>>>>I think bush will not been viewed well historically. Which makes me think, who was the last great president? Kennedy?
>>>
>>>Reagan.
>>
>>Why, just because he raised the bet and bankrupted the Soviets? Won in the noble art of armament race by outspending them? I'd beg to differ.
>>
>>Kennedy was respected on both sides. Reagan was not.
>
>So what? It takes two to race. If money was the deciding factor in that, then so be it.

Sounds verrrry unconvincing to me. After all the decades (since 1917) the two systems were competing with each other in all possible ways, trying to prove to each other('s people) that they are better. Both claimed to be ultimate democracies, bastions of freedom, and fullfilment of the wishes of the masses. And then, completely anticlimactically, the tipping point is "screw the ideology and the benefit of the masses, we can throw more money on weaponry than you can, bang - you're done"? I'm disappointed.

> If you mean US vs other countries, then I disagree about Reagan not being respected on both sides. You're right about Kennedy though; he was held in higher regard. The original point was about presidents since Kennedy, and from my perspective, domestically Reagan was the man. He wasn't nearly the foreign policy maven that Clinton was, but there's more to a president than whether he outspent other countries on military force.

OTOH, I've never heard a mocking song dedicated to Kennedy sung in front of half a million people. Check Country Joe & Fish on Woodstock 69, when Reagan was the governor of California.

Is the meaning of "since" including the starting moment or not? I thought the word which would mean the same but exclude the starting point would be "after".