Chapter 23
A Starring Role for Ronald Reagan
IN THIS CHAPTER
Taking up careers in acting and politics
Becoming president
Establishing a stronger foreign policy
Handling the Iran-Contra scandal
Retiring popular
Ronald Reagan is one of the most beloved presidents in U.S. history. While academics rank him low on the presidential scale, the public adores him and ranks him in the top ten of all presidents. He was able to communicate in a unique way with the U.S. public: He reassured the country and instilled a new patriotism. He truly deserves the title bestowed upon him by the media: “The Great Communicator.”
As president, Reagan restored U.S. pride and prestige in the world. He not only contained communism but also liberated communist countries. Trying to match his increase in U.S. defense spending crippled the Soviet economy and contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the same time, he left office with the largest budget deficit in U.S. history and the cloud of the Iran-Contra scandal hanging over him.
For his foreign policy successes, Reagan deserves to be listed in my top ten of U.S. presidents. Had his economic policies worked, he could have broken into the top five.
President Reagan gave the United States many firsts: He was the oldest president at the time at age 69 to be elected to office (President Donald Trump broke this record; he was 70 years old when elected in 2016), and he was the first president to have been divorced and who had been the president of a labor union.
Reagan’s Early Career
Reagan started his political career in 1947 when he became president of the Screen Actors Guild, a union representing actors and actresses. Reagan was a lifelong Democrat, but, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, he was called to Washington to testify on communist involvement in the film industry. He took a strong anti-communist stance and started moving to the right.
Actress Nancy Davis contacted Reagan because her name appeared by mistake on a list of communist sympathizers in Hollywood. Reagan, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, took care of the problem for Nancy and also fell in love with her. They were married in 1952.
In 1954, Reagan turned to television. He hosted a half-hour television show, General Electric Theater, and traveled around the country giving speeches on behalf of General Electric. In his speeches, Reagan tackled many political issues, such as tax cuts and the superiority of the free enterprise system — wherein the government does not interfere in the economy.
After campaigning and voting for Republicans Eisenhower and Nixon, Reagan officially changed his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican in 1962.
Reagan’s big political break occurred in 1964. The Republican nominee for president, Barry Goldwater, was doing poorly in the polls and having problems raising money. Reagan gave an impassioned speech on Goldwater’s behalf, blasting big government and praising individual initiative. The televised speech raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Goldwater and turned Reagan into a national conservative icon.
Governing California
In 1966, a group of businesspeople asked Reagan to run for governor of California. He accepted and ran a tough campaign, appealing to Republicans and to Democrats who belonged to labor unions. (He used the same technique when he ran for the presidency in 1980.) Reagan beat the incumbent Pat Brown, who had beaten Nixon back in 1962, by almost a million votes.
Reagan’s terms as governor of California foreshadowed his presidency. To combat a budget deficit, Reagan cut spending. He initiated a 10 percent budget cut in all state agencies.
Reagan became known for being tough on protesters, especially the counterculture movement that grew up at many universities in the 1960s. This stance pleased many voters. Reagan easily won reelection in 1970.
During his second term, Reagan’s major accomplishment was welfare reform in California. To combat welfare fraud, Reagan cut more than 300,000 people from the welfare rolls. In 1974, everybody expected Reagan to run for and easily win a third term. But he had his sights set on the White House.
Challenging Ford in 1976
In 1975, Reagan announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. President Ford had been in office for just a year, and he was experiencing many problems (see Chapter 22). The conservative wing of the Republican Party backed Reagan.
Not doing well in the early primaries, Reagan accused Ford of not being conservative enough. This strategy worked, especially in the South and West. In the end, Ford won the nomination by a slim, 57-vote margin.
Winning the presidency in 1980
After losing by a narrow margin in 1976, Reagan ran for the Republican nomination again in 1980. He was the clear frontrunner for the nomination until George H. W. Bush entered the race and won several primaries.
