Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)

Benedict Gombocz

Life and Political Career in brief

Life • Born February 6, 1911, Tampico, IL

• Died June 5, 2004 (aged 93), Bel Air, Los Angeles, CA

• Resting place Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, CA

• Political party Republican (after 1962)

• Other political affiliations Democratic (before 1962)

• Spouse(s) Jane Wyman (1940-49; divorced)

Nancy Davis (1952-2004; his death)

Political Career • 40th President of the United States (January 20, 1981-January 20, 1989)

• 33rd Governor of California (January 2, 1967-January 6, 1975)

Synopsis

Synopsis • Ronald Wilson Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois on February 6, 1911.

• The only U.S. president who had an acting career prior to his involvement in politics, Ronald Reagan originally chose a career in entertainment, and appeared in over 50 movies.

• He served as President of the Screen Actor’s Guild during his time in Hollywood, where he met Nancy Davis, who would be his second wife.

• He served two terms as Governor of California from 1967-1975.

• A liberal Democrat until 1962, Ronald Reagan ran for the presidency as a conservative Republican in 1980, and was elected over incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter and Independent John B. Anderson in a landslide; he was easily re-elected in a landslide in 1984, defeating Democrat Walter F. Mondale.

• President Reagan helped to restate the role of government and played a key role in persuading the Soviet Union to end the Cold War; during his second term, relations between the United States and the Soviet Union improved through Reagan’s successful relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev.

• In the years during and after his presidency, Ronald Reagan helped solidify the conservative agenda; a conservative icon, he is viewed as a hero to the American conservative right and an important figure of the Republican Party.

Ronald Reagan’s presidential portrait

Childhood and Education

Childhood and Education • Ronald Wilson Reagan was born on February 6, 1911 in Tampico, Illinois, to John Edward

“Jack” Reagan and Nellie Wilson Reagan.

• His father gave him the nickname “Dutch”, saying that Ronald looked like “a fat little Dutch man”.

• During Reagan’s youth, his family lived in numerous towns before they finally settled in Dixon, Illinois in 1920; here, Jack Reagan opened his own shoe store.

• Reagan attended Dixon High School, where he was an athlete and student body president and was involved in the school theater; he graduated in 1928.

• He spent his summers working as a lifeguard in Dixon.

• He enrolled at Eureka College in Illinois with an athletic grant, and studied economics and sociology.

• At Eureka, he played football, ran track, captained the swimming team, served as student council president, and again took part in school productions; he graduated in 1932, and found a job as a radio sports reporter in Iowa.

Ronald Reagan’s childhood home

Dixon High School and Eureka College

Dixon High School Eureka College

Hollywood Career and Marriages

Hollywood Career and Marriages• Reagan signed a seven-year contract with the Warner Studios movie studio in 1937; he would

appear in over 50 movies over the next three decades.

• Some of his most famous roles include Notre Dame football legend George Gipp in the biopic

Knute Rockne, All American (1940) and his role in Kings Row (1942), where he played an accident

victim who wakes up to find that his legs have been cut off and cries out, “Where’s the rest of

me?”

• Also in 1942, Reagan starred in the World War II movie Desperate Journey, in which he played

Johnny Hammond, a flying officer; he is the only president to have worn a Nazi uniform.

• In 1940, Reagan married actress Jane Wyman; they gave birth to a daughter, Maureen, and

adopted a son, Michael.

• However, the couple divorced in 1949.

• During World War II, Reagan was discharged from combat duty because of poor vision,

spending his time in the army making training movies; he left the military with the rank of

captain.

Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman’s wedding day, January 1940

Hollywood Career and Marriages (cont.)

Hollywood Career and Marriages (cont.)• Reagan served as President of the Screen Actors Guild from 1947-1952, during which time he

met actress Nancy Davis, who requested his assistance after the House Un-American Activities

Committee wrongly listed her as a likely communist sympathizer on the “Hollywood blacklist”.

• They were attracted to each other, but Reagan had doubts about a second marriage after his

unpleasant split from Jane Wyman.

• Over time, however, he saw Nancy as his true love, and they married in 1952.

• When Reagan’s movie career saw little change, he found a job as host of the weekly TV drama

series The General Electric Theater, in 1954.

• Part of Reagan’s duty as host was to tour the United States as a public relations delegate for

General Electric; during this particular point in his life, his political standings became more

conservative.

