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EspañolPRESIDENCY OF RONALD REAGAN
(Redirected from Reagan administration)
Headed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1989, the 'Presidency of Ronald Reagan', also known as the 'Reagan Administration', was conservative, steadfastly anti-Communist, employed a foreign policy of “peace through strength”, and favored tax cuts and smaller government.
Reagan was an advocate of free markets and, upon taking office, believed that the American economy was hampered by excessive economic controls and misguided welfare programs enacted during the 1960s and 1970s. Taking office during a period of stagflation, Reagan said in his first inauguration speech, which he himself authored[1], "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." His first act as president was to issue an executive order ending certain price controls. His supply-side economics policies, or "Reaganomics", achieved a 25% cut in the federal personal income tax, moderate deregulation and tax reform, which he believed would remove barriers to efficient economic activity. After a sharp recession, a long period of high economic growth without significant inflation ensued.
Despite Reagan's stated desire to cut spending, federal spending grew during his administration. However, economist Milton Friedman points out that non-defense spending as a percentage of national income stabilized throughout Reagan's term, breaking a long upward trend; the number of new regulations added each year dramatically decreased as well.[2]
One of Reagan's most controversial early moves was to fire most of the nation's air traffic controllers who took part in an illegal strike. Reagan strengthened Social Security to make it solvent longer by cutting disability benefits, and survivor benefits, and by increasing the FICA payroll withholding tax. He also took tough positions against crime, declared a renewed war on drugs, but was criticized for being slow to respond to the AIDS epidemic.
In foreign affairs, Reagan initially rejected détente and confronted the Soviet Union through a policy of "peace through strength", including increased military spending, firm foreign policies against the USSR and support for anti-communist groups around the world. Reagan later embraced the reformer Mikhail Gorbachev after he rose to power and together they peacefully ended the Cold War.
Some foreign interventions, such as the one in Lebanon, ended in failure, while others, such as the invasion of Grenada, were successful. Involvement in the Iran-Iraq War at times favored Iraq, believing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was less dangerous. The Administration also engaged in covert arms sales to Iran in order to fund anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua. The resulting Iran-Contra Affair became a scandal to which Reagan professed ignorance. A significant number of officials in the Reagan Administration were either convicted or forced to resign as a result of the scandal.
However, by the end of the Reagan presidency, a high level of public approval (64% of the nation) indicated that the administration had recovered its image among the American public due to the perceived restoration of America's power, prosperity and national pride.
Reagan nominated the following jurists to the Supreme Court of the United States:
★ Sandra Day O'Connor – 1981, making Reagan the first President to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court
★ William Rehnquist – Chief Justice, 1986 (an associate justice since 1972)
★ Antonin Scalia – 1986
★ Robert Bork – 1987 (rejected by Senate)
★ Douglas Ginsburg – 1987 (withdrawn)
★ Anthony M. Kennedy – 1988
In his inaugural address, Reagan addressed the economic malaise he inherited, arguing: "Government is not the solution to our problems; Government is the problem." The Reagan Presidency began in a historic manner. On January 20, 1981 while Reagan was delivering his inaugural address, just 30 minutes into his term, 52 American hostages, held by Iran for 444 days were set free.[3]
Main articles: Reagan assassination attempt
On March 30, 1981, only 69 days into the new administration, Reagan, his press secretary James Brady, and two others were struck by gunfire from a deranged would-be assassin, John Hinckley, Jr.. Missing Reagan’s heart by less than an inch, the bullet instead pierced his left lung, which likely saved his life. In the operating room, Reagan joked to the surgeons, "I hope you're all Republicans!" March 30, 1981 Though they were not, Dr. Joseph Giordano replied, "Today, Mr. President, we're all Republicans." Reagan famously told his wife, "Honey, I forgot to duck" (using defeated boxer Jack Dempsey's quip). On April 12, Nancy Reagan and their daughter, Patti, escorted the President home from the hospital.
Main articles: Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (1968),
Only a short time into his administration, Federal air traffic controllers went on strike, violating a regulation prohibiting Government unions from striking. The Pressures of PATCO: Strikes and Stress in the 1980s Rebecca Pels Declaring the situation an emergency as described in the 1947 Taft Hartley Act, Reagan held a press conference in the White House Rose Garden, where he stated that if the air traffic controllers "do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated." Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session With Reporters on the Air Traffic Controllers Strike On August 5, 1981, Reagan fired 11,359 striking air traffic controllers who had ignored his order to return to work.
Main articles: Reaganomics
When Ronald Reagan entered office, the American economy faced the highest rate of inflation since 1947 (11.83% in January of 1981), as well as double-digit unemployment. Those, along with high interest rates, were considered the nation's principal economic problems. Reagan focused on reviving the economy through his economic policies, partially based on supply-side economics. The policies sought to stimulate the economy with large, across-the-board tax cuts[4][5] and aimed to reduce the growth of domestic government spending, regulation, and inflation. In attempting to reduce or eliminate decades-long social programs and to significantly increase defense spending, while at the same time lowering taxes, Reagan's approach was a departure from his immediate predecessors. Reaganomics William A. Niskanen Reagan's expansionary fiscal policies soon became known as "Reaganomics", and were considered by some to be the most serious attempt to change the course of U.S. economic policy of any administration since the New Deal. Reaganomics William A. Niskanen
President Reagan's tenure marked a time of economic prosperity for many Americans. Income tax rates were lowered significantly, with the top personal tax bracket dropping from 70% to 28% in 7 years. The Historical Lessons of Lower Tax Rates Daniel J. Mitchell, Ph.D. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth recovered strongly after the 1982 recession, growing at an annual rate of 3.4% per year. Gross Domestic Product Unemployment peaked at over 11 percent in 1982, then dropped steadily, and inflation significantly decreased, falling from 13.6% in 1980 (President Carter's final year in office) to 4.1% by 1988. Reagan reappointed Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, as well as the monetarist Alan Greenspan to succeed him. He preserved the core New Deal safeguards, such as the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the GI Bill and Social Security, while rolling back what he viewed as the excesses of 1960s and 1970s liberal policies.
Reagan's 1981 income tax cuts, the largest in American history, were passed with bipartisan support by the Democratic-controlled House and Senate. Reagan's support for an increased defense budget also was supported by Congressional Democrats. These Democrats, however, were not so willing to go along with Reagan's proposed cuts in domestic programs. The resulting increase of the national budget deficit led Reagan and Congress to approve tax increases in 1982 and 1983.
The policies were derided by some as "Trickle-down economics," "The Historical Record: Trends in Family Income, Inequality, and Poverty" in ''Confronting Poverty: Prescriptions for Change'', , S.H., Danziger, , 1994, due to the facts that the combination of significant tax cuts and a massive increase in Cold War related defense spending caused large budget deficits, Trickle-Down Economics: Four Reasons why it Just Doesn't Work Etebari, Mehrun the U.S. trade deficit expansion, and contributed to the Savings and Loan crisis,[6] as well as the stock market crash of 1987. In order to cover new federal budget deficits, the United States borrowed heavily both domestically and abroad, raising the national debt from $700 billion to $3 trillion,[7] and the United States moved from being the world's largest international creditor to the world's largest debtor nation. Reagan Policies Gave Green Light to Red Ink Reagan described the new debt as the "greatest disappointment" of his presidency.
