views and messianic Reagan views. During the early eighties I was crapping my pants a lot, so I didn't have time to follow politics too closely. I would like those who were politically conscious during the Reagan years to give their perspectives on the Reagan Administration's tenure, and if you would like, Reagan himself.From what I've read, the main highlights of the Reagan years were:1.Beirut Fiasco (His Fault?)
2.Iran-Contra Scandel (His Fault?)
3.Supply-Side Economics (Good or Bad for economy? Was it in anyway involved in the 90's good economy as some conservatives claim?)
4.Star Wars Program (A Failure?)
5.Cold War (How much was he involved in the Soviet's demise?)I've also read that Reagan didn't know the specifics of a lot of his policies, would make up statistics during press conferences, have trouble answering questions during press conferences, and adamantly believed in astrology, which he based his schedule around. He wasn't too enivironmentally friendly either, from what I read.Based on this, I don't think I would of been Pro-Reagan, but I'm also a conservatively moderate liberal.

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As to ending the Cold War, Reagan does deserve some credit. He, or his advisors, saw the monetary advantage that we had over the Soviets. The Cold War was as much about the arms race as it was about ideology. By ramping up our defense spending we forced the Soviets to try and keep up. When their economy collapsed so did the government. Just as an aside, I am also a big Gorbachev fan. I think he saw the writing on the wall and laid the ground work for an easy transition between communism and capitalism/democracy.

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This is how the argument goes, but I don't think it was ever backed up by any evidence. The Soviet's military budget stayed more or less the same throughout the 80's, and Gorbachev even said that the Soviet's weren't going to keep up with the the US's rampant military spending because it was wasteful. They may of allocated some money towards tweaking their missiles to bypass SDI, which didn't work anyway, but they didn't increase their spending. I think the Soviets knew that even though they were lagging behind the Americans military-wise, they had more than enough missils to destroy America, if they were ever forced to use them.I think the real reason the Soviet Union collapsed was because of their command economy and ecomomic turmoil is caused amongst its citizens, along with glasnost and perestroika. The people wanted change. This is not to say that their huge military spending wasn't involved in the economic demise, but this was going on for around 40 years by the time Reagan took office and the spending didn't increase substantially during the Reagan years.There's a good article I read on this a while back and I will dig it up and post it so you can get the info from the primaray source.

Here's the link to the article I was referring to when I spoke about Reagan's impact on the fall of the Soviet Union, for those interested.Reagan and the Russians - 94.02Should Reagan be given credit because he facilitated the fall of the Soviet Union without war breaking out? And if so, what did he specifically do?