{ray'-guhn}

Ronald Wilson Reagan served from 1981 to 1989 as the 40th president of the United States.  At the age of 69, he was the oldest man ever sworn into that office.  Reagan's previous executive experience included two terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild (1952, 1959-60) and governor of the nation's most populous state, California (1966-74).

EARLY LIFE AND CAREER

Born on Feb.  6, 1911, in Tampico, Ill., Reagan had strong roots in small-town, middle America.  He worked his way through Eureka College (B.A., 1932), had some success as a sportscaster, and began an acting career with Warner Brothers in 1937.  He was to appear in about 53 films, with an interlude (1942-45) in the U.S.  Army.  Reagan married the actress Jane Wyman in 1940 (divorced 1948) and in 1952 wed Nancy Davis.  He moved into television in the 1950s and was seen by millions as the popular host of "Death Valley Days" (1962-65) and as spokesman for the General Electric Company.

Inheriting from his father a New Deal orientation in politics, Reagan shifted his views in the 1950s and began to speak out against "big government" and communism.  By the 1960s he was a favorite speaker on the conservative circuit, and it was natural that he should support Barry Goldwater in 1964.  With the shattering defeat of the Republicans that year, Reagan was widely regarded as an ex-movie actor with simplistic views, no constituency of any size, and no future.  Reagan's big years lay ahead, however.  In 1966 he easily defeated the incumbent governor of California, Democrat Edmund "Pat" Brown, and began two four-year terms that made him a national figure.

Governor Reagan won the loyalty of conservatives by initially opposing state spending and tax increases, but he proved to be a pragmatist when California's growth required an expansion of government services.  He left Sacramento in 1974 with the state's budget showing a $550-million surplus.  Reagan had been mentioned as a presidential contender in every campaign since 1968, and he tirelessly traveled the lecture circuit, skillfully delivering "the speech," his unvarying recitation of the evils of liberalism.  Republican rivals thought him too old to be a force in 1980, but because Reagan's backers were well financed and intensely loyal, he swept through the primaries to nomination.

PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

Democrats began the campaign by underestimating Reagan's strengths.  His age was offset by robust health and relaxed self-assurance.  His views on domestic policy appeared to be farther to the right than majority opinion, and his foreign-policy views carried overtones of ideological crusades and "Great Power" confrontation--vulnerabilities that President Jimmy Carter expected to exploit.  But Reagan, the master of television, phrased his conservative views with an air of reasonableness and geniality, promising prosperity by "getting the government off our backs." Burdened by his failure to free the Americans held hostage by Iran and by a deteriorating economy, Carter saw his thinly based support erode as the voters concluded that Reagan was a safe choice to replace an ineffective regime.  Reagan's margin of victory was sizable, the Californian carrying 44 states against Carter's 6, the popular vote 43 million to 36 million (with 5.7 million for independent John B.  Anderson).

THE REAGAN PRESIDENCY

Immediately after his inauguration, Reagan launched a bold program that, if carried to conclusion, would fundamentally alter the U.S.  political economy.  Regarding the economy as in a state of crisis, the Reagan program for economic "revitalization" had been incubated by conservative theorists around the new president.  To call forth the allegedly pent-up energies of entrepreneurial capitalism and restore growth, the Reagan plan offered a triad of measures:  sharp budget cutting to shrink the public sector;  tax cutting, especially in the higher and business brackets, to unleash investment;  and a broad retreat from business and social regulation.  This policy was \Tsupply-side economics\t, and Reagan promised a surge of noninflationary growth.

Despite many doubters, Reagan jammed his program through Congress in 1981--a major tax cut, $43 billion in budget cuts in domestic programs, and cutbacks in environmental and business regulation.  Democrats in the House resisted this reversal in tax and spending policies, but the president's successful appeals to the public, combined with the assassination attempt in which he was wounded by shots fired by John W.  Hinckley, Jr., on March 30, generated irresistible popular support.

