Well, here's what I think Reagan's legacy is. I've always thought he was the last president we had that was bigger than the office. And I think that philosophically, he molded the foundation for what moderate conservatives of both parties pretty much think of government today.

1. Derregulation - Reagan did a lot to deregulate business. Telecom deregulation as did the demonopolizing of the entire industry happened under his watch and was the biggest thing in American business since Teddy Roosevelt busted trusts when he was a Republican president. That had a HUGE personal impact on my career. I went to work for a little company with 700 employees in 1979 and within three years had tripled my started salary and had gotten three promotions. Of course, as NoTill pointed out, inflation was in the double digits so salaries were in large part tied to the inflation rate. I made a ton of money on my first house too from being in one of the hottest real estate markets in the country (Dallas) at the time and in double digit inflation.
2. Fed Policy - Folks don't remember this, but before the Reagan era, the stock markets didn't hold their breath each quarter wondering if the Fed was going to raise interest rates. Using the Fed as a control measure of inflation was part of the reagan monetary policy and its probably impacted our lives economically more than any single thing Reagan or any other president has done since. The rest of 'Reaganomics' or supply side economics has been pretty much proven to be not effective. But this part sure was.
3. Tear Down the Wall - Reagan's stance in the Cold War happened in a perfect storm with a lot of economic shit to bring the USSR down, but it also helped it along. You have to give Reagan credit for his SDI policies for zapping whatever will the Soviets had left.

Those are my top three. Only one, coincidently, would be part of the Republican platform today and that's number three. that's why I think he was bigger than the office. No republican would ever bust up an AT&T sized company these days. No Republican would ever create a governmental lever to shove the economy today.
But if you think about Reagan objectively, how much could he have accomplished without Tip O'neill, the speaker of the House. They were ideologically different as night and day, but they got budgets passed every year, they got tax cuts (and a record number of tax increases) passed that reagan wanted, and all in a Democratically controlled House. Sure there were battles, but they worked it out and got it done. There's no way the current set of dildos would get half that done. Because they're more concerned about ideology than they are about America, plain and simple. Reagan and O'neill wasn't the first example of a president and House Speaker working together from opposite sides of issues, but they are damn sure the last.
One last thing I think Reagan left us. The Fucking Bushes. That's when the bitterness and rancor started escalating in American politics and that's when both sides started openly using governmental processes to achieve political aims. And its when the Republicans started using fear as their number one political platform.

But that's a negative on what I was trying to paint as the positive contributions of Reagan.

BKB