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/* President Ronald Reagan */ improved
After serving in World War II (he was rejected for a promotion), he became a leader of the Screen Actors Guild in Hollywood at a time when the communists were trying to infiltrate it. Though a Democrat himself, Reagan found himself in the way of the communist infiltration. He stood up to them, and they terrorized him in an attempt to intimidate him. Reagan became strongly anti-communist, a principle that would guide him for the rest of his life.
After campaigning for the conservative Barry Goldwater for president in 1964 (Goldwater lost), Reagan ran for governor of California by emphasizing two points: (1) "to send the welfare bums back to work," and (2) "to clean up the mess at Berkeley" (referring to the student and hippie protests). Reagan won in a stunning upset. Two years later, he showed up at the Republican National Convention in Miami in 1968, when Nixon was being nominated for president. Your teacher laughed at people who found it amusing that some went to shake Reagan's hand instead of Nixon's, but it turned out that Reagan would be much more influential than Nixon was.
Every president who has served since President Reagan has imitated him, or benefited from him. Reagan served from 1980 to 1988, winning reelection in 1984 by a record landslide number of votes. President George H.W. Bush won the presidency by riding on Reagan's coattails; President Clinton imitated the style (but not the substance) of Reagan and made a special (and surprising) visit to meet him after Clinton won in 1992; and President George W. Bush gives weekly radio addresses to this day, a practice that Reagan started. Politicians, both Democratic and Republican, cite Ronald Reagan today to gain support for their ideas, and the airport in D.C. is now named after him.
On March 30th, John Hinckley shot Reagan as he was walking from a speaking event to his car in D.C. The bullet came with an inch of killing him. But Reagan survived with charm and good spirits. Despite losing a great deal of blood, Reagan was even cracking jokes about his misfortune as he was rushed to the hospital. Hinckley tried to kill Reagan because Hinckley had been inspired by a filthy Hollywood movie featuring a prostitute played by Jodie Foster. Hinckley was trying to impress the actress. Hinckley was later found not guilty by reason of insanity, and that led to changes in many laws to limit the insanity defense. Many people gave Reagan a break at this point, and grew sympathetic towards him. His tax cuts passed the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, because many Democrats voted for them based on Reagan's promise not to campaign against them when they sought to be reelected. That illustrated how much politicians feared Reagan's ability to connect with the people.
In August 1981, the Air Traffic Controllers union Union (PATCO) went on strike in order to obtain much higher wages. Reagan went on television to address the nation and told the government-paid union workers to stay on the job or be fired. He was acting just as one of his heroes, President Calvin Coolidge, did when Coolidge was governor of Massachusetts and the police went on strike. When the PATCO strike continued, Reagan then fired all the PATCO workers who went on strike and barred them from ever being rehiredby the government. The airports remained open through use of military traffic controllers who filled in for the strikers, and many pilots commented on how much more polite the substitutes were than the union workers.
In 1982, unemployment hit 10.8%, the worst since the Great Depression. Reagan was blamed for this and things looked bleak. But the criticism did not change Reagan. "Stay the course" was his campaign slogan for Republicans up for reelection in 1982. The Democrats, led by the clever Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, countered with this sarcastic twist: "stay the curse." After hitting rock bottom in 1982 (and losing many Republican seats in the mid-term election), the effects of Reagan's tax and spending cuts began to take hold in 1983. An unprecedented economic boom began in 1983 and lasted throughout the remainder of the 1980s.
In 1983, Reagan turned to foreign policy. He called the communist Soviet Union the "evil empire." Then Reagan advanced a completely original idea in a speech to the nation: he proposed a missile defense system called the "Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)." This was probably the most original and powerful idea ever proposed by a president in our entire history, and its origin genesis remains a mystery among historians. Reagan's enemies derisively called it "Star Wars," after the popular new movie that hit the theaters earlier with advanced new special effects.
To understand the idea, it is first necessary to appreciate our military defense strategy in the 1960s and 1970s. Throughout the 1970s, our Our foreign policy towards the Soviet Union then consisted of "Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD)." Under this approach, each side was deterred from attacking the other side because the result would be the mutual destruction of both sides through massive nuclear war. While neither side could defend against an attack, each side threatened massive retaliation as a deterrent to the attack. Simply put: "if you attack me, then I’ll attack you back and we’ll both be destroyed!"
There were obvious flaws in MAD. What about an accidental firing of a nuclear missile by the other side, which we could do nothing to stop? What about an attack by smaller countries? What about a terrorist missile attack? What about an attack by a crazed dictator who might rise to power and not mind mutual assured destruction? MAD left us defenseless against such attacks.
Reagan wanted a defense against missile attacks. He thought this would bring us to a new level of freedom and security. Critics immediately attacked his theory as impossible, wasteful, and destabilizing. Enormous debate and controversy followed, and many were vicious in their criticism of Reagan over this. Your teacher recalls attending a presentation by a prestigious scientist from IBM who described Reagan's plan as impossible and destabilizing. But questions after his talk were cut off prematurely so he could avoid addressing the logical flaws in his presentation.
Also in 1983, communists backed by Cuba invaded Grenada, where there were over one hundred American medical students. Reagan immediately sent in our troops and saved the students, bringing them back to the United States safely. Students were seen on television kissing the American soil as soon as they got off their planes.
In 1984, Reagan stood for reelection against Walter Mondale (who promised to raise taxes during the campaign), the former Vice President under Jimmy Carter. Mondale promised to raise taxes. In the first of two debates, Reagan's mind was had been stuffed with facts by his advisers in preparation for his first of two debates with Mondalepreparing him, and Reagan did poorly. Mondale pulled nearly even in the polls. For the second and final debate, conservatives demanded that his advisers "let Reagan be Reagan." Free to be himself, Reagan thoroughly destroyed Mondale in the second debate and even showed a great deal of class in politely accepting the moderators moderator's cutting him off in the middle of his closing remarks, short (due to time restraintsconstraints). Reagan then won one of the biggest landslide victories in U.S. history.
In 1985, Reagan began authorizing the sale of arms to Iran in exchange for its work to free American hostages held captive in the Middle East. Two years later this would turn into the "Iran-Contra" scandal, as the proceeds of those sales were intended to be sent to anti-communist freedom fighters in Nicaragua (the "Contras"). Congress, which was controlled by Democrats, had passed a law prohibiting funding of the Contras, and saw this as a violation of that law. Reagan was never charged with any crime, however. This became known as the "arms for hostages" deal.