At the Republican convention, Reagan won the nomination and planned to name former president Gerald Ford as his vice president. Ford, however, wanted to have a co-presidency, where he could be involved in decision making. Reagan opted for George H. W. Bush instead. He didn’t want the media or the public to think that he needed help from a former president.
Reagan faced incumbent president Jimmy Carter in the general election. Reagan focused on Carter’s weaknesses and called for a restoration of U.S. power, major rearmament, and, especially, a smaller government with less regulation and a major tax cut.
The Reagan Democrats — white, male, working class voters — paired with support from corporations across the country, contributed to Reagan’s landslide victory. He got 489 electoral votes and 51 percent of the popular vote, and the mandate he was looking for to bring about major changes.
President Ronald Wilson Reagan (1981–1989)
Ronald Reagan, shown in Figure 23-1, entered the White House intending to bring about major changes in economic and social policy. He believed in less government regulation of the economy, and lower taxes for both businesses and individuals. Reagan opposed the welfare state and wanted to cut welfare benefits. He also intended to appoint conservative Supreme Court justices who would help promote his conservative social agenda.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
FIGURE 23-1: Ronald Reagan, 40th president of the United States.
Surviving an assassination attempt
Before Reagan was able to get started on his agenda, an assassin’s bullet almost killed him. Reagan survived the assassination attempt, although his press secretary, James Brady, was crippled for life.
On March 30, 1981, Reagan delivered a speech at a hotel in Washington. He was shot by a crazed assassin, John Hinckley, while waiting outside the hotel. Doctors found that the bullet had hit the president’s left lung and lodged itself just an inch from his heart. On his way to the operating table, Reagan cracked several jokes, which turned him into a hero with most U.S. citizens. Reagan returned to work only 12 days later, having achieved almost mythical status.
After the assassination attempt, Congress felt that it had to go along with Reagan’s policies because the public stood behind him. Who could oppose a president who survived being shot?
Ronald Reagan was the only serving president in U.S. history who was wounded during an assassination attempt and survived.
Stimulating the economy
When Reagan took office in 1981, the economy was in bad shape. By 1982, unemployment had hit 11 percent, the budget deficit had increased, and interest rates were still high. Reagan pushed many reforms through Congress in his first term (1981 to 1985) to help the economy. These reforms included
- Major tax cuts: He introduced tax cuts of up to 30 percent and increases in tax write-offs for U.S. citizens and U.S. businesses with the Economic Recovery Act of 1981. (See the “Supply-side economics” sidebar in this section for more on this theory.)
- Major cutbacks in social spending: Reagan cut spending on programs such as job training, college loans, and medical programs.
- Reductions in regulations for the economy: For example, Reagan pushed to deregulate the savings-and-loan industry, which resulted in the savings-and-loan crises of the late 1980s.
- Reductions in environmental standards: Reagan believed that stringent environmental and pollution standards imposed unnecessary costs on U.S. businesses. So the standards were lowered or eliminated.
- Massive increases in defense spending: Reagan doubled the defense budget to almost $300 billion.
Reagan’s economic programs, though controversial in nature, worked fairly well. By 1983, the economy had recovered, and by 1984, it was booming. Reagan left the most popular welfare programs untouched, actually increasing Social Security and Medicare spending. Reagan’s policies created 20 million new jobs during his eight years in office. Unemployment had sunk to 5.5 percent by 1988, and inflation virtually disappeared. Things looked good in America. However, Reagan’s policies also had negative side effects.
Increasing the national debt
With tax cuts reducing government income, Reagan had to borrow heavily to finance his increase in expenditures. By the time he left office, the national debt had reached a record $3 trillion. The government needed to set aside almost 15 percent of the annual budget just to make the interest payments.