• The actor sponsored pro-business discussions, and spoke in opposition to what he saw as

unnecessary government regulation and wasteful spending; these would be important topics of

his future political career.

Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis’ wedding day, March

1952

Governorship and Presidential Bid

Governorship and Presidential Bid• Reagan formally entered the national political limelight in 1964 at age 53, when he delivered a

well-received televised speech in support of Republican presidential candidate Barry M.

Goldwater, a notable libertarian conservative.

• Just two years later, Reagan, in what was his first run for public office, defeated Democratic

incumbent Edmund “Pat” Brown, Sr. by approximately 1 million votes in the California

gubernatorial election; he was re-elected in 1970, defeating Democratic challenger Jesse M.

Unruh.

• Following two unsuccessful bids for the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1968 and

1976, Reagan finally won the nomination in 1980; during his campaign, he and his running

mate, former Director of Central Intelligence George H. W. Bush, made “Let’s Make America

Great Again” their slogan.

• In the general election the same year, he defeated the incumbent, Democrat Jimmy Carter, and

Independent John B. Anderson; in a landslide election, he won the electoral vote 489 to

Carter’s 49 and won 50% of the popular vote to Carter’s 41% and Anderson’s six percent.

• Reagan, at the age of 69, became the oldest person elected president.

Ronald Reagan delivering his endorsement speech

for Barry M. Goldwater, 1964

Results of the 1980 presidential election

Results of the 1980 presidential election Election statistics • Ronald Reagan (Republican): 50.8%

• Jimmy Carter (Democratic): 41.0%

• John B. Anderson (Independent): 6.6%

1981 Inauguration and Assassination Attempt

1981 Inauguration and Assassination Attempt• In his inaugural address on January 20, 1981, President-elect Reagan verbally said that

“government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem”.

• He expressed hope for a period of national revitalization and showed optimism that America would again serve as “a beacon of hope for those who do not have freedom”.

• The new president and Nancy found themselves in a new era of allure to the White House, with designer fashions and a major renovation of the executive mansion.

• On March 30, 1981, as President Reagan was leaving the Washington Hilton Hotel with some of his advisors, shots were fired, and quick-thinking Secret Service agents put Reagan into his limousine.

• John Hinckley, Jr., Reagan’s would-be assassin, also shot three bystanders, but not fatally.

• At the hospital, doctors concluded that the gunman’s bullet had impaled one of the President’s lungs and barely hit his heart.

• Reagan, known for his cheerful humor, later joked to Nancy, “Honey, I forgot to duck”.

• Within weeks of the incident, President Reagan returned to work.

President-elect Reagan delivers his first inaugural address,

January 20, 1981

Assassination attempt against President Reagan,

March 30, 1981

Domestic Agenda

Domestic Agenda • President Reagan promoted policies on the domestic front that reduced social programs and

limits on business.

• Tax cuts were passed to stimulate the economy.

• He also supported increasing military spending.

• The economy improved by 1983; according to many economists, it entered a period of

prosperity for seven years.

• Reagan’s critics, however, charged that his policies really increased the deficit and harmed the

middle class and the poor.

• Reagan made history during his first year in office when he nominated Sandra Day O’Connor

the first female to the U.S. Supreme Court; she would serve as an associate justice until 2006.

• In 1983, Reagan signed Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday into law as a national holiday; it was

celebrated for the first time in 1986, although it would not be until 2000 when all 50 states

observed it.

Sandra Day O’Connor is sworn in as the first female

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, September 21, 1981

President Reagan signs Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday into

law as a national holiday, November 2, 1983

Foreign Affairs

Foreign Affairs • The Cold War was the most persistent foreign policy issue of President Reagan’s first term.

• He labeled the Soviet Union the “evil empire” and began a huge build-up of U.S. weapons and troops.

• He also coordinated the Reagan Doctrine, which gave assistance to anti-communist rebels in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

• In 1983, he announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”), a plan that wanted to create space-based weapons to defend the U.S. from attacks by Soviet nuclear missiles.

• In June 1982, Reagan sent 800 U.S. Marines to Lebanon as part of an international peacekeeping force.

• Over a year later, in October 1983, suicide bombers attacked the Marine quarters in Beirut, and killed 241 American civilians; the same month, Reagan ordered U.S. forces to invade the Caribbean island of Granada after Marxist insurgents toppled the government.

