Reagan, Ronald Wilson

Reagan, Ronald Wilson (1911–2004) 40th president of the United States. Reagan was born in and spent his childhood in Illinois. After graduating from college, he entered radio broadcasting. He moved to California with the goal of becoming an actor and secured a contract at Warner Brothers. Commissioned a cavalry officer, Reagan, a supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, spent World War II in Los Angeles making training films for the U.S. Army Air Force. From 1947 to 1951, and again in 1959, he served as president of the Screen Actors Guild; he cooperated with the House Committee on Un-American Activities and with the blacklist. Becoming more conservative politically, he supported Dwight D. Eisenhower for president in 1952 and 1956 and Richard Nixon in 1960. During the 1950s he was a spokesman for the General Electric Company, in which capacity he toured the country giving speeches with conservative and pro-business themes, until the company, concerned about the controversial nature of his lectures, fired him. Reagan won national attention in 1964 with his nominating speech for U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, and in 1967 he ran successfully for governor of California; during his term he began welfare reforms and eliminated the state budget deficit; he was re-elected in 1971. In 1980 he won the Republican nomination for president and went on to defeat the incumbent, Jimmy Carter, by a landslide 483 electoral votes to Carter's 43, promising tax cuts, increased defense spending, and a balanced budget. His campaign was aided by Carter's inability to free the staff of the U.S. embassy in Teheran held as hostages by the Iranian government and by Reagan's own affable, ingratiating personality. In his two terms as president, Reagan passed massive tax cuts, pared federal spending for environmental and safety regulations and for social programs, and approved huge increases in defense spending, including beginning the development of a Strategic Defense Initiative intended to block incoming missiles. Reagan suffered a major foreign policy blow when 241 marine peacekeepers died in a terrorist attack on army barracks in Lebanon (1983). More successful was his policy toward the Soviet Union. Reagan negotiated a major intermediate-range nuclear arms reduction treaty with the Soviet Union, and his staunch anti-Communism and his defense buildup are credited with helping to bring down the Soviet government in 1991. A major issue during his second term was U.S. funding of partisans of the ousted Somoza government (called Contras) in Nicaragua in their fight to overthrow that country's leftist Sandinista government (1986–87); Reagan denied knowing the United States was selling arms to Iran despite his stated policy of refusing to deal with terrorist governments and using the proceeds to fund the Contras' fight against the country's legitimate government in direct violation of a congressional ban on such aid. Despite the foreign policy problems of his second term, Reagan left office in 1989 still tremendously popular.