Ronald Reagan

President of the United States (1981–89)

• Born: February 6, 1911
• Birthplace: Tampico, Illinois
• Died: June 5, 2004
• Place of death: Bel Air, California

Reagan stemmed the general feeling of instability that surrounded the office of the US president. Almost by sheer personality and enormous self-confidence, Reagan reversed many of the negative images of the office. His tenure was marked by economic recession and recovery, problems of unemployment, complicated foreign affairs, a foreign policy scandal, expanding American military buildup, and silence regarding HIV/AIDS. However, his optimism appealed to voters and his conservatism produced a number of programs that changed American government in fundamental ways.

Early Life

Ronald Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois. He was the younger of two sons; his brother, John Neil Reagan, was born in 1909. His father, John Edward Reagan, was born in 1883 in Fulton, Illinois; his father’s parents were born in County Cork, Ireland. The young Reagan’s mother, Nelle Clyde Wilson Reagan, of English-Scottish ancestry, was born in 1885, also in Fulton. His father gave him the nickname Dutch because as a boy he favored a Dutch-boy haircut.

When Reagan was ten years old, his family settled in Dixon, Illinois, after living in several other rural Illinois towns. His father was a shoe salesman who experienced alcoholism and had difficulty holding a job. His mother loved the theater, and it was in Dixon, while attending high school, that Reagan first began acting. In 1928, he graduated from high school, where he had played basketball and football and was on the track team; he also was president of the student body. For seven summers during his high school and college years, he worked as a lifeguard at Lowell Park near Dixon.

Reagan won a scholarship that paid half of his living expenses, tuition, and fees at Eureka College, where he majored in sociology and economics. At Eureka, he participated in student politics, athletics, and theater, playing the lead in several college productions and winning honorable mention in a drama competition sponsored by Northwestern University. He won varsity letters in football, swimming, and track, and, as in high school, was elected president of the student body.

After receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1932, Reagan was hired as a sports announcer for station WOC in Davenport, Iowa. WOC was a five-thousand-watt station that shared its wavelength with WHO in Des Moines; both stations became part of the NBC network within a year after Reagan’s initial employment. By 1937, his coverage of major league baseball, Big Ten Conference football, and other sports events had earned for him a national reputation as a sportscaster. While covering the Chicago Cubs’ training camp at Catalina Island, he was introduced to a Los Angeles motion picture agent who succeeded in getting him a screen test with Warner Bros. In 1937, Reagan signed a $200-per-week, seven-year contract with Warner Bros.

Reagan was married for the first time, in 1940, to actor Jane Wyman, whom he had met while they were both appearing in films for Warner Bros. From that marriage, which ended in 1949, they had a daughter, Maureen Elizabeth, and an adopted son, Michael Edward. In 1952, Reagan married actor Nancy Davis, the daughter of Loyal Davis, a prominent Chicago neurosurgeon. They had two children, Patricia Ann and Ronald Prescott. Reagan was the first US president to have been divorced.

Life’s Work

Reagan’s first career, then, was in film. His first picture was Love Is on the Air (1937), in which he played a radio commentator. He would act in more than twenty B movies before his performance as George Gipp, the famous Notre Dame football star, in Knute Rockne, All American (1940). This role established his reputation as a serious actor, and it was from this film that he got his second nickname, the Gipper. In 1940–41, he was chosen one of the “stars of tomorrow” in an exhibitor’s poll.

Reagan’s most memorable film role was probably that of Drake McHugh, the victim of a sadistic surgeon, in King’s Row (1942), a film directed by Sam Wood. Reagan’s performance was described as excellent by many reviewers. Overall, Reagan was considered a competent but not outstanding actor. He made fifty-five feature-length films, mostly for Warner Bros., between 1937 and 1964. He left Warner Bros. in the 1950s and freelanced among several studios for a few years.

On April 14, 1942, Reagan became a second lieutenant with the cavalry of the US Army Reserve; poor eyesight disqualified him from combat duty. Until his discharge as a captain on December 9, 1945, he made training films for the army in California. It was after his years in the army that Reagan began to give serious attention to the politics of the film industry. He took fewer roles as an actor after he was elected president in 1947 of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), one of the major labor unions in the industry. He was elected to six one-year terms as president, and in that position he successfully negotiated several significant labor contracts. In October he appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (better known as HUAC) as a friendly witness in its investigation of communist influence in the film industry. He came to view HUAC and its chair, Congressman J. Parnell Thomas, along with their questionable tactics, with enough wariness that he did not “name names” of suspected communists.

Reagan started his political life as a liberal Democrat who ardently supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR). In the 1940s, however, his political outlook became much more conservative. His movement to the right of center politically came during his experience from 1954 to 1962 when he was employed by General Electric, as host, program supervisor, and occasional actor on the weekly television show General Electric Theater. Between television appearances, Reagan traveled throughout the country for General Electric’s personnel relations division. He spoke at the company’s 135 plants and addressed thousands of its workers. In these speeches he often repeated two themes, that of America’s need for free enterprise and of the evils of big government. In 1962, Reagan became the host of the weekly television program Death Valley Days. He remained with that show until he entered the race for governor of California in 1965.