• Apart from the problems in Lebanon and Grenada, the Reagan administration had to handle a constant hostile relationship between the United States and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

President Reagan announces his plans for the Strategic

Defense Initiative, March 23, 1983

Original plan for the U.S. invasion of Grenada

Foreign Affairs (cont.)

Foreign Affairs (cont.) • Reagan, during his second term, established a diplomatic relationship with the reform-minded

Mikhail Gorbachev, who had replaced Konstantin Chernenko as leader of the Soviet Union

upon the latter’s death in 1985.

• In 1987, the United States and the Soviet Union signed a remarkable agreement to remove

intermediary-range nuclear missiles; the same year, President Reagan spoke in front of the

Berlin Wall, long a symbol of communism and oppression, and challenged Gorbachev to tear

the wall down.

• In late 1989, Gorbachev permitted the people of Berlin to demolish the wall, putting an end to

Soviet control of East Germany.

• After he departed from the White House in 1989, Reagan would return to Germany in

September 1990 only weeks before Germany was formally reunified; with a hammer, he took

numerous symbolic strikes at a remaining piece of the wall.

President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev at

the White House, 1985

President Reagan delivers his “Tear Down this Wall!” speech in Berlin, June 12, 1987

President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev sign the

Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, December 8, 1987

President Reagan with General Secretary

Gorbachev in Moscow, May 31, 1988

1984 re-election

1984 re-election • Reagan was re-elected in a landslide in November 1984, defeating Democrat Walter F. Mondale.

• He won 49 of the 50 states (while Mondale won only his home state of Minnesota and D.C.) and 525 of

538 electoral votes, the biggest number of votes that a presidential nominee has ever won.

• Reagan’s second term was marked by the Iran-Contra scandal, a complicated “arms-for-hostages” deal with

Iran to funnel money to support and finance anti-communist uprisings in Central America.

• Initially, Reagan denied having any knowledge about the affair, but he later claimed that it was a mistake.

• As a result of the scandal, his popularity dropped from its high of 67% to 46% in less than a week, the

fastest and most significant decline in a president’s approval rating; fourteen officials of the Reagan

Administration were indicted (including then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger); eleven of them

were found guilty, but some of those convictions were overturned on appeal.

• The remainder of those accused or imprisoned were issued pardons in the closing days of the presidency of

George H. W. Bush, who was Vice President when the scandal occurred.

Results of the 1984 presidential election

President Reagan meets with (left to right) Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of State

George Schultz, Attorney General Ed Meese, and Chief of Staff Don Regan in the Oval Office

Later Years and Death

Later Years and Death• After Ronald Reagan and his wife left the White House in January 1989, they returned to their home in Los

Angeles.

• The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum opened in Simi Valley, California in 1991.

• In November 1994, Reagan disclosed in a handwritten letter to the American people that he was recently

diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, saying, “Upon learning this news, Nancy and I had to decide whether

as private citizens we would keep this a private matter or whether we would make this news known in a

public way.”

• After an almost ten-year battle with Alzheimer’s, Ronald Reagan died on June 5, 2004 at his home in Los

Angeles at the age of 93; he was the longest-lived president until Gerald R. Ford surpassed him when Ford

died in December 2006, also at age 93.

• Reagan was also the first president to die in the twenty-first-century.

• On June 11, 2004, a state funeral was held at the capital building in Washington, D.C.; then-President

George W. Bush declared a national day of mourning the same day.

• Later that day, following the service, Reagan’s casket was transported back to California, where he was

buried at his presidential library.

The Reagans board the Marine One as they leave

Washington, D.C., January 20, 1989

Ronald Reagan’s state funeral, June 11, 2004

Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, California

References

References • http://www.biography.com/people/ronald-reagan-9453198

• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/reagan-

alzheimers/

• Other links:

• “A Time for Choosing" by Ronald Reagan (speech endorsing Barry M. Goldwater):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXBswFfh6AY

• Ronald Reagan Campaign Commercial 1980:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIpmHjOLCsM

• Best Reagan Clips from 1980 Carter debate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9qDRZ6pSRE

• Challenger: President Reagan's Challenger Disaster Speech - 1/28/86:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa7icmqgsow