In a wave of gracious stories on Reagan, reporters still recall that he “tripled the debt.” This is true — if you consider that Reagan was somehow the dictator of the federal budget. He could have refused to sign spending bills, and let the government shut down for months, but that’s hardly a palatable scenario. Reagan did seek to trim spending, even advocating a line-item veto. Meanwhile, Democrats in the House piled on the spending throughout his reign, and the media seemed to treat every minute reduction in growth as a “draconian cut.” So it would be additionally gracious of the media to acknowledge reality — that they are also responsible for tripling the national debt in the 1980s, as are the Democrats.