Reagan switched to the Republican Party in 1962, although he had campaigned as a Democrat for Republican nominees Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 and Richard M. Nixon in 1960. He also supported Harry S. Truman in 1948. However, in the early 1960s he felt that the Democratic Party had abandoned its roots in the ideas of Thomas Jefferson and had created a bloated federal government. In October 1964, Reagan’s prerecorded speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater, “A Time for Choosing,” was well received by viewers and resulted in a huge surge in campaign contributions. Reagan’s friendly, low-key delivery suggested a reassuring, plain patriotism that became a hallmark of his appeal to voters.

In November 1966, Reagan defeated the incumbent Democratic governor of California, Edward G. “Pat” Brown, by more than one million votes. Reagan stumped the state with his basic speech, essentially unchanged from his days with General Electric. He called on voters to bring “common sense” back to government. He was reelected four years later when he defeated Democratic state assembly speaker Jesse Unruh by more than a half-million votes.

As governor of California, Reagan mastered the art of compromise with state legislators and was more restrained and pragmatic than his conservative rhetoric suggested. He took a hard line toward dissident students in the state’s educational system, particularly at the University of California, Berkeley. He also reduced expenditures in a number of areas, including social services and education, to fulfill his campaign promise to reduce the size of government. These cuts, along with a prosperous state economy, resulted in substantial surpluses in the state government’s revenues. In 1973, he was able to begin generous programs of income tax rebates and credits as well as significant property tax relief. A major tax law was passed during his tenure as governor, which corrected a regressive state revenue system. A major achievement of Reagan’s second term was the passage of the California Welfare Reform Act of 1971. This law reduced the numbers of people on welfare while increasing payments to those in need, notably those recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children. His successes as a governor led many political observers to regard him as a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968.

Reagan’s first run for the presidency, however, was too tentative to stop Nixon in 1968, and accordingly, he requested that the convention make Nixon’s nomination unanimous. He next campaigned for the presidency against Gerald R. Ford, beginning with the New Hampshire primary in February 1976. Reagan narrowly lost the nomination to Ford at the Republican National Convention in Kansas City, Missouri; the delegate vote was 1,187 for Ford to Reagan’s 1,070. Nevertheless, Reagan had laid the groundwork for the 1980 election by his strong showing, especially with voters in the South, and in July of that year he arrived unopposed at the Republican convention. In his acceptance speech, Reagan pledged to support a conservative platform that called for voluntary prayer in public schools, credits for private-school tuition, and strong opposition to school busing, abortion, and the Equal Rights Amendment. Reagan overcame questions about his age with a vigorous campaign against incumbent Jimmy Carter, and his disarming and engaging performance in televised debates helped him to defeat Carter at the polls on November 4, 1980. His margin in the popular vote was substantial, and he received 489 votes to Carter’s 49 in the electoral college.

On Tuesday, January 20, 1981, Reagan was inaugurated as the fortieth president of the United States, with Chief Justice Warren E. Burger administering the oath of office. For the first time in the nation’s history, the ceremony was held at the West Front of the Capitol, in a symbolic allusion to Reagan’s Western roots. The president gave a twenty-minute address calling for “an era of national renewal.” Minutes afterward, he fulfilled a campaign promise by placing a freeze on government hiring. As the president concluded his address, at 12:33 p.m., the Iranian government released the American hostages whom they had held for 444 days. The news added to the festive spirit of the occasion.

A few months into his first term, Reagan was shot in the chest as he left the Washington Hilton Hotel at about 2:30 p.m. on March 30, after addressing a group of union officials. His assailant, John Hinckley Jr., was overpowered and arrested at the scene of the crime. The president was rushed to nearby George Washington University Hospital, where he later was operated on to remove a bullet from his left lung. On April 11, after a remarkably quick recovery, he returned to the White House.

During his first term, Reagan concentrated on a strategy of cutting taxes for economic growth stimulation (a strategy popularly known as Reaganomics ), holding back increases in government spending, an expensive buildup of American defenses throughout the world, and a so-called War on Drugs to combat adolescent drug use. He asserted the government’s authority during a strike of air traffic controllers in 1981 by firing more than ten thousand controllers who disobeyed his order to return to work. He asserted the nation’s power abroad to protect American lives and interests in 1983, first in Lebanon and then on the Caribbean island of Grenada. By 1984, inflation was under control; interest rates moved down, though not low enough; employment was up significantly; and generally the economy was upbeat. Difficult problems remained, however, such as the huge size of the federal deficit, a somewhat myopic view of government’s role in domestic matters, and a US Supreme Court that was perhaps too conservative in such a complex, modern world. There remained to be found solutions to the problems of racism and to the concerns of American farmers. Nevertheless, the Reagan presidency set standards against which present and future programs were judged.

