REAGAN, Ronald Wilson

(b. 6 February 1911 in Tampico, Illinois), former movie actor who rose to political prominence in the 1960s, was elected governor of California in 1966 and 1970, and became the fortieth president of the United States (1981–1989).

Reagan was the son of John Edward (Jack) Reagan, a shoe salesman, and his wife, Nelle Wilson Reagan. The family, which included an older brother, Neil, moved several times before settling in Dixon, Illinois, in 1920. Following his graduation from Eureka College in Illinois in 1932 with a degree in economics and sociology, Reagan worked as a radio announcer in Iowa. In 1937 he traveled to California, where, after a successful screen test, he signed an acting contract. He married the actress Jane Wyman on 26 January 1940. They had one daughter and adopted a son. The couple divorced in 1948. Reagan married another actress, Nancy Davis, on 4 March 1952. They had two children.

Reagan served several terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild. When his movie career waned in the 1950s, he became the host of a weekly television show sponsored by General Electric (GE). He also traveled around the country making speeches on GE's behalf. Although he had long been a New Deal Democrat, Reagan was coming to believe that people were too dependent on government. In his speeches he called for reductions in the size of government, fewer regulations on business, and lower taxes.

Reagan joined the Republican party in 1962. On 27 October 1964, he spoke on national television in support of the party's presidential nominee, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona. "The Speech," as it came to be known, was a reprise of themes Reagan had stressed in his appearances for GE. Although the speech did little to help Goldwater, it catapulted Reagan to national political prominence. The Washington columnist David Broder hailed it as the most successful political debut of the century. Whereas Goldwater scared off many Americans with his bluntness, the affable Reagan seemed less threatening. After Goldwater's overwhelming defeat in 1964, Reagan emerged as the leading conservative spokesman in the country.

Encouraged by Holmes Tuttle, a Ford Motor Company dealer, and other wealthy businessmen, Reagan ran for governor of California in 1966. He confounded the expectations of the Democratic incumbent, Edmund G. Brown, Sr., and others that he would be a weak candidate. While continuing to stress his opposition to big government, Reagan successfully played on the reactions of many white working-class and middle-class Californians to the bloody Watts (Los Angeles) race riots of 1965 and to continuing student unrest at the University of California—especially the Berkeley campus. Reagan insisted that radical students who disrupted school activities should "observe the rules or get out." Declaring that he was "sick at the sit-ins, the teach-ins, and walk-outs," he promised that as governor he would organize a "throw-out" of Clark Kerr, president of the University of California, on whom he blamed the "mess" at Berkeley. Reagan's conservative message struck a chord with many voters. He won a convincing victory, collecting 3.7 million votes to Brown's 2.7 million.

Kerr was dismissed in the first month of Reagan's term. When, in an effort to balance the budget, Reagan called for an end of free tuition for students at state universities, critics saw it as a further attack on the college system. Reagan made a limited run for president in 1968. Although not an officially declared candidate, his name appeared on the Republican primary ballot in Oregon and California. The first choice of many conservatives, especially from the South, Reagan finally announced his candidacy on the eve of the Republican convention, too late to derail the first-ballot nomination of the former vice president Richard Nixon.

Back in California, the governor and higher education continued to be at odds. The nadir came in 1969, when Reagan responded to a student strike at Berkeley by sending in the National Guard for seventeen days to impose order. Reagan won reelection in 1970, after a campaign in which he stressed the need for reform of the welfare system, which he denounced as requiring working Americans to pay taxes for programs that increased others' dependency on government. As governor, Reagan's policies sometimes belied his conservative words. Confronted by a budget crisis in 1967, he initially proposed a 10 percent across-the-board cut in spending. In the end, he supported increases in the corporate tax, maximum personal income tax, and state sales tax. During his eight years as governor, spending on higher education increased 136 percent, more than the overall 100 percent increase in state spending. Reagan made a second and more serious run for the presidency in 1976, losing the Republican nomination to Gerald Ford. After finally winning the nomination in 1980, he defeated Jimmy Carter to become the fortieth president of the United States. He was reelected in 1984. Reagan dropped from public view in 1994 after revealing that he had Alzheimer's disease.

Reagan reached his political apogee as president in the 1980s, a fact that obscures both the importance of the 1960s to him and his importance in the 1960s. It was in that decade that he was transformed from an actor to a national political figure. The 1960s saw the apparent triumph of liberalism over conservatism, a result that some thought was clinched by Goldwater's poor showing in 1964. California itself became a focal point for cultural and political radicalism, and to many it was the hippies in San Francisco—not the conservative governor in Sacramento—who defined both the state and the nation. Yet Reagan voters were what Nixon called the "Silent Majority": working-class and middle-class Americans who went to work, respected traditional values, and ultimately were much more representative of America than the vocal minority. Reagan was successful precisely because he opposed the political liberalism and cultural radicalism of the era. He was both a beneficiary and a leader of the conservative backlash that defined much of the latter part of the 1960s and helped shape the American political scene for the next three decades.

Reagan's autobiography is An American Life (1990). It presents Reagan's perspective on the 1960s, although it slights the decade in favor of his early years and especially his presidency. For a fuller view of the period, see Bill Boyarsky, Ronald Reagan: His Life and Rise to the Presidency (1981). Also useful is Lou Cannon, Reagan (1982).

Fred Nielsen