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/* Presidency (1981-1989) */ Fact tag, see talk
Once in office, Reagan showed he was playing hardball. When the Federal [[Air Traffic Controllers]] struck illegally, Reagan gave them 48 hours before he fired all who hadn't gone back to work (11,359).
In 1984, Reagan won 49 out of 50 states' electoral votes, and the largest public vote in almost 100 years, 58.77%. {{fact}} During his second term, he helped end the [[Cold War]] with the help of [[Margaret Thatcher]] and some assistance from [[Pope John Paul II]] and [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] by recognizing the weakness of the Soviet economy, and spent them out of existence by not being able to compete with defense spending.<ref>[http://www.valt.helsinki.fi/agathon/2661_8.htm#7867The Demise of the Brezhnev Doctrine and the Dismantling of the Warsaw Treaty Organization], " The party leadership gradually came to understand that the sustaining of domestic [[perestroika]] in the USSR was endangered by the inability of an inefficient economy to carry the burdens of excessive overseas military spending in the form of the [[Warsaw Pact]]".</ref>
March 30, 1981 there was an unsuccessful assassination attempt on President Reagan at the Washington Hilton Hotel in [[Washington, D.C.]] John Hinckley, Jr. shot Reagan and injured 3 others. Reagan survived and was able to recover quickly.
