Reagan, Ronald Wilson

REAGAN, RONALD WILSON

Folk wisdom holds that the burden of politics is much like the burden of fame. If that is true then no one knows that as well as Ronald Reagan. Born in Tampico, Illinois, on February 6, 1911, Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911–) grew up to become the fortieth president of the United States. Reagan was raised in several towns in the rural areas of northern Illinois. His family finally settled down in Dixon when he was nine. Reagan graduated from Eureka College in 1932. After graduating, he began working in Davenport, Iowa, as a radio sports announcer. He also authored a sports column on a weekly basis for a Des Moines newspaper.

While covering a sports story on Catalina Island, near Los Angeles, Reagan caught the attention of a agent from the Warner Brothers movie studio. After doing a screen test for Warner Brothers, Reagan was signed to a movie contract with the studio. His first film was Love Is on the Air (1937). In the several years following, he was seen in a number of forgettable films. There were a few, however, that were exceptions, such as Brother Rat (1938), Dark Victory (1939), and Kings Row (1941). His most notable film was made in 1940, Knute Rockne—All American, in which he portrayed football legend George Gipp. With the onset of World War II Reagan found himself making air force training films.

He continued to act after the conclusion of the war but he also found himself becoming extensively involved in politics. During his early political years, Reagan was an active member of several liberal organizations, including the Americans for Democratic Action. Eventually he began to grow fearful of communist subversion and his political attitudes made a turn to the right. In 1947 he testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee regarding the influence the communists had in the movie industry.

It was during the 1950s that Reagan's movie career faltered and he began working for the General Electric Company as a traveling spokesman and as the host of General Electric Theater (on television from 1954 to 1962). It was also during this period that he shifted from being a liberal and a Democrat to a conservative Republican.

Leadership was not unfamiliar to Reagan when he began to work in politics. By the time he co-chaired the Citizens for Goldwater-Miller Committee in 1964, he had already served on the board of directors of the Screen Actors Guild, serving as president from 1949 to 1952, and again in 1959. He had also served as chairman of the Motion Picture Industry Council in 1949. Two years after the Barry Goldwater campaign, Reagan successfully ran for governor of California against Democratic incumbent Edmund G. Brown.

Reagan's first term agenda as California's governor was to enact a freeze in state hiring, consequently restraining the growth rate of the state's bureaucracy. He also increased taxes to eliminate the state deficit and reduced social services. Welfare reform, reducing the caseload while increasing the payments to families with dependent children, was on the agenda for his second term. Reagan only had moderate success in promoting his programs.

In 1976 he made his first serious run for the U.S. presidency. His long-fought campaign against Gerald Ford was a lost battle and the Republican nomination went to Ford. Reagan was not deterred, and in 1980 he easily won his party's nomination and defeated the Democratic incumbent, Jimmy Carter, for the presidency.

Reagan's presidency was filled with substantial tax cuts. He reduced spending on domestic programs, increased military expenditures, and doubled the national debt. His moves are credited with decreasing the inflation rate, which had seen rapid growth in the 1970s, down to 3.5 percent during his tenure. On March 30, 1981, a 25-year old drifter named John Hinckley shot Reagan. His wounds were serious, but he recovered and the stories of his good humor while in the hospital added to his popularity.

In 1986 it was learned that the Reagan administration had participated in the shipping of arms to the radical Islamic fundamentalist government of Iran. This was apparently an effort to gain the release of American hostages who were being held by Iranian terrorists in Beirut, Lebanon. During investigations it became clear that high-ranking officials in the National Security Council, an agency that advises the president, had covertly moved money from the Iranian arms deals to aid the U.S.-supported insurrectionists against the (Marxist) Sandinista government in Nicaragua. While others resigned or were prosecuted for their involvement, Reagan himself was left relatively unscathed by the scandal.

Reagan's foreign affairs policies may be the legacy which will stand the test of time. During Reagan's tenure he pushed for the largest peacetime military buildup in American history. In 1983 he unveiled a proposal for the Strategic Defense Initiative. His strong military build up lead to the 1988 summit meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev where they signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) limiting the use of intermediate-range nuclear weapons. Arguably, this marked the beginning of the end of communist Russia. Many credit Reagan's policies with the end of communism in Europe and its reduction as a political alternative in much of the world.

Ronald Reagan retired to Santa Monica, California, with his second wife Nancy Davis Reagan (born Anne Frances Robbins). His last public act was to have President William Clinton inform the country of his Alzheimer's Disease.

See also: Laissez Faire, Supply-Side Economics

FURTHER READING

Carter, Hodding. The Reagan Years. New York: G. Braziller, 1988.

D'Souza, Dinesh. Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader. New York: Free Press, 1997.

Morris, Edmund. Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan. New York: Random House, 1999.

Reagan, Michael. The City on a Hill: Fulfilling Ronald Reagan's Vision for America. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1997.

Reagan, Ronald. The Common Sense of an Uncommon Man: The Wit, Wisdom and Eternal Optimism of Ronald Reagan. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998.