Buoyed by a landslide victory over former vice president Walter Mondale in the 1984 presidential election, Reagan began his second term with as much popular backing as any president since FDR. However, his age began to show. He underwent two surgeries during this term and appeared to many to have problems with his memory. Moreover, criticism of his policies began to mount, especially the administration’s slow response to the epidemic of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and his siting of Pershing II intermediate range nuclear missiles in Europe to counter Soviet military might.

Reagan supported anti-communist forces not only in Nicaragua but also in El Salvador, Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, and Angola, and was wary of Communist Cuba's role in the politics of other Latin American and Caribbean countries. It was, however, the Iran-Contra affair that most overshadowed his second term. Members of the government’s clandestine services illegally sold missiles to the Iranian government, then at war with Iraq, and used the money to finance an insurgency of Nicaraguan paramilitary forces, called Contras, against the Central American country’s leftist government after it won a civil war. When the Contra operation became public, Reagan denied knowledge of it, yet high-ranking members of his administration were indicted for wrongdoing, some convicted, others forced to resign.

Another controversy grew from Reagan’s decision to build a missile defense system, officially the Strategic Defense Initiative but popularly known as Star Wars because it required new technology. The research program escalated tensions with the Soviet Union, whose own military technology was beginning to equal in sophistication that of the United States. At the same time, Reagan persevered in diplomatic initiatives with the Soviets. At the last of four summits with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, in a historic presidential trip to Moscow, the two leaders signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, intended to eliminate thousands of nuclear weapons. In 1987, Reagan issued his famous challenge to Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" dividing East and West Berlin, an event that would not occur until 1989 and then through popular, not governmental, action. He also pressured Gorbachev during negotiations on what he saw as human rights issues, such as religious freedoms.

Reagan left office on January 11, 1989, succeeded by his vice president, George H. W. Bush. At age seventy-seven, he was America’s oldest president. The Reagans moved into an exclusive suburb of Bel Air in Los Angeles but also spent part of their retirement on their ranch, Rancho del Cielo, near Santa Barbara, California. Reagan was six feet one inch tall, with light-brown hair and blue eyes. He wore contact lenses for many years, was a nonsmoker, and drank only on occasion. He enjoyed horseback riding, chopping wood, and watching television, and he privately screened motion pictures.

Reagan’s health steadily deteriorated. In 1994, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and thereafter made few public appearances. He made his last public appearance on April 27, 1994, at the funeral of former president Nixon.

Alzheimer’s disease slowly took away Reagan’s memory and vitality. He died of pneumonia in his Bel Air home on June 5, 2004. Private funeral services took place at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, and his body was flown to Washington, DC, where he lay in state in the Capitol. A state funeral was held June 11 at the Washington National Cathedral and was attended by heads of state from throughout the world. The body was then returned to California for burial at the Reagan Library.

Among the many honors accorded to Reagan was the dedication of the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, DC, in 1998, the renaming of Washington’s airport as Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (actually located in Virginia) the same year, and the christening of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan in 2001. He also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1993. Many Americans place him with FDR and Abraham Lincoln in the front rank of the nation’s leaders.

Significance

Reagan fashioned two careers in his long years in the public eye. He was well known to the public before he undertook a career in public service in the 1960s. His first career was in film and television, and most voting-age Americans encountered him first in the darkened film theater or at home on television. It was during the Hollywood years that Reagan’s vision of the United States was formed. He learned more than simply acting from the film world: he acquired an easy way with an audience, and he also experienced the competition and studio politics that led him into the larger arenas of the New Deal, SAG, and HUAC, all of which constituted the apprenticeship for his second career.

In his second career, that of public office, Reagan began at the top. His years in the governor’s mansion in Sacramento coincided with an era of national protest, foreign war, and social change; his years in the White House were marked by economic recession and recovery, problems of unemployment, complicated foreign affairs, a foreign policy scandal, and expanding American military buildup. Many have credited Reagan's dialogue with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev as having brought about the end of the Cold War, which occurred not long after the end of Reagan's term, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Reagan’s optimistic attitude appealed to voters, and his conservatism produced a number of programs that changed American government in fundamental ways. By June 1986, public approval of his performance in office was higher than ever before, according to a Gallup poll. The poll also found that Reagan was more popular than any previous second-term, second-year president since World War II. A crest of public support in 1981, when 58 percent of Americans approved of his performance, had tapered off in 1982 and 1983 to 44 percent, rising again in 1984 to 56 percent approval and 61 percent in 1985.

Despite the Iranian arms scandal that marred the later half of Reagan’s second term, few presidents in the twentieth century demonstrated such staying power in the polls, including Eisenhower and FDR. Indeed, Reagan’s greatest achievement, perhaps, was to have restored the office of president of the United States to a position of power and prestige, especially in the eye of the public. Democratic senator Edward Kennedy, despite his frequent criticism of Reagan’s economic, social, and civil rights policies, acknowledged that Reagan nonetheless “contributed a spirit of good will and grace to the presidency and American life generally and turned the presidency into a vigorous and forceful instrument of national policy.”

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