How would you rank Ronald Reagan's presidency on a scale of 1 to 10?

Well, I don't remember.

9

Reversed American decline, dubbed "inevitable" by the liberal academics of the time, and ignited a "rediscovery" of freedom and other core founding values.

Won the Cold War by replacing the inadequate "containment" strategy with a "rollback" strategy, freeing hundreds of millions of people from communist oppression, reducing the chances of overnight nuclear annihilation, and leaving the USA as the world's sole superpower.

Rebuilt a US military ravaged by the post Vietnam era into the greatest fighting force the world had ever seen.

Saved the American economy from decades of drift into a Keynesian, statist direction with massive tax cuts, reforms (e.g. ending inflationary bracket creep), and deregulation (this freeing up boosted industries from trucking to cable tv), ending Carter-era "malaise" and sparking an historic boom that at times saw 8% GDP growth and such massive job growth that net job gains hit over 1 million in a single month in Sep. 1983, while simultaneously conquering soaring, double digit inflation that had become chronic.

The era's so called establishment "experts", especially leftists, claimed all these things were impossible, insisting that inflation couldn't be conquered during a strong economy and that the Soviet Union, which in fairness had been gaining strength vis a vis the US through the late 70s, was here to stay for a very long time. They were wrong and Reagan was right.

I gave a 9 instead of a 10 because of the tragic 1986 illegal alien amnesty, cutting a deal with Democrats for greater border security that they reneged on. But Reagan is one of the greatest presidents in history and it's telling that even Democrats finally started grudgingly acknowledging this in various ways, with Obama and others sometimes comparing themselves to Reagan or saying the Democrats need their version of Reagan.

I'm a conservative libertarian and registered Republican.

I'm an independent and I would rate Reagan's presidency a 7.

10

trickel down worked great; also Nancy was best first lady ever she kept hm quiet and a hero

10 because he single-handedly knocked down The Berlin Wall with his enormous nutsack~My state doesn't have party registration, but if it did I would register as an Independent...

In a Sep. 28, 1981 speech to the International Chiefs of Police, Reagan claimed that people who commit violent crimes "are not desperate people seeking bread for their families; crime is the way they've chosen to live." [30] This attitude failed to address the stark realities underlying crime, namely the national culture of poverty and discrimination. Violent crime nationwide increased 21% from 1981-1989. [31] The "War on Drugs" wasted billions of dollars and escalated drug-related crime.
Reagan increased the defense budget for an unprecedented six consecutive years. This spending produced an unsustainable bubble in the defense industry that led to decades of restructuring. By the early 1990s the defense industry had too many factories and too many workers to support with its smaller budgets. For example, in the early 1980s there were 50 large defense suppliers to the US government. By 2004 there were five.
Reagan pledged during his 1980 campaign for president to balance the federal budget, but never submitted a balanced budget in his eight years in office. In 1981, the deficit was $79 billion and, in 1986, at the peak of his deficit spending, it stood at $221 billion. The federal debt was $994 billion when he took office in 1981 and grew to $2.9 trillion when his second term ended in 1989. [36] Reagan also added more trade barriers than any other president since Hoover in 1930. US imports that were subject to some form of trade restraint increased from 12% in 1980 to 23% in 1988.
In his two terms in office, Reagan slashed federal aid to schools by more than $1 billion, and he cut the Department of Education budget by 19%. [4] One of Reagan's campaign promises was to abolish the Department of Education, which he considered a "bureaucratic boondoggle." After intermittent attempts to fulfill this promise, he gave up in 1983 due to lack of Congressional support.

Reagan almost completely ignored the growing AIDS epidemic. Although the first case of AIDS was discovered in the early 1980s, Reagan never publicly addressed the epidemic until May 31, 1987 when he spoke at an AIDS conference in Washington, DC. By that time, 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed with the disease and 20,849 had died.
On Aug. 3, 1981, Reagan ordered 12,176 striking air traffic controllers (PATCO) back to their jobs, disregarding the workers' complaints of stress, staff shortages, and outdated equipment. PATCO was one of the few unions that had endorsed Reagan in the 1980 election. Reagan repaid them by giving them only 48 hours to cancel the strike and banning them from federal service for life. The ban was not lifted until 1993 by President Bill Clinton.
Reagan's over-ambitious space-based laser strategic defensive system, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) or "Star Wars," proved to be too technically complex and expensive to complete. [26] From its inception in 1983 to its demise in 1993, the program cost taxpayers $33 billion dollars.
Reagan believed that widespread freeloading plagued welfare and social programs. As Reagan slashed spending in his first term on programs such as food stamps and subsidized housing, the poverty rate climbed from 12% to 15% and unemployment rose from 7% to 11%.