Donald Regan, the President's former Secretary of the Treasury, and later Chief of Staff, criticized Reagan for his supposed lack of understanding of economics: "In the four years that I served as Secretary of the Treasury, I never saw President Reagan alone and never discussed economic philosophy or fiscal and monetary policy with him one—on—one....The President never told me what he believed or what he wanted to accomplish in the field of economics.”[8] However, Reagan's chief economic advisor Martin Feldstein, argues the opposite: "I briefed him on Third World debt; he didn't take notes, he asked very few questions....The subject came up in a cabinet meeting and he summarized what he had heard perfectly. He had a remarkably good memory for oral presentation and could fit information into his own philosophy and make decisions on it.[9]
Some economists argue that Reagan's tax policies invigorated America's economy, such as Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, who wrote that the Reagan tax cuts were "one of the most important factors in the boom of the 1990s." Similarly, fellow Nobel Prize winning economist Robert A. Mundell wrote that the tax cuts "made the U.S. economy the motor for the world economy in the 1990s, on which the great revolution in information technology was able to feed." Other economists argue that the deficits slowed economic growth during the following administration Exploding Deficits, Declining Growth: The Federal Budget and the Aging of America and was the reason that Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush, and raised taxes. Nobel prize winning economist Robert Solow stated, "As for Reagan being responsible [for the 1990s boom], that's far-fetched. What we got in the Reagan years was a deep recession and then half a dozen years of fine growth as we climbed out of the recession, but nothing beyond that."[10]
Not long after being sworn into office, Reagan declared more militant policies in the "War on Drugs". The War on Drugs NIDA InfoFacts: High School and Youth Trends He promised a "planned, concerted campaign" against all drugs, The Drug War as Race War Randall, Vernellia R leading to decreases in adolescent drug use in America. Interview: Dr. Herbert Kleber [11]
On October 27, 1986, President Reagan signed a drug enforcement bill into law, which granted $1.7 billion dollars to fight the crisis, and ensured a mandatory minimum penalty for drug offenses. The Bill was criticized for promoting significant racial disparities in the prison population, because of the differences in sentencing for crack vs. powder cocaine.
Many critics also charged that the administration's policies did little to actually reduce the availability of drugs or crime on the street, while resulting in a great financial and human cost for American society. The Reagan-Era Drug War Legacy Many critics regarded Reagan as indifferent to the needs of poor and minority citizens.
Reagan's First Lady, Nancy, even took on the War on Drugs as her main cause, by founding the "Just Say No" anti-drug association. Today, there are still hundreds of "Just Say No" clinics around the country aimed at helping and rehabilitating children and teenagers with drug problems.[12]
During his 1980 campaign, Reagan pledged that, if given the opportunity, he would appoint the first female Supreme Court Justice. [13] That opportunity came in his first year in office when he nominated Sandra Day O'Connor to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Potter Stewart. In his second term, Reagan elevated William Rehnquist to succeed Warren Burger as Chief Justice, and named Antonin Scalia to fill the vacant seat. However in 1987 Reagan lost a significant political battle when the Senate rejected the nomination of Robert Bork. Anthony Kennedy was eventually confirmed in his place.
Main articles: Invasion of Grenada
American peacekeeping forces in Beirut, a part of a multinational force during the Lebanese Civil War, were attacked on October 22, 1983. The Beirut barracks bombing, in which 241 American servicemen were killed by suicide bombers, was the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima, and the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States military since the first day of the Tet offensive. Reagan called the attack "despicable," pledged to keep a military force in Lebanon, and planned to target the Sheik Abdullah barracks in Baalbek, Lebanon, which housed Iranian Revolutionary Guards believed to be training Hezbollah fighters.[14] Report on the DoD Commission on Beirut International Airport Terrorist Act, October 23, 1983 Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger aborted the mission, however, reportedly because of his concerns that it would harm U.S. relations with other Arab nations. Besides a few shellings, there was no serious American retaliation, and the Marines were moved offshore where they could not be targeted. On February 7, 1984, President Reagan ordered the Marines to begin withdrawal from Lebanon. This was completed on February 26: the rest of the MNF was withdrawn by April.
Three days later, U.S. forces invaded Grenada, where a 1979 ''coup d’état'' had established a Marxist-Leninist government aligned with the Soviet Union and Cuba. The Grenadan government began military expansion and construction of an international airport with Cuban assistance. On October 13, 1983, a faction led by Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard seized power. A formal appeal from the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) led to the intervention of U.S. forces; President Reagan also cited the regional threat posed by a Soviet-Cuban military build-up in the Caribbean and concern for the safety of several hundred American medical students at St. George's University as adequate reasons to invade. On October 25, 1983, in the first major operation conducted by the U.S. military since the Vietnam War, several days of fighting commenced, and led to U.S. victory, Operation Agent Fury with 19 American fatalities and 116 wounded American soldiers. Grenada, 1983: Operation 'Urgent Fury' Cooper, Tom In mid-December, after a new government was appointed by the Governor-General, U.S. forces withdrew.
Main articles: United States presidential election, 1984
Reagan accepted the Republican nomination in Dallas, Texas, on a wave of positive feeling bolstered by the recovering economy and the dominating performance by the U.S. athletes at the Los Angeles Olympics that summer. He became the first American president to open a summer Olympic Games held in the United States. Los Angeles 1984
Reagan's opponent in the 1984 presidential election was former Vice President Walter Mondale. With questions about Reagan's age, and a weak performance in the first presidential debate, many wondered if he was up to the task of being president for another term. The Debate Reagan rebounded in the second debate, and confronted questions about his age, stating, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience," which generated applause and laughter from members of the audience. 1984 Presidential Debates
In the 1984 presidential election, Reagan was re-elected over Mondale, winning 49 of 50 states. The president's landslide victory saw Mondale carry only his home state of Minnesota (by 3800 votes) and the District of Columbia. Reagan received nearly 60 percent of the popular vote. 1984 Presidential Election Results
Reagan was sworn in as President for the second time on January 20, 1985, in a private swearing in at the White House. He was sworn in publicly in the Capitol Rotunda the next day, because January 20 fell on a Sunday, and thus no public celebration was held. January 21 was one of the coldest days on record in Washington, D.C., thus due to the low temperatures, inaugural celebrations were held inside the Capitol.
On July 13, 1985, Reagan underwent surgery to remove polyps from his colon, causing the first-ever invocation of the Acting President clause of the 25th Amendment,[15] and on January 5, 1987, Reagan underwent surgery for prostate cancer which caused further worries about his health. At this time, the President was 76 years old.
In 1985, Ronald and Nancy Reagan visited a cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, where Reagan was to lay a wreath. Some Jewish leaders criticized him for deciding to visit the cemetery, after they discovered that 47 Waffen SS men were buried there.[16] Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel pleaded with Reagan not to go, stating, "May I, Mr. President, if it is possible at all, implore you to do something else, to find a way, to find another way, another site."[17] Reagan argued that it would be wrong to back down on a promise he had made to Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and in the end, two retired generals laid the wreath in the cemetery with Reagan present.[18] In 1983, and again in 1984, Reagan told prominent Israelis and American Jews — notably Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir of Israel, Simon Wiesenthal, and Rabbi Martin Hier of Los Angeles — of his personal experience ''vis-à-vis'' the Holocaust, saying "I was there" and that that he himself had assisted personally at the liberation of Nazi death camps; in fact, he was in a film unit in Hollywood that processed raw footage it received from Europe for newsreels, but Reagan was not in Europe itself during the war.[19]
Reagan's presidency saw the advent of HIV-AIDS as a widespread epidemic in the United States. Although AIDS was first identified in 1981, Reagan did not mention it publicly for several more years. Critics of Reagan typically state that he did not do so until 1987, but this claim is false, as he discussed funding for AIDS research in a press conference in 1985. The death from AIDS of his friend Rock Hudson helped motivate Reagan to support more active measures to contain the spread of AIDS, although in retrospect those measures are still seen by Reagan's critics as inadequate.
Possibly in deference to the views of the powerful religious right, which saw AIDS as a disease limited to the gay male community and spread by immoral behavior, Reagan prevented his Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, from speaking out about the epidemic. When in 1986 Reagan finally authorized Koop to issue a report on the epidemic, he expected it to be in line with conservative policies; instead, Koop's ''Surgeon General's Report on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome'' greatly emphasized the importance of a comprehensive AIDS education strategy, including widespread distribution of condoms, and rejected mandatory testing. This approach brought Koop into conflict with other administration officials such as Education Secretary William Bennett.
Social action groups such as ACT UP worked to raise awareness of the AIDS problem. In 1987, Reagan responded by appointing the Watkins Commission on AIDS, which was succeeded by a permanent advisory council, and subsequently (under the administration of President Clinton) by the "AIDS czar".
