And how about... "He caused the collapse of Soviet Communism which is why we no longer live under the threat of global nuclear annihilation, but hey, who cares about a little thing like that when he committed the terrible crime of *slightly* reducing the mountain of regulation which keep so many good people in tax funded government jobs!" Yeah, Reagan was terrible. Everyone knows we need LESS civil society and MORE state and MORE politically mediated interaction.

The usual formulation -- some important Russians believe it, too -- is that Reagan spent the Soviet Union into the ground. It was already headed that way before he ever got to the White House. In the same way, government regulation was already well started under Carter's conservative administration, allowing us to be victimized by institutions we have even less control over than we had over government. Reagan's smarminess was deemed charm by those who admired him for clinging to lies they preferred to believe, his unapologetic selfishness allowed them to excuse their own, and they could recast his arrogance as charisma.
Forgive the man, of course - likely enough, much of his persona was due to the illness he had no control over. But never forget that his death, as terrible as it was, was still better than the one that many suffered on his account.

Yes true, old as world :)