Reagan faced a Democrat dominated Congress, a Russian military on the advance, and Central America gone communist. W has barely addressed, much less reversed that Latin American threat. The vision and leadership that generated SDI, or the sheer chutzpah to call for the fall of the Berlin Wall are unequalled in the Twentieth Century. His leadership vs the UN was far more independent than Bush, who has, in some respects, strengthened that corrupt institution. Reagan rolled back many federal regulations, where in some cases they are worse under W than they were under Bubba. Although I will give you the point about O'Connor, W has refused to pursue his judicial appointments against what should have been an ephemeral opposition, rendering those appointments a possible empty gesture to conservatives, rather than a substantive commitment to judicial change.
1. I'm not comforable calling our illegal alien problem "the Latin American threat," I call it an illegal alien problem.
2. Reagan invaded Grenada, much to his credit (and allowed defenseless members of our armed forces to be murdered in Lebanon, in a bad case of UN cooperation). Bush 43, well you know about what he's been doing militarily, and it's been more of an investment than going to the Berlin wall with a microphone.
3. Bush and Senate Republicans have had their hands significantly and constitutionally tied, in overcomming unprecedented and atrocious Democrat obstruction. (Wish I could remember the FR article about this, but it didn't read like an ephemeral opposition, to me.)
I think Reagan was a critically important and great president, who along with his Republican predecessors and one successor, committed grave error in Supreme Court nomination --though fewer of these mistakes I think than Eisenhower or Bush 41 --a tie with Nixon, if I recall.