Reagan's economic policy was cast into serious doubt by the fall of 1981, when economic recession deepened.  Wall Street agreed with Budget Director David Stockman's admission that Reagan's massive defense increases dwarfed budget cuts elsewhere and insured large continuing deficits, while public-opinion polls indicated a growing conviction that the tax cuts had mainly benefited the rich.  The promised prosperity did not seem to be filtering down from the wealthy. The "revolution" seemed to have stalled, and 1982 was spent in budgetary wrangles, while all factions waited to see if the Reagan program would end the recession.  Inflation dropped out of double figures, but interest rates remained high until the fall, when a change in Federal Reserve policy caused them to decline.  Unemployment in 1982 was the highest in 40 years, however.  The political future of the Reagan administration clearly depended on the response of the economy to supply-side medicine.

Reagan's defense buildup commenced, while foreign relations saw a stronger anti-Soviet stance but no major departures.  The administration appeared internally divided on many matters, such as the Middle East and Central America, and in July 1982, Alexander \THaig\t was replaced as secretary of state by George P. \TShultz\t.  The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 1982 prompted the dispatch of U.S.  and other peacekeeping forces to that beleaguered country.  In a September appeal to solve the Israeli-Arab dispute, Reagan laid out a detailed proposal for Palestinian self-rule in association with Jordan, which was flatly rejected by Israel.

The congressional elections of November 1982 gave the Democrats a larger-than-normal, 26-seat gain in the House, while the Senate was unchanged in party totals.

Although the commitment of U.S.  Marines to Lebanon had seemed a minor step in late 1982, the events of 1983 suggested a pattern that increasingly divided American opinion.  Heavy casualties suffered by the Marine forces in Beirut raised anxieties about the administration's Lebanese intervention (and early in 1984 the Marines were withdrawn).  In late October 1983 the president ordered an invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada and overthrew the country's anti-American dictatorship.  U.S.  troops were on extended maneuver in Central America, and the CIA worked openly to overturn the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.  Arms control talks with the Soviet Union were frozen in mutual distrust as a new deployment of U.S.  nuclear missiles began in Europe in November 1983.  In each of these initiatives, the president's rationale was the necessity to counter Soviet advances, but this strategy worried some observers because of the lack of diplomatic successes.

The economic picture had brightened in 1983, with a resurgent stock market, low inflation, a jobless rate inching downward, and several months of rising production.  Recovery, although menaced by enormous deficits, continued in 1984.

On Jan.  29, 1984, Ronald Reagan announced his decision to run for a second term.  Strong support came primarily from conservatives who approved of the military buildup and pro-business policies.  Equally fervent, however, were his critics--environmentalists, minorities, and those who feared that nuclear war might come from the very arms race that Reagan proposed as a path to "strength."

The Democrats nominated former Vice-President Walter F. \TMondale\t, who made history by selecting N.Y.  Rep.  Geraldine \TFerraro\t as his running mate.  Yet the campaign of 1984 developed no clear issues.  Mondale charged that Reagan would cut social security benefits and raise taxes after reelection and criticized the huge federal deficits.  Reagan, who said little of his program for a second term (except that he would not raise taxes), spoke of America "standing tall" again.  The president's radiant optimism, plus the continued economic recovery, produced a stunning victory in November.  Reagan gained 59% of the vote and won the electoral votes of every state except the challenger's home state of Minnesota (and the District of Columbia), for a total of 525 electoral votes, the greatest number ever tallied by a presidential candidate in U.S.  history.

Reagan and Bush were inaugurated for second terms in January 1985.  In July, Reagan underwent surgery for the removal of a cancerous intestinal polyp.  For the approximately eight hours that Reagan was incapacitated, by general anesthesia, executive authority was temporarily transferred to Vice-President George Bush.  The contrast between the president's upbeat mood and underlying ailments was mirrored in the national economy, where a moderate recovery overlay worrisome trends:  huge trade deficits, a shaky farm economy, and a 1985 budget deficit of $211 billion.  Reagan signed a sweeping tax-reform bill on Oct. 22, 1986, that slashed rates for individuals but eliminated many deductions;  it had bipartisan parentage.  More clearly an administration policy--and finally victorious in Congress (by summer 1986)--was Reagan's request for $100 million in aid to the "contra" rebels against the Nicaraguan government.