The government was competing with private businesses for loans, so interest rates shot up. This increase encouraged foreigners to buy dollars and put them into U.S. banks to take advantage of the high interest rates. The value of the dollar appreciated, making foreign goods cheaper and U.S. exports more expensive, resulting in a massive trade deficit. The government was forced to intervene: It devalued the dollar, or reduced the value of the dollar in relation to foreign currencies, in 1986 to correct the trade deficit.
Breaking a strike
In August 1981, the union representing air traffic controllers, PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization), went on strike, effectively shutting down the country’s major airports.
The union’s actions were illegal under federal law. But instead of negotiating, as the union leaders expected, Reagan fired all 13,000 air traffic controllers, hired replacements, and disbanded the union. Reagan refused to rehire the controllers even after major labor leaders in the United States asked him to do so. No other union challenged Reagan during the rest of his presidency.
Implementing conservative social policies
Reagan changed U.S. social policies — a promise made during his campaign. The emphasis on civil rights stopped. Reagan attempted to curtail affirmative action and stop court-ordered busing, where white students were bused to inner city schools and black students to affluent suburban schools.
Federal affirmative action, which set aside government contracts for minorities, was stopped in 1981. In addition, Reagan’s administration supported lawsuits challenging the legality of affirmative action.
Packing the Supreme Court
Reagan knew that to be successful he had to have the support of the Supreme Court, so he appointed conservatives to the bench. His first selection was Sandra Day O’Connor, a conservative judge from Arizona and the first woman on the Supreme Court. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate easily.
Reagan then appointed Antonin Scalia, a conservative Catholic who became one of the most conservative members on the court. Reagan elevated William Rehnquist to Chief Justice, and conservatives controlled the Supreme Court. However, to Reagan’s great disappointment, the conservative court did not roll back affirmative action or end the practice of abortion.
Reestablishing U.S. World Domination
Before Reagan took office, U.S. prestige and power had suffered greatly. The Soviet Union used the Carter years to expand and rearm. After Cuba, a second country in Latin America, Nicaragua, went communist and was destabilizing its neighbor, El Salvador. Reagan was especially concerned with growing Soviet power in Latin America. The United States was perceived as weak, while Soviet power was growing.
Influencing events around the globe
Reagan took decisive action on the foreign policy front, especially in the cause of wiping out communism. Some of the more notable events are
- The Reagan Doctrine: This doctrine pledged economic and military aid to any movement fighting communism. Under the doctrine, the United States gave aid to rebels fighting communism in Angola and Nicaragua.
- Central America: The United States cut off support from the socialist government of Nicaragua in 1981. After Nicaragua signed a pact with the Soviet Union, the United States gave support to the anticommunist forces in Nicaragua, known as the Contras. In addition, Reagan started to support the right-wing government in El Salvador, which was fighting a communist uprising sponsored by Nicaragua.
- Grenada: In 1983, Reagan invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada. The island had gone communist after a pro-American government was overthrown. Cuban military advisors were present to help build up the infrastructure of the island. Because Reagan feared another Soviet ally in Latin America, he invaded and liberated the island nation.
- Lebanon: In 1982, Reagan sent marines to Lebanon to protect a new Christian government. A suicide bomber attacked the headquarters of the marines, killing 241 marines. Reagan withdrew the marines in 1984.
- Afghanistan: The United States began supporting the Afghan freedom fighters, or mujahidin, opposing the Soviet Union, supplying them with stinger missiles, which gave the Afghans the ability to shoot down Soviet aircraft and take away Soviet air superiority.
- Libya: In 1986, a Muslim terrorist killed a U.S. soldier in a dance hall in Berlin, Germany. Reagan blamed Libya and its leader Muammar Qaddafi. He initiated an air strike against Libya.
- SDI: In 1983, Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also referred to as “Star Wars,” an antiballistic missile system designed to shoot down incoming nuclear missiles before they hit the United States. In theory, the system would protect the country from nuclear attack, thus restoring U.S. superiority in the nuclear arms race. Billions of dollars were spent on it before President George H. W. Bush abandoned it.
