By John Mattingly
Not long ago, I was dining out with a friendly group of Republicans who went on and on about the glories of the Reagan years. It’s difficult to stay quiet on this topic if you actually lived in the Reagan years and paid attention. But, before I could give the discussion a booster shot of reality, before getting to the Reagan-guided deregulation of financial systems that laid the foundation for a greed-and-bubble economy, or the Iran Contra Affair in which Reagan “knew in his heart” that he did the right thing even though it was a felony, or before I could get to the bulging taxes and deficits and expansive militarism of Reagan’s actual term in office, a song came over the radio in the cafe …
