Ronald Reagan’s America

Learning Objectives

  • Explain Ronald Reagan’s rise to the presidency and the accompanying shift in American politics
A timeline shows important events of the era. In 1980, Ronald Reagan is elected president; a portrait of Reagan is shown. In 1981, President Reagan is wounded in an assassination attempt; a photograph of Reagan lying on the ground surrounded by people is shown. In 1982, the Equal Rights Amendment dies after not achieving the required ratification. In 1987, Reagan addresses the Iran-Contra scandal. In 1989, the Berlin Wall falls; a photograph of a part of the Berlin Wall is shown. In 1991, Operation Desert Storm begins in the Persian Gulf, and the Internet opens to commercial use; a photograph of George H. W. Bush greeting troops in the Persian Gulf is shown. In 1992, William J. Clinton is elected. In 1993, Congress approves the North American Free Trade Agreement. In 1994, Republicans draft the Contract with America. In 1995, Timothy McVeigh bombs a federal building in Oklahoma City; a photograph of the bombed building is shown. In 1998, the U.S. House of Representatives impeaches President Clinton; a photograph of the impeachment proceedings is shown.

Figure 1. This timeline shows some of the major political events of the 1980s and 90s.

Introduction

Ad with Ronald Reagan and the words "Ronald Reagan speaks out against socialized medicine."

Figure 1. In 1961, when Congress began to explore nationwide health insurance for the elderly under Social Security, Reagan made a recording for the American Medical Association in which he denounced the idea—which was later adopted as Medicare—as “socialized medicine.” Such a program, Reagan warned his listeners, was the first step to the nation’s demise as a free society.

Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1981 with strongly conservative values but experience in moderate politics. He appealed to moderates and conservatives anxious about social change and the seeming loss of American power and influence on the world stage. Leading the so-called Reagan Revolution, he appealed to voters with the promise that the principles of conservatism could halt and revert the social and economic changes of the last generation. Reagan won the White House by citing big government and attempts at social reform as the problem, not the solution. He was able to capture the political capital of an unsettled national mood and, in the process, helped set an agenda and policies that would affect his successors and the political landscape of the nation.

Reagan’s Early Career

Prior to entering politics, Reagan was a Hollywood actor. Although many of his movie roles and the persona he created for himself seemed to represent traditional values, Reagan’s rise to the presidency was an unusual transition from pop cultural significance to political success. Born and raised in the Midwest, he moved to California in 1937 to become an actor. He also became a reserve officer in the U.S. Army that same year, but when the country entered World War II, he was excluded from active duty overseas because of poor eyesight and spent the war in the army’s First Motion Picture Unit. After the war, he resumed his film career; rose to leadership in the Screen Actors Guild, a Hollywood union; and became a spokesman for General Electric and the host of a television series that the company sponsored. As a young man, he