"He was never talking about doing away with Medicaid, Medicare, or abolishing HUD," he said. "It had more to do with trimming the federal budget."  Upon taking office, Reagan faced a severe recession and double-digit inflation. Gas station lines stretched for miles. Americans simply lost hope in their economic future, historians say.  The former governor of California used his experiences in politics and his career in Hollywood -- first as an actor and later as president of the Screen Actors Guild -- to help change the American way of life.  But for all the praise by current conservatives for the economic turnaround during his presidency, historians also note that many conservatives of his day weren't exactly big fans of all of his policies, including his negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev over nuclear arms. At the time, many within his own party felt reaching out to the Soviets was a sign of willingness to negotiate with an evil dictator.  "What made Reagan different from many of his fellow conservatives -- and different, too, from liberals who looked upon the Cold War as an eternal condition -- was that he really wanted to negotiate and thought he had learned the art of doing so by bargaining with movie producers when he was president of the Screen Actors Guild," Lou Cannon, author of several books on Reagan, wrote in a commentary for AOL News.  Journalist Will Bunch, author of the book "Tear Down This Myth," pointed out in an interview with National Public Radio on Thursday that many forget that Reagan was divisive and had "virtually zero support from African-Americans."
As the late President Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday is observed, historians point out that his political successes, not his persona, have been mythologized over the years."Today's Republicans