- Massive rearmament: Reagan poured billions of dollars into defense to restore U.S. military might. The Soviet Union tried to match the strength of the U.S. military, but couldn’t. By 1986, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev decided that it was time to end the arms race, and arms control negotiations took place.
Dealing with the Soviets
In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union. He was young and energetic, and he wanted to reform the Soviet Union. He recognized that his country couldn’t keep up with the United States in the arms race and approached Reagan to discuss ending the arms race. The two met in 1985 and 1986 and hit it off on a personal level. Détente, or peaceful coexistence, was reestablished. In the following years, many weapons treaties were negotiated, including:
- The Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty: Gorbachev and Reagan signed this historic treaty in 1987. Both countries agreed to engage in disarmament — the destruction of existing weapons. Intermediate range missiles scattered all over Europe were to be destroyed, with foreign observers acting as witnesses. Close to 2,000 intermediate range missiles were destroyed under the provisions of the treaty. The United States withdrew from the treaty on August 2, 2019, for Russian noncompliance.
- The Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty: This treaty provided for massive cutbacks among conventional forces, such as tanks located throughout Europe. In March 2015, Russia withdrew from the treaty.
The Soviet Union also agreed to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan and abandon the objective of world communism. The collapse of the Soviet Empire had begun.
Dealing with Scandal in His Second Term
In 1984, Reagan ran for reelection. The economy was doing well, and the United States seemed more powerful than ever. At 73, Reagan was the oldest man ever to run for the presidency: His age became an issue, but one he put to rest with a stellar performance in the second debate. Reagan went on to win the largest victory in the history of the country with 49 states and 525 electoral votes. Former vice president Walter Mondale carried only his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia.
Reagan’s policy successes came to an abrupt halt in late 1986, as he spent the remainder of his term dealing with the Iran-Contra scandal.
A story broke in Lebanon in November 1986, revealing that the Reagan administration had been selling weapons to Iran in exchange for freeing U.S. hostages in Lebanon. The exchange was illegal, and it embarrassed the Reagan administration. The profits from the illegal arms sales were then used to fund the Contras in Nicaragua, which was also illegal. Congress had repeatedly refused Reagan’s requests to give aid to the Contras — so-called freedom fighters trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. Congress instead passed a bill making military aid to the Contras illegal.
In the end, Congress issued a 690-page report stating that Reagan was unaware of the illegal doings of some of his staff, though it criticized Reagan’s management style. This analysis was no surprise to many political observers who knew that Reagan liked to delegate authority: He wasn’t involved in day-to-day decisions.
Even though many believed that Reagan was aware of the dealings in the Iran-Contra scandal, the public never blamed him for it, and his approval ratings remained high. The media gave him the nickname the “Teflon president,” because none of the accusations stuck.
Keeping the Revolution Alive during Retirement
After Reagan left office, he stayed active in Republican politics, campaigning for his vice president, George H. W. Bush, in 1988 and contributing to Bush’s victory. The Reagan Democrats transferred their votes to Bush, who ran on a platform built around continuing Reagan’s policies. Though he campaigned for Bush again in 1992, Bill Clinton won that election.
Reagan’s memoirs, An American Life, became a bestseller. The opening of the Reagan library in Simi Valley, California, in 1991 was one of the big highlights of the former president’s career. The library is considered the best presidential library in the country (that’s where I rank it in Chapter 30).
In November 1994, Reagan announced that he had Alzheimer’s disease. His public appearances decreased, and his wife Nancy attended the 1996 Republican national convention on his behalf. By 1999, the disease had progressed to a point where Reagan and his wife decided to live in semi-isolation away from the public eye. Ronald Reagan died on June 5, 2004, at the age of 93. President George W. Bush declared a day of national mourning and Reagan’s burial site at his library in California includes the following inscription:
“I know in my heart that man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph, and that there is purpose and worth to each and every life.”