Yesterday was Ronald Reagan's...

...100th birthday. I think the smartest thing I ever heard said about him was that he wasn't as bad a president as Democrats thought, but neither was he as good as Republicans claimed.

Today, Jonathan Chait writes what I've long suspected about the Gipper:

The main accomplishment which he's credited, winning the Cold War, is one in which his policies contributed a very small amount. The most important cause of the fall of the Soviet Union by far was its failed, unsustainable political and economic system, which would have eventually collapsed regardless of American policy. 

I'd go him one better. To me, one of the great questions of the 20th Century is, how in the heck did the Soviet Union last for 70 years?