I see that Reagan has an edge in the "Best Presidents" thread. I thought Bob Herbert of the NYT however puts a focused light on America's "great communicator."
The Andrew here is Andrew Goodman, one of the 3 civil rights activists murdered in 1964 by Klan members in Neshoba County, Mississippi.

"Andrew would not survive very long. On June 21, one day after his arrival, he and fellow activists Michael Schwerner and James Chaney disappeared. Their bodies wouldn’t be found until August. All had been murdered, shot to death by whites enraged at the very idea of people trying to secure the rights of African-Americans.
The murders were among the most notorious in American history. They constituted Neshoba County’s primary claim to fame when Reagan won the Republican Party’s nomination for president in 1980. The case was still a festering sore at that time. Some of the conspirators were still being protected by the local community. And white supremacy was still the order of the day.
That was the atmosphere and that was the place that Reagan chose as the first stop in his general election campaign. The campaign debuted at the Neshoba County Fair in front of a white and, at times, raucous crowd of perhaps 10,000, chanting: “We want Reagan! We want Reagan!”
Reagan was the first presidential candidate ever to appear at the fair, and he knew exactly what he was doing when he told that crowd, “I believe in states’ rights.

”He was opposed to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was the same year that Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney were slaughtered. As president, he actually tried to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He opposed a national holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He tried to get rid of the federal ban on tax exemptions for private schools that practiced racial discrimination. And in 1988, he vetoed a bill to expand the reach of federal civil rights legislation."

Congress overrode the veto. Herbert goes on to say that Reagan was insensitive and mean spirited on issues of importance to blacks.

Reagan is given the credit for ending the cold war, but that in reality was the cumulative impact of US policy for the preceding 30 + years.

Reagan is not the greatest President of the 20th century, not even close IMO.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/op...on&oref=slogin