Many socially conservative commentators saw Reagan's handling of the AIDS crisis as a common sense approach to a problem they believed was caused by social immorality. Members of the gay and lesbian communities saw his policies as anything from politically motivated willful blindness to outright contempt for groups affected by the disease.
Regardless of the aesthetic merits (or lack thereof) of the administration's approach to the disease, discretionary spending by the Federal government on AIDS research programs for both prevention and treatment increased steadily during Reagan's two terms in office, and afterwards. [2]
Main articles: Iran-Contra Affair, Reagan administration scandals
In 1986, the Reagan Administration was found to have illegally sold arms to Iran to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. The Iran-Contra Affair was the largest political scandal in the United States during the 1980s.[20] President Reagan professed ignorance of the plot's existence and quickly called for an Independent Counsel to investigate. Reagan's denial of awareness of the scandal belied his signing a secret presidential "finding" describing the deal as "arms-for-hostages." Critics objected to his comparison of the Contras to the Founding Fathers and to the French Resistance. The International Court of Justice, in its ruling on ''Nicaragua v. United States'', found that the U.S. had been involved in the "unlawful use of force" in Nicaragua due to its treaty obligations and the customary obligations of international law not to intervene in the affairs of other states.
Reagan appointed the non-partisan, three-man Tower Commission to review the Scandal. Headed by John Tower, the other two members were Edmund Muskie and Brent Scowcroft. In the end, ten officials in the Reagan Administration were convicted, and others were forced to resign. A Tale of Three Countries: The Iran Contra Affair Rockwell, Kara Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger was indicted for perjury and later received a presidential pardon from George H.W. Bush. In 2006, historians ranked the Iran-Contra affair as one of the ten worst mistakes by a U.S. president.[21]
Reagan escalated the Cold War, accelerating a reversal from the policy of détente which began in 1979 following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Towards an International History of the War in Afghanistan, 1979-89 The Reagan Administration implemented new policies towards the Soviet Union: reviving the B-1 bomber program that had been canceled by the Carter administration, and producing the MX "Peacekeeper" missile. LGM-118A Peacekeeper In response to Soviet deployment of the SS-20, Reagan oversaw NATO's deployment of the Pershing II missile in West Germany. Cold War Generals: The Warsaw Pact Committee of Defense Ministers, 1969-90, by Christian Nünlist
One of Reagan's more controversial proposals was the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, a defense project. The program would use ground- and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. SDI:The Next Generation Adelman, Ken Reagan believed that this defense shield could make nuclear war impossible, Deploy or Perish: SDI and Domestic Politics [22] but the unlikelihood that the technology could ever work led opponents to dub SDI "Star Wars," and argue that the technological objective was unattainable.The Soviets became concerned about the possible effects SDI would have, and leader Yuri Andropov considered the possibility that Reagan was pushing to win the Cold War,[23] saying it put "the entire world in jeopardy."
In a famous address on June 8, 1982 to the British Parliament, Reagan called the Soviet Union an "Evil Empire" that would be consigned to the "ash heap of history." On March 3, 1983, Reagan predicted that Communism would collapse, stating, "communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written." Former President Reagan Dies at 93 After Soviet fighters downed Korean Airlines Flight 007 on September 1, 1983, Reagan labeled the act a "massacre" and declared that the Soviets had turned "against the world and the moral precepts which guide human relations among people everywhere." 1983:Korean Airlines flight shot down by Soviet Union The Reagan administration responded to the incident by suspending all Soviet passenger air service to the United States, and dropped several agreements being negotiated with the Soviets, hurting them financially.
Reagan's foreign policies were criticized variously as aggressive, imperialistic, and were derided as "warmongering". Foreign Affairs: Ronald Reagan All this was before a reformer, Mikhail Gorbachev, rose to power in the Soviet Union in 1985. To confront the Soviet Union's serious economic problems, Gorbachev implemented bold new policies for openness and reform called ''glasnost'' and ''perestroika''.
By the late years of the Cold War, Moscow had built up a military which surpassed that of the United States.In the past, the United States had relied on the qualitative superiority of its weapons to essentially frighten the Soviets, but with Soviet technological advances in the 1980s, the gap between the two nations was narrowed. New Evidence of Moscow's Military Threat Manfred R. Hamm With the military buildup came large budget deficits, and as a result, Gorbachev offered major concessions to the United States on the levels of conventional forces, nuclear weapons, and policy in Eastern Europe. The Thawing of the Cold War Michael Beschloss
Ronald Reagan recognized the change in the direction of the Soviet leadership with Gorbachev, and shifted to diplomacy, with a view to encourage the Soviet Leader to go further with his reforms. Gorbachev agreed to meet Reagan in four summit conferences around the world: the first in Geneva, Switzerland, the second in Reykjavík, Iceland, the third held in Washington, D.C., along with the fourth summit in Moscow, Russia. Reagan-Gorbachev Summit Meetings Reagan believed that if he could persuade the Soviets to look at the prosperous American economy, they would embrace free markets and a free society. Gorbachev, facing severe economic problems at home, was swayed.
Speaking at the Berlin Wall, on June 12, 1987, Reagan challenged Gorbachev to go further:
When Gorbachev visited Washington, D.C. for the third summit in 1987, he and Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty at the White House (they finalized it a year later), which eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons.[24]
When Reagan visited Moscow for the fourth summit in 1988, he was viewed as a celebrity by Russians. A journalist asked the president if he still considered the Soviet Union the evil empire. "No," he replied, "I was talking about another time, another era." Gorby Had the Lead Role, Not Gipper Martin, Lawrence At Gorbachev’s request, Reagan gave a speech on free markets at Moscow University.[25]
In his autobiography ''An American Life'', Reagan expressed his optimism about the new direction that they charted, his warm feelings for Gorbachev, and his concern for Gorbachev's safety because Gorbachev pushed reforms so hard: "I was concerned for his safety," Reagan wrote. "I've still worried about him. How hard and fast can he push reforms without risking his life?"[26] Events would unravel far beyond what Gorbachev originally intended. In 1990, the Berlin Wall was torn down. A year later, the Soviet Union officially collapsed.
In 1988, Reagan's Vice President, George H. W. Bush, was elected President of the United States. On January 11, 1989, Reagan addressed the nation for the last time on television from the Oval Office, nine days before handing over the presidency to George H. W. Bush. On the morning of January 20, 1989, Ronald and Nancy Reagan escorted the Bushes to the Capitol Building, where Bush took the Oath of Office. The Reagans then boarded a Presidential helicopter, and flew to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. There, they boarded the Presidential Jet (in this instance, it was not called Air Force One), and flew home to California – to their new home in the wealthy suburb of Bel Air in Los Angeles. Reagan was the oldest president to serve (at 77), surpassing Dwight Eisenhower, who was 70 when he left office in 1961.
During his Presidency, Ronald Reagan pursued policies that reflected his optimism in individual freedom, expanded the American economy, and contributed to the end of the Cold War.[27] The "Reagan Revolution", as it came to be known, aimed to reinvigorate American morale, and reduce the people's reliance upon government. As President, Reagan kept a series of leather bound diaries, in which he talked about daily occurrences of his presidency, commented on current issues around the world (expressing his point of view on most of them), and frequently mentioned his wife, Nancy. The diaries were recently published into the bestselling book, ''The Reagan Diaries''.[28]
As a politician and as President, Ronald Reagan portrayed himself as being a conservative, an anti-communist, in favor of tax cuts, in favor of smaller government (with the exclusion of the military), in favor of removing regulations on corporations, in favor of the use of force to protect U.S. interests, and zero tolerance on crime, as well as pro-life.
Ronald Reagan is credited with increasing spending on national defense and diplomacy which contributed to the end of the Cold War, deploying U.S. Pershing II missiles in West Germany in response to the Soviet stationing of SS-20 missiles near Europe, negotiating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) to substantially reduce nuclear arms and initiating negotiations with the Soviet Union for the treaty that would later be known as START I, proposing the Strategic Defense Initiative, a controversial plan to develop a missile defense system, re-appointing monetarists Paul Volcker and (later) Alan Greenspan to be chairmen of the Federal Reserve, ending the high inflation that damaged the economy under his predecessors Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, lowering tax rates significantly (under Reagan, the top personal tax bracket dropped from 70% to 28% in 7 years [3]) and leading a major reform of the tax system, providing arms and other support to anti-communist groups such as the Contras and the mujahideen, selling arms to foreign allies such as Taiwan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq (see Iran-Iraq War), greatly escalating the "war on drugs" with his policies and Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign, ordering the April 14, 1986 bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in retaliation for an April 5 bombing of a West Berlin nightclub frequented by U.S. servicemen, in which the Libyan government was deemed complicit, and signing the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which compensated victims of the Japanese American Internment during World War II.
As Ronald and Nancy Reagan were both former actors and he had served as president of the Screen Actor's Guild, via a 1982 Executive Order, President Reagan established the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities. In each year of his presidency, Reagan increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. In a 1983 speech he declared, "We support the National Endowment for the Arts to stimulate excellence and make art more available to more of our people." [4]
Although Reagan's second term was mostly noteworthy for matters related to foreign affairs, he supported significant pieces of legislation on domestic matters. In 1982, Reagan signed legislation reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for another 25 years, even though he had opposed such an extension during the 1980 campaign.[29] This extension added protections for blind, disabled, and illiterate voters.
Other significant legislation included the overhaul of the Internal Revenue Code in 1986, as well as the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which compensated victims of the Japanese-American internment during World War II. Reagan also signed legislation authorizing the death penalty for offenses involving murder in the context of large-scale drug trafficking; wholesale reinstatement of the federal death penalty did not occur until the presidency of Bill Clinton.
In 1987 Reagan signed the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement with Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
Milton Friedman has pointed to the number of pages added to the Federal Register each year as evidence of the anti-regulatory nature of Reagan's presidency. The number of pages added to the Register each year declined sharply at the start of the Ronald Reagan presidency, breaking a steady and sharp increase since 1960. The increase in the number of pages added per year resumed an upward, though less steep, trend after Reagan left office.
In 1983 and again in 1984, Reagan was heard to say -- by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir of Israel and by Simon Wiesenthal and Rabbi Martin Hier of Los Angeles -- that he personally filmed the Auschwitz death camps; he was in a film unit in Hollywood that processed raw footage for newsreels, but he was not in Europe during the war.[30]
As Reagan was the oldest person to be inaugurated as president (age 69), and also the oldest person to hold the office (age 77), his health, although generally good, became a concern at times during his presidency. His age even became a topic of concern during his re-election campaign. In a debate on October 21, 1984 between Reagan and his opponent Walter Mondale, panelist Henry Trewhitt brought up how President Kennedy had to go for days on end without sleep during the Cuban Missile crisis. He then asked the President if he had any doubts about if or how he could function in a time of crisis, given his age. Without hesitation, Reagan remarked, "Not at all Mr. Trewhitt, and I want you to know I am not going to make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience." Walter Mondale years later said in an interview that he knew at that moment he had lost the election.
On July 13, 1985, Reagan underwent surgery to remove polyps from his colon, causing the first-ever invocation of the Acting President clause of the 25th Amendment. On January 5, 1987, Reagan underwent surgery for prostate cancer which caused further worries about his health, but which significantly raised the public awareness of this "silent killer."
★ Reagan administration scandals
★ U.S. presidential election, 1976
★ U.S. presidential election, 1980
★ U.S. presidential election, 1984
★ Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California
★ October Surprise
★ Iran-Contra Affair
★ History of the United States (1980-1988)
★ List of things named after Ronald Reagan
★ 600-ship Navy
★ Ronald Reagan on Wikiquote
1. Murray, Robert K. & Blessing, Tim H. 1993. Greatness in the White House. Penn State Press. p. 80
2. Friedman, Milton. Letter to the editor of Liberty Magazine. August 5, 2004 [1] AND Friedman, Milton. Freedom's Friend. Wall Street Journal. June 11. 2004
3. Iran Hostage Crisis: November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981
4. Cannon, Lou (2001) p. 99
5. Appleby, Joyce (2003), pp. 923–924
6. The S&L Crisis: A Chrono-Bibliography
7. Cannon, Lou (2001) p. 128
8. Regan, Donald T. (1988), p. 142
9. Lee, Susan. 1996. Hands Off: Why the Government is a Menace to Economic Health. Simon & Schuster. p. 223
10. Reagan's Economic Legacy
11. The Decline of Substance Use in Young Adulthood Bachman, Gerald G. et al.
12. Thirty Years of America's Drug War
13. Reagan, Ronald (1990), p. 280
14.
15. What is the 25th Amendment and When Has It Been Invoked?
16. Reeves, Richard (2005), p. 249
17. Reeves, Richard (2005) p. 250
18. Reeves, Richard (2005) p. 255
19. Morris (1999), p. 113
20. NYT's apologies miss the point
21. U.S. historians pick top 10 presidential errors
22. Beschloss, Michael (2007), p. 293
23. Beschloss, Michael (2007), p. 294
24. INF Treaty
25. Reagan, Ronald (1990), p. 713
26. Reagan, Ronald (1990), p. 720
27. Freidel, Frank (1995), p. 84
28. The Reagan Diaries
29. "Reagan Weighs In On Social Issues." U.S. News & World Report, May 12, 1982
30. Morris, Edumund. Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (2000) p.465. Cannon, Lou. ''President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime'' (2000) p. 428-30.
★ The American Journey, , Joyce, Appleby, Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, , 0078241294
★ Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How they Changed America 1789-1989, , Michael, Beschloss, Simon & Schuster, 2007,
★ President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, , Lou, Cannon, Public Affairs, 2000,
★ Ronald Reagan: The Presidential Portfolio: A History Illustrated from the Collection of the Ronald Reagan Library and Museum, , Lou, Cannon, PublicAffairs, 2001,
★ Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History, , John Patrick, Diggins, W. W. Norton, 2007,
★ The Presidents of the United States of America, , Frank, Freidel, White House Historical Association, 1995,
★ The Cold War: A New History, , John Lewis, Gaddis, The Penguin Press, 2005,
★ Hertsgaard, Mark. (1988) ''On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency.'' New York, New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux.
★ America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1971, , Walter, LaFeber, Wiley, ,
★ Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended, , Jack, Matlock, Random House, 2004,
★ Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, , Edmund, Morris, Random House, 1999, includes fictional material
★ My Turn: The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan, , Nancy, Reagan, Harper Collins, 1989,
★ An American Life, , Ronald, Reagan, Simon and Schuster, 1990,
★ President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination, , Richard, Reeves, Simon & Schuster, 2005,
★ For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington, , Donald, Regan, Harcourt, 1988,
★ Ronald Reagan, , Kenneth, Walsh, Random House Value Publishing, Inc., 1997,
Headed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1989, the 'Presidency of Ronald Reagan', also known as the 'Reagan Administration', was conservative, steadfastly anti-Communist, employed a foreign policy of “peace through strength”, and favored tax cuts and smaller government.
Overview
Reagan was an advocate of free markets and, upon taking office, believed that the American economy was hampered by excessive economic controls and misguided welfare programs enacted during the 1960s and 1970s. Taking office during a period of stagflation, Reagan said in his first inauguration speech, which he himself authored[1], "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." His first act as president was to issue an executive order ending certain price controls. His supply-side economics policies, or "Reaganomics", achieved a 25% cut in the federal personal income tax, moderate deregulation and tax reform, which he believed would remove barriers to efficient economic activity. After a sharp recession, a long period of high economic growth without significant inflation ensued.
Despite Reagan's stated desire to cut spending, federal spending grew during his administration. However, economist Milton Friedman points out that non-defense spending as a percentage of national income stabilized throughout Reagan's term, breaking a long upward trend; the number of new regulations added each year dramatically decreased as well.[2]
One of Reagan's most controversial early moves was to fire most of the nation's air traffic controllers who took part in an illegal strike. Reagan strengthened Social Security to make it solvent longer by cutting disability benefits, and survivor benefits, and by increasing the FICA payroll withholding tax. He also took tough positions against crime, declared a renewed war on drugs, but was criticized for being slow to respond to the AIDS epidemic.
In foreign affairs, Reagan initially rejected détente and confronted the Soviet Union through a policy of "peace through strength", including increased military spending, firm foreign policies against the USSR and support for anti-communist groups around the world. Reagan later embraced the reformer Mikhail Gorbachev after he rose to power and together they peacefully ended the Cold War.
Some foreign interventions, such as the one in Lebanon, ended in failure, while others, such as the invasion of Grenada, were successful. Involvement in the Iran-Iraq War at times favored Iraq, believing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was less dangerous. The Administration also engaged in covert arms sales to Iran in order to fund anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua. The resulting Iran-Contra Affair became a scandal to which Reagan professed ignorance. A significant number of officials in the Reagan Administration were either convicted or forced to resign as a result of the scandal.
However, by the end of the Reagan presidency, a high level of public approval (64% of the nation) indicated that the administration had recovered its image among the American public due to the perceived restoration of America's power, prosperity and national pride.
Major issues of Presidency
Ronald Reagan★ , (20 January, 1981) ★ , (20 January, 1985) ★ , (26 January, 1982) ★ , (25 January, 1983) ★ , (25 January, 1984) ★ , (6 February, 1985) ★ , (4 February, 1986) ★ , (27 January, 1987) ★ , (25 January, 1988) Major acts as PresidentMajor treaties | Major legislation signed★ Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 - lowered income tax rates ★ Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 - revoked some provisions of the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 ★ Social Security Amendments of 1983 - amended Social Security to adjust for new retirees ★ Tax Reform Act of 1986 - simplified the income tax code, broaden the tax base and eliminate many tax shelters and other preferences ★ Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 - sweeping change to the Department of Defense command structure ★ Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 - granted amnesty to illegal immigrants who entered the United States before January 1, 1982 and had resided there continuously Major legislation vetoed |
Administration and Cabinet
Supreme Court nominees
Reagan nominated the following jurists to the Supreme Court of the United States:
★ Sandra Day O'Connor – 1981, making Reagan the first President to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court
★ William Rehnquist – Chief Justice, 1986 (an associate justice since 1972)
★ Antonin Scalia – 1986
★ Robert Bork – 1987 (rejected by Senate)
★ Douglas Ginsburg – 1987 (withdrawn)
★ Anthony M. Kennedy – 1988
The Cabinet of President Reagan
First Term (1981-1985)
In his inaugural address, Reagan addressed the economic malaise he inherited, arguing: "Government is not the solution to our problems; Government is the problem." The Reagan Presidency began in a historic manner. On January 20, 1981 while Reagan was delivering his inaugural address, just 30 minutes into his term, 52 American hostages, held by Iran for 444 days were set free.[3]
Assassination attempt
Main articles: Reagan assassination attempt
On March 30, 1981, only 69 days into the new administration, Reagan, his press secretary James Brady, and two others were struck by gunfire from a deranged would-be assassin, John Hinckley, Jr.. Missing Reagan’s heart by less than an inch, the bullet instead pierced his left lung, which likely saved his life. In the operating room, Reagan joked to the surgeons, "I hope you're all Republicans!" March 30, 1981 Though they were not, Dr. Joseph Giordano replied, "Today, Mr. President, we're all Republicans." Reagan famously told his wife, "Honey, I forgot to duck" (using defeated boxer Jack Dempsey's quip). On April 12, Nancy Reagan and their daughter, Patti, escorted the President home from the hospital.
Air traffic controllers' strike
Main articles: Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (1968),
Only a short time into his administration, Federal air traffic controllers went on strike, violating a regulation prohibiting Government unions from striking. The Pressures of PATCO: Strikes and Stress in the 1980s Rebecca Pels Declaring the situation an emergency as described in the 1947 Taft Hartley Act, Reagan held a press conference in the White House Rose Garden, where he stated that if the air traffic controllers "do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated." Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session With Reporters on the Air Traffic Controllers Strike On August 5, 1981, Reagan fired 11,359 striking air traffic controllers who had ignored his order to return to work.
"Reaganomics" and the economy
Main articles: Reaganomics
When Ronald Reagan entered office, the American economy faced the highest rate of inflation since 1947 (11.83% in January of 1981), as well as double-digit unemployment. Those, along with high interest rates, were considered the nation's principal economic problems. Reagan focused on reviving the economy through his economic policies, partially based on supply-side economics. The policies sought to stimulate the economy with large, across-the-board tax cuts[4][5] and aimed to reduce the growth of domestic government spending, regulation, and inflation. In attempting to reduce or eliminate decades-long social programs and to significantly increase defense spending, while at the same time lowering taxes, Reagan's approach was a departure from his immediate predecessors. Reaganomics William A. Niskanen Reagan's expansionary fiscal policies soon became known as "Reaganomics", and were considered by some to be the most serious attempt to change the course of U.S. economic policy of any administration since the New Deal. Reaganomics William A. Niskanen
President Reagan's tenure marked a time of economic prosperity for many Americans. Income tax rates were lowered significantly, with the top personal tax bracket dropping from 70% to 28% in 7 years. The Historical Lessons of Lower Tax Rates Daniel J. Mitchell, Ph.D. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth recovered strongly after the 1982 recession, growing at an annual rate of 3.4% per year. Gross Domestic Product Unemployment peaked at over 11 percent in 1982, then dropped steadily, and inflation significantly decreased, falling from 13.6% in 1980 (President Carter's final year in office) to 4.1% by 1988. Reagan reappointed Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, as well as the monetarist Alan Greenspan to succeed him. He preserved the core New Deal safeguards, such as the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the GI Bill and Social Security, while rolling back what he viewed as the excesses of 1960s and 1970s liberal policies.
Reagan's 1981 income tax cuts, the largest in American history, were passed with bipartisan support by the Democratic-controlled House and Senate. Reagan's support for an increased defense budget also was supported by Congressional Democrats. These Democrats, however, were not so willing to go along with Reagan's proposed cuts in domestic programs. The resulting increase of the national budget deficit led Reagan and Congress to approve tax increases in 1982 and 1983.
Reagan gives a televised address from the Oval Office, outlining his plan for Tax Reduction Legislation in July of 1981.
The policies were derided by some as "Trickle-down economics," "The Historical Record: Trends in Family Income, Inequality, and Poverty" in ''Confronting Poverty: Prescriptions for Change'', , S.H., Danziger, , 1994, due to the facts that the combination of significant tax cuts and a massive increase in Cold War related defense spending caused large budget deficits, Trickle-Down Economics: Four Reasons why it Just Doesn't Work Etebari, Mehrun the U.S. trade deficit expansion, and contributed to the Savings and Loan crisis,[6] as well as the stock market crash of 1987. In order to cover new federal budget deficits, the United States borrowed heavily both domestically and abroad, raising the national debt from $700 billion to $3 trillion,[7] and the United States moved from being the world's largest international creditor to the world's largest debtor nation. Reagan Policies Gave Green Light to Red Ink Reagan described the new debt as the "greatest disappointment" of his presidency.
Donald Regan, the President's former Secretary of the Treasury, and later Chief of Staff, criticized Reagan for his supposed lack of understanding of economics: "In the four years that I served as Secretary of the Treasury, I never saw President Reagan alone and never discussed economic philosophy or fiscal and monetary policy with him one—on—one....The President never told me what he believed or what he wanted to accomplish in the field of economics.”[8] However, Reagan's chief economic advisor Martin Feldstein, argues the opposite: "I briefed him on Third World debt; he didn't take notes, he asked very few questions....The subject came up in a cabinet meeting and he summarized what he had heard perfectly. He had a remarkably good memory for oral presentation and could fit information into his own philosophy and make decisions on it.[9]
Some economists argue that Reagan's tax policies invigorated America's economy, such as Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, who wrote that the Reagan tax cuts were "one of the most important factors in the boom of the 1990s." Similarly, fellow Nobel Prize winning economist Robert A. Mundell wrote that the tax cuts "made the U.S. economy the motor for the world economy in the 1990s, on which the great revolution in information technology was able to feed." Other economists argue that the deficits slowed economic growth during the following administration Exploding Deficits, Declining Growth: The Federal Budget and the Aging of America and was the reason that Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush, and raised taxes. Nobel prize winning economist Robert Solow stated, "As for Reagan being responsible [for the 1990s boom], that's far-fetched. What we got in the Reagan years was a deep recession and then half a dozen years of fine growth as we climbed out of the recession, but nothing beyond that."[10]
War on Drugs
Not long after being sworn into office, Reagan declared more militant policies in the "War on Drugs". The War on Drugs NIDA InfoFacts: High School and Youth Trends He promised a "planned, concerted campaign" against all drugs, The Drug War as Race War Randall, Vernellia R leading to decreases in adolescent drug use in America. Interview: Dr. Herbert Kleber [11]
On October 27, 1986, President Reagan signed a drug enforcement bill into law, which granted $1.7 billion dollars to fight the crisis, and ensured a mandatory minimum penalty for drug offenses. The Bill was criticized for promoting significant racial disparities in the prison population, because of the differences in sentencing for crack vs. powder cocaine.
Many critics also charged that the administration's policies did little to actually reduce the availability of drugs or crime on the street, while resulting in a great financial and human cost for American society. The Reagan-Era Drug War Legacy Many critics regarded Reagan as indifferent to the needs of poor and minority citizens.
Reagan's First Lady, Nancy, even took on the War on Drugs as her main cause, by founding the "Just Say No" anti-drug association. Today, there are still hundreds of "Just Say No" clinics around the country aimed at helping and rehabilitating children and teenagers with drug problems.[12]
Judiciary
During his 1980 campaign, Reagan pledged that, if given the opportunity, he would appoint the first female Supreme Court Justice. [13] That opportunity came in his first year in office when he nominated Sandra Day O'Connor to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Potter Stewart. In his second term, Reagan elevated William Rehnquist to succeed Warren Burger as Chief Justice, and named Antonin Scalia to fill the vacant seat. However in 1987 Reagan lost a significant political battle when the Senate rejected the nomination of Robert Bork. Anthony Kennedy was eventually confirmed in his place.
Lebanon and Grenada, 1983
Main articles: Invasion of Grenada
Reagan meets with Prime Minister Eugenia Charles of Dominica in the Oval Office about ongoing events in Grenada.
American peacekeeping forces in Beirut, a part of a multinational force during the Lebanese Civil War, were attacked on October 22, 1983. The Beirut barracks bombing, in which 241 American servicemen were killed by suicide bombers, was the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima, and the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States military since the first day of the Tet offensive. Reagan called the attack "despicable," pledged to keep a military force in Lebanon, and planned to target the Sheik Abdullah barracks in Baalbek, Lebanon, which housed Iranian Revolutionary Guards believed to be training Hezbollah fighters.[14] Report on the DoD Commission on Beirut International Airport Terrorist Act, October 23, 1983 Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger aborted the mission, however, reportedly because of his concerns that it would harm U.S. relations with other Arab nations. Besides a few shellings, there was no serious American retaliation, and the Marines were moved offshore where they could not be targeted. On February 7, 1984, President Reagan ordered the Marines to begin withdrawal from Lebanon. This was completed on February 26: the rest of the MNF was withdrawn by April.
Three days later, U.S. forces invaded Grenada, where a 1979 ''coup d’état'' had established a Marxist-Leninist government aligned with the Soviet Union and Cuba. The Grenadan government began military expansion and construction of an international airport with Cuban assistance. On October 13, 1983, a faction led by Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard seized power. A formal appeal from the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) led to the intervention of U.S. forces; President Reagan also cited the regional threat posed by a Soviet-Cuban military build-up in the Caribbean and concern for the safety of several hundred American medical students at St. George's University as adequate reasons to invade. On October 25, 1983, in the first major operation conducted by the U.S. military since the Vietnam War, several days of fighting commenced, and led to U.S. victory, Operation Agent Fury with 19 American fatalities and 116 wounded American soldiers. Grenada, 1983: Operation 'Urgent Fury' Cooper, Tom In mid-December, after a new government was appointed by the Governor-General, U.S. forces withdrew.
1984 presidential campaign
Main articles: United States presidential election, 1984
1984 Presidential electoral votes by state. Reagan (red) won every state, with the exception of Minnesota and Washington, D.C.
Reagan accepted the Republican nomination in Dallas, Texas, on a wave of positive feeling bolstered by the recovering economy and the dominating performance by the U.S. athletes at the Los Angeles Olympics that summer. He became the first American president to open a summer Olympic Games held in the United States. Los Angeles 1984
Reagan's opponent in the 1984 presidential election was former Vice President Walter Mondale. With questions about Reagan's age, and a weak performance in the first presidential debate, many wondered if he was up to the task of being president for another term. The Debate Reagan rebounded in the second debate, and confronted questions about his age, stating, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience," which generated applause and laughter from members of the audience. 1984 Presidential Debates
In the 1984 presidential election, Reagan was re-elected over Mondale, winning 49 of 50 states. The president's landslide victory saw Mondale carry only his home state of Minnesota (by 3800 votes) and the District of Columbia. Reagan received nearly 60 percent of the popular vote. 1984 Presidential Election Results
Second Term (1985-1989)
Ronald Reagan is sworn in for a second term as President in the Capitol Rotunda.
Reagan was sworn in as President for the second time on January 20, 1985, in a private swearing in at the White House. He was sworn in publicly in the Capitol Rotunda the next day, because January 20 fell on a Sunday, and thus no public celebration was held. January 21 was one of the coldest days on record in Washington, D.C., thus due to the low temperatures, inaugural celebrations were held inside the Capitol.
On July 13, 1985, Reagan underwent surgery to remove polyps from his colon, causing the first-ever invocation of the Acting President clause of the 25th Amendment,[15] and on January 5, 1987, Reagan underwent surgery for prostate cancer which caused further worries about his health. At this time, the President was 76 years old.
In 1985, Ronald and Nancy Reagan visited a cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, where Reagan was to lay a wreath. Some Jewish leaders criticized him for deciding to visit the cemetery, after they discovered that 47 Waffen SS men were buried there.[16] Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel pleaded with Reagan not to go, stating, "May I, Mr. President, if it is possible at all, implore you to do something else, to find a way, to find another way, another site."[17] Reagan argued that it would be wrong to back down on a promise he had made to Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and in the end, two retired generals laid the wreath in the cemetery with Reagan present.[18] In 1983, and again in 1984, Reagan told prominent Israelis and American Jews — notably Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir of Israel, Simon Wiesenthal, and Rabbi Martin Hier of Los Angeles — of his personal experience ''vis-à-vis'' the Holocaust, saying "I was there" and that that he himself had assisted personally at the liberation of Nazi death camps; in fact, he was in a film unit in Hollywood that processed raw footage it received from Europe for newsreels, but Reagan was not in Europe itself during the war.[19]
Response to AIDS
Reagan's presidency saw the advent of HIV-AIDS as a widespread epidemic in the United States. Although AIDS was first identified in 1981, Reagan did not mention it publicly for several more years. Critics of Reagan typically state that he did not do so until 1987, but this claim is false, as he discussed funding for AIDS research in a press conference in 1985. The death from AIDS of his friend Rock Hudson helped motivate Reagan to support more active measures to contain the spread of AIDS, although in retrospect those measures are still seen by Reagan's critics as inadequate.
Possibly in deference to the views of the powerful religious right, which saw AIDS as a disease limited to the gay male community and spread by immoral behavior, Reagan prevented his Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, from speaking out about the epidemic. When in 1986 Reagan finally authorized Koop to issue a report on the epidemic, he expected it to be in line with conservative policies; instead, Koop's ''Surgeon General's Report on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome'' greatly emphasized the importance of a comprehensive AIDS education strategy, including widespread distribution of condoms, and rejected mandatory testing. This approach brought Koop into conflict with other administration officials such as Education Secretary William Bennett.
Social action groups such as ACT UP worked to raise awareness of the AIDS problem. In 1987, Reagan responded by appointing the Watkins Commission on AIDS, which was succeeded by a permanent advisory council, and subsequently (under the administration of President Clinton) by the "AIDS czar".
Many socially conservative commentators saw Reagan's handling of the AIDS crisis as a common sense approach to a problem they believed was caused by social immorality. Members of the gay and lesbian communities saw his policies as anything from politically motivated willful blindness to outright contempt for groups affected by the disease.
Regardless of the aesthetic merits (or lack thereof) of the administration's approach to the disease, discretionary spending by the Federal government on AIDS research programs for both prevention and treatment increased steadily during Reagan's two terms in office, and afterwards. [2]
Iran-Contra Affair
Main articles: Iran-Contra Affair, Reagan administration scandals
In 1986, the Reagan Administration was found to have illegally sold arms to Iran to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. The Iran-Contra Affair was the largest political scandal in the United States during the 1980s.[20] President Reagan professed ignorance of the plot's existence and quickly called for an Independent Counsel to investigate. Reagan's denial of awareness of the scandal belied his signing a secret presidential "finding" describing the deal as "arms-for-hostages." Critics objected to his comparison of the Contras to the Founding Fathers and to the French Resistance. The International Court of Justice, in its ruling on ''Nicaragua v. United States'', found that the U.S. had been involved in the "unlawful use of force" in Nicaragua due to its treaty obligations and the customary obligations of international law not to intervene in the affairs of other states.
Reagan appointed the non-partisan, three-man Tower Commission to review the Scandal. Headed by John Tower, the other two members were Edmund Muskie and Brent Scowcroft. In the end, ten officials in the Reagan Administration were convicted, and others were forced to resign. A Tale of Three Countries: The Iran Contra Affair Rockwell, Kara Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger was indicted for perjury and later received a presidential pardon from George H.W. Bush. In 2006, historians ranked the Iran-Contra affair as one of the ten worst mistakes by a U.S. president.[21]
Cold War
Reagan addresses the British Parliament in London. In this speech, he famously predicted communism would collapse.
Reagan escalated the Cold War, accelerating a reversal from the policy of détente which began in 1979 following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Towards an International History of the War in Afghanistan, 1979-89 The Reagan Administration implemented new policies towards the Soviet Union: reviving the B-1 bomber program that had been canceled by the Carter administration, and producing the MX "Peacekeeper" missile. LGM-118A Peacekeeper In response to Soviet deployment of the SS-20, Reagan oversaw NATO's deployment of the Pershing II missile in West Germany. Cold War Generals: The Warsaw Pact Committee of Defense Ministers, 1969-90, by Christian Nünlist
One of Reagan's more controversial proposals was the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, a defense project. The program would use ground- and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. SDI:The Next Generation Adelman, Ken Reagan believed that this defense shield could make nuclear war impossible, Deploy or Perish: SDI and Domestic Politics [22] but the unlikelihood that the technology could ever work led opponents to dub SDI "Star Wars," and argue that the technological objective was unattainable.The Soviets became concerned about the possible effects SDI would have, and leader Yuri Andropov considered the possibility that Reagan was pushing to win the Cold War,[23] saying it put "the entire world in jeopardy."
In a famous address on June 8, 1982 to the British Parliament, Reagan called the Soviet Union an "Evil Empire" that would be consigned to the "ash heap of history." On March 3, 1983, Reagan predicted that Communism would collapse, stating, "communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written." Former President Reagan Dies at 93 After Soviet fighters downed Korean Airlines Flight 007 on September 1, 1983, Reagan labeled the act a "massacre" and declared that the Soviets had turned "against the world and the moral precepts which guide human relations among people everywhere." 1983:Korean Airlines flight shot down by Soviet Union The Reagan administration responded to the incident by suspending all Soviet passenger air service to the United States, and dropped several agreements being negotiated with the Soviets, hurting them financially.
Reagan's foreign policies were criticized variously as aggressive, imperialistic, and were derided as "warmongering". Foreign Affairs: Ronald Reagan All this was before a reformer, Mikhail Gorbachev, rose to power in the Soviet Union in 1985. To confront the Soviet Union's serious economic problems, Gorbachev implemented bold new policies for openness and reform called ''glasnost'' and ''perestroika''.
End of the Cold War
By the late years of the Cold War, Moscow had built up a military which surpassed that of the United States.In the past, the United States had relied on the qualitative superiority of its weapons to essentially frighten the Soviets, but with Soviet technological advances in the 1980s, the gap between the two nations was narrowed. New Evidence of Moscow's Military Threat Manfred R. Hamm With the military buildup came large budget deficits, and as a result, Gorbachev offered major concessions to the United States on the levels of conventional forces, nuclear weapons, and policy in Eastern Europe. The Thawing of the Cold War Michael Beschloss
Ronald Reagan recognized the change in the direction of the Soviet leadership with Gorbachev, and shifted to diplomacy, with a view to encourage the Soviet Leader to go further with his reforms. Gorbachev agreed to meet Reagan in four summit conferences around the world: the first in Geneva, Switzerland, the second in Reykjavík, Iceland, the third held in Washington, D.C., along with the fourth summit in Moscow, Russia. Reagan-Gorbachev Summit Meetings Reagan believed that if he could persuade the Soviets to look at the prosperous American economy, they would embrace free markets and a free society. Gorbachev, facing severe economic problems at home, was swayed.
Speaking at the Berlin Wall, on June 12, 1987, Reagan challenged Gorbachev to go further:
When Gorbachev visited Washington, D.C. for the third summit in 1987, he and Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty at the White House (they finalized it a year later), which eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons.[24]
When Reagan visited Moscow for the fourth summit in 1988, he was viewed as a celebrity by Russians. A journalist asked the president if he still considered the Soviet Union the evil empire. "No," he replied, "I was talking about another time, another era." Gorby Had the Lead Role, Not Gipper Martin, Lawrence At Gorbachev’s request, Reagan gave a speech on free markets at Moscow University.[25]
Reagan and Gorbachev sign the INF Treaty at the White House in 1987.
In his autobiography ''An American Life'', Reagan expressed his optimism about the new direction that they charted, his warm feelings for Gorbachev, and his concern for Gorbachev's safety because Gorbachev pushed reforms so hard: "I was concerned for his safety," Reagan wrote. "I've still worried about him. How hard and fast can he push reforms without risking his life?"[26] Events would unravel far beyond what Gorbachev originally intended. In 1990, the Berlin Wall was torn down. A year later, the Soviet Union officially collapsed.
Close of the Reagan Era
In 1988, Reagan's Vice President, George H. W. Bush, was elected President of the United States. On January 11, 1989, Reagan addressed the nation for the last time on television from the Oval Office, nine days before handing over the presidency to George H. W. Bush. On the morning of January 20, 1989, Ronald and Nancy Reagan escorted the Bushes to the Capitol Building, where Bush took the Oath of Office. The Reagans then boarded a Presidential helicopter, and flew to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. There, they boarded the Presidential Jet (in this instance, it was not called Air Force One), and flew home to California – to their new home in the wealthy suburb of Bel Air in Los Angeles. Reagan was the oldest president to serve (at 77), surpassing Dwight Eisenhower, who was 70 when he left office in 1961.
Political philosophy
Ronald Reagan's Official Portrait that hangs in the White House.
During his Presidency, Ronald Reagan pursued policies that reflected his optimism in individual freedom, expanded the American economy, and contributed to the end of the Cold War.[27] The "Reagan Revolution", as it came to be known, aimed to reinvigorate American morale, and reduce the people's reliance upon government. As President, Reagan kept a series of leather bound diaries, in which he talked about daily occurrences of his presidency, commented on current issues around the world (expressing his point of view on most of them), and frequently mentioned his wife, Nancy. The diaries were recently published into the bestselling book, ''The Reagan Diaries''.[28]
As a politician and as President, Ronald Reagan portrayed himself as being a conservative, an anti-communist, in favor of tax cuts, in favor of smaller government (with the exclusion of the military), in favor of removing regulations on corporations, in favor of the use of force to protect U.S. interests, and zero tolerance on crime, as well as pro-life.
Ronald Reagan is credited with increasing spending on national defense and diplomacy which contributed to the end of the Cold War, deploying U.S. Pershing II missiles in West Germany in response to the Soviet stationing of SS-20 missiles near Europe, negotiating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) to substantially reduce nuclear arms and initiating negotiations with the Soviet Union for the treaty that would later be known as START I, proposing the Strategic Defense Initiative, a controversial plan to develop a missile defense system, re-appointing monetarists Paul Volcker and (later) Alan Greenspan to be chairmen of the Federal Reserve, ending the high inflation that damaged the economy under his predecessors Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, lowering tax rates significantly (under Reagan, the top personal tax bracket dropped from 70% to 28% in 7 years [3]) and leading a major reform of the tax system, providing arms and other support to anti-communist groups such as the Contras and the mujahideen, selling arms to foreign allies such as Taiwan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq (see Iran-Iraq War), greatly escalating the "war on drugs" with his policies and Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign, ordering the April 14, 1986 bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in retaliation for an April 5 bombing of a West Berlin nightclub frequented by U.S. servicemen, in which the Libyan government was deemed complicit, and signing the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which compensated victims of the Japanese American Internment during World War II.
Controversy
Foreign Interventions
The Arts
As Ronald and Nancy Reagan were both former actors and he had served as president of the Screen Actor's Guild, via a 1982 Executive Order, President Reagan established the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities. In each year of his presidency, Reagan increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. In a 1983 speech he declared, "We support the National Endowment for the Arts to stimulate excellence and make art more available to more of our people." [4]
Other matters
Although Reagan's second term was mostly noteworthy for matters related to foreign affairs, he supported significant pieces of legislation on domestic matters. In 1982, Reagan signed legislation reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for another 25 years, even though he had opposed such an extension during the 1980 campaign.[29] This extension added protections for blind, disabled, and illiterate voters.
Other significant legislation included the overhaul of the Internal Revenue Code in 1986, as well as the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which compensated victims of the Japanese-American internment during World War II. Reagan also signed legislation authorizing the death penalty for offenses involving murder in the context of large-scale drug trafficking; wholesale reinstatement of the federal death penalty did not occur until the presidency of Bill Clinton.
In 1987 Reagan signed the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement with Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
Milton Friedman has pointed to the number of pages added to the Federal Register each year as evidence of the anti-regulatory nature of Reagan's presidency. The number of pages added to the Register each year declined sharply at the start of the Ronald Reagan presidency, breaking a steady and sharp increase since 1960. The increase in the number of pages added per year resumed an upward, though less steep, trend after Reagan left office.
In 1983 and again in 1984, Reagan was heard to say -- by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir of Israel and by Simon Wiesenthal and Rabbi Martin Hier of Los Angeles -- that he personally filmed the Auschwitz death camps; he was in a film unit in Hollywood that processed raw footage for newsreels, but he was not in Europe during the war.[30]
The Oldest President
As Reagan was the oldest person to be inaugurated as president (age 69), and also the oldest person to hold the office (age 77), his health, although generally good, became a concern at times during his presidency. His age even became a topic of concern during his re-election campaign. In a debate on October 21, 1984 between Reagan and his opponent Walter Mondale, panelist Henry Trewhitt brought up how President Kennedy had to go for days on end without sleep during the Cuban Missile crisis. He then asked the President if he had any doubts about if or how he could function in a time of crisis, given his age. Without hesitation, Reagan remarked, "Not at all Mr. Trewhitt, and I want you to know I am not going to make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience." Walter Mondale years later said in an interview that he knew at that moment he had lost the election.
On July 13, 1985, Reagan underwent surgery to remove polyps from his colon, causing the first-ever invocation of the Acting President clause of the 25th Amendment. On January 5, 1987, Reagan underwent surgery for prostate cancer which caused further worries about his health, but which significantly raised the public awareness of this "silent killer."
See also
★ Reagan administration scandals
★ U.S. presidential election, 1976
★ U.S. presidential election, 1980
★ U.S. presidential election, 1984
★ Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California
★ October Surprise
★ Iran-Contra Affair
★ History of the United States (1980-1988)
★ List of things named after Ronald Reagan
★ 600-ship Navy
★ Ronald Reagan on Wikiquote
Footnotes
1. Murray, Robert K. & Blessing, Tim H. 1993. Greatness in the White House. Penn State Press. p. 80
2. Friedman, Milton. Letter to the editor of Liberty Magazine. August 5, 2004 [1] AND Friedman, Milton. Freedom's Friend. Wall Street Journal. June 11. 2004
3. Iran Hostage Crisis: November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981
4. Cannon, Lou (2001) p. 99
5. Appleby, Joyce (2003), pp. 923–924
6. The S&L Crisis: A Chrono-Bibliography
7. Cannon, Lou (2001) p. 128
8. Regan, Donald T. (1988), p. 142
9. Lee, Susan. 1996. Hands Off: Why the Government is a Menace to Economic Health. Simon & Schuster. p. 223
10. Reagan's Economic Legacy
11. The Decline of Substance Use in Young Adulthood Bachman, Gerald G. et al.
12. Thirty Years of America's Drug War
13. Reagan, Ronald (1990), p. 280
14.
15. What is the 25th Amendment and When Has It Been Invoked?
16. Reeves, Richard (2005), p. 249
17. Reeves, Richard (2005) p. 250
18. Reeves, Richard (2005) p. 255
19. Morris (1999), p. 113
20. NYT's apologies miss the point
21. U.S. historians pick top 10 presidential errors
22. Beschloss, Michael (2007), p. 293
23. Beschloss, Michael (2007), p. 294
24. INF Treaty
25. Reagan, Ronald (1990), p. 713
26. Reagan, Ronald (1990), p. 720
27. Freidel, Frank (1995), p. 84
28. The Reagan Diaries
29. "Reagan Weighs In On Social Issues." U.S. News & World Report, May 12, 1982
30. Morris, Edumund. Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (2000) p.465. Cannon, Lou. ''President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime'' (2000) p. 428-30.
References
★ The American Journey, , Joyce, Appleby, Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, , 0078241294
★ Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How they Changed America 1789-1989, , Michael, Beschloss, Simon & Schuster, 2007,
★ President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, , Lou, Cannon, Public Affairs, 2000,
★ Ronald Reagan: The Presidential Portfolio: A History Illustrated from the Collection of the Ronald Reagan Library and Museum, , Lou, Cannon, PublicAffairs, 2001,
★ Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History, , John Patrick, Diggins, W. W. Norton, 2007,
★ The Presidents of the United States of America, , Frank, Freidel, White House Historical Association, 1995,
★ The Cold War: A New History, , John Lewis, Gaddis, The Penguin Press, 2005,
★ Hertsgaard, Mark. (1988) ''On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency.'' New York, New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux.
★ America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1971, , Walter, LaFeber, Wiley, ,
★ Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended, , Jack, Matlock, Random House, 2004,
★ Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, , Edmund, Morris, Random House, 1999, includes fictional material
★ My Turn: The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan, , Nancy, Reagan, Harper Collins, 1989,
★ An American Life, , Ronald, Reagan, Simon and Schuster, 1990,
★ President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination, , Richard, Reeves, Simon & Schuster, 2005,
★ For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington, , Donald, Regan, Harcourt, 1988,
★ Ronald Reagan, , Kenneth, Walsh, Random House Value Publishing, Inc., 1997,
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