You have to remember that being a political leader is arguably the hardest job in any country. First, it is incredibly hard to know what the right policies are, since experts almost always disagree. Second, even if you know the perfect policies, it is very hard to get elected to the top job. Third, even if you do that, it is hard to implement these policies due to other people having vested interests, or being stupid and thinking your policies aren't good. Fourth, even if you do all that, you can lose office due to random chance, scandal, or just people not liking you personally.
Before Reagan and Thatcher took power, the US and UK were in a total fucking mess due to terrible central bank policy and excessive socialism in the 70s, and there was a serious threat of the rest of mainland Europe being invaded and conquered by the USSR, the west had little military credibility after Vietnam, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iranian hostage crisis,. There was also serious risk of WWIII, in fact we came pretty close to it one time. Conventional wisdom then was big government, appeasement, and that communism was a viable alternative to capitalism or social democracy. Half the world was allied with the USSR or looking to it as a political model. Within 10 years almost all of this had done a 180 degree flip. The cold war ended, tax and inflation came to reasonable levels, unemployment dropped significantly, economic stability improved significantly, and communism died in almost all countries except N Korea and Cuba. Half a billion people went from slaves to free citizens of relatively free and peaceful societies. Reagan's decision to ramp up the Cold War and attempt to roll back the state - both daring minority positions going strongly against conventional wisdom - played a considerable role in achieving a lot of that.
To say that Reagan "obviously made mistakes" is trivial, since perfection in politics is literally impossible, much more so than in trading or any other field. However, I'd be interested when comparing the USA in 1980 to 1989, did it become a better or worse place? What about the world in general? What other potential presidential candidates at the time would have been able to contribute to the improvements listed above? How many would have done nothing or made things worse?
It is easy to criticize in hindsight, but that makes about as much sense as saying what the ideal trades for 2008 were - it is totally useless since you can't make politics years after the fact any more than you can trade using last year's prices.
