As Emmitt Smith has been quoted, "a leopard can't change its stripes."
Freepers, take heed to Mr. Lowbridge...he is a wise man. Just ask the Nigerians who tried to scam him! lol
Stockman is correct if you are looking at only the US economy.
He uses the phrase, "notwithstanding Reagan" to include Reagan, but identifies 1989 as the date going forward.
This is the end of the cold war, the end of the bipolar world. There are dis-agreements as to whether we are a unipolar world, or a multipolar world, but definitely the US has no military or economic adversaries. We are the world hegemon.
If you do include Reagan, first there was the Caribbean Basin trade agreement(1984), the FTA with Israel(1985), and the bilateral with Canada, that Bush shifted to trilateral with Mexico, which was modified some by Clinton's parallel agreement. Then CAFTA, Chile, Columbia, Panama, Korea. The Pacific agreement is moving forward.
So you have to look at how the world economy has grown, and recognize that US monetary policy has to include world monetary policy.
Reagan's military interventionism was relatively small compared to what would come after the Soviet collapse. Obama may have shifted somewhat from military to statesmanship, but he ain't walking away from military intervention.