A decisive moment in Reagan's second term appeared to come at the second summit meeting between Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Iceland in October 1986 (the first meeting had been in Geneva in November 1985).  The leaders apparently came close to agreeing to drastic reductions in nuclear missiles, but Reagan resisted the Soviet demand that the U.  S. \TStrategic Defense Initiative\t ("Star Wars") be limited to laboratory research, and the meeting ended in bitter disappointment.  Despite Reagan's vigorous campaigning for Republican candidates, the Democrats took control of the Senate in the 1986 elections by the unexpectedly wide margin of 55 to 45 seats.

Shortly after, Reagan faced a damaging internal crisis, the \TIran-contra affair\t, involving secret arms sales to Iran and diversion of profits to the "contras." Reagan had apparently not known of the diversion, which exposed his "management style" as inept.  Now on the defensive, he saw two Supreme Court nominations (Robert \TBork\t and Douglas Ginsburg) fail, and a stock-market collapse late in 1987 raised questions about his economic policies.  History's verdict, perhaps, would focus more on the improving U.  S.-Soviet relations, specifically on the arms-control agreement, eliminating all medium- and short-range missiles in Europe, that Reagan signed with Gorbachev in Washington in December 1987.  Reagan visited Moscow in the spring of 1988.  His popularity rating again high, Reagan campaigned for, and thus contributed to, George Bush's election as president on Nov.  8, 1988.  The Iran-Contra Affair involved Reagan once more, in connection with the trial of John M.  Poindexter, at one time his national security adviser.  Reagan, in videotaped testimony in a closed Los Angeles courtroom, testified that he had not ordered any illegal actions, but the testimony was marked by numerous memory lapses.  Poindexter's attorneys had earlier asked that Reagan's diaries be turned over, but Reagan refused on the grounds of executive privilege.  A U.  S.  district court upheld the executive privilege claim on Mar.  21, 1990.

Otis L. Graham, Jr.

Bibliography:  Anderson, Martin, Revolution (1988);  Boskin, Michael J., Reagan and the Economy (1987);  Boyarsky, Bill, Ronald Reagan:  His Life and Rise to the Presidency (1981); Cannon, Lou, President Reagan:  The Role of a Lifetime (1991); Dallek, Robert, Ronald Reagan:  The Politics of Symbolism (1984);  Erickson, Paul D., Reagan Speaks:  The Making of an American Myth (1985);  Friedman, Benjamin, Day of Reckoning: The Consequences of American Economic Policy Under Reagan and After (1988);  Friedman, Stanley P., Ronald Reagan:  His Life Story in Pictures (1986);  Greenstein, Fred I., ed., The Reagan Presidency (1983);  Hyland, W.  G., ed., The Reagan Foreign Policy (1987);  Johnson, Haynes, Sleepwalking through History: America in the Reagan Years (1991);  Jones, C., ed., The Reagan Legacy (1988);  Kirkpatrick, Jeane J., The Reagan Doctrine and U.S.  Foreign Policy (1985);  Mayer, J.  and McManus, D., Landslide:  The Unmaking of the President 1984-88 (1988); Noonan, Peggy, What I Saw at the Revolution:  A Political Life in the Reagan Era (1990);  Peterson, George E., ed., Reagan and the Cities (1986);  Reagan, Nancy, with Novak, William, My Turn (1989);  Reeves, Richard, The Reagan Detour (1985);  Regan, Donald T., For the Record:  From Wall Street to Washington (1988);  Speakes, Larry, The Reagan Presidency from Inside the White House (1988);  Will, Gary, Reagan's America:  Innocents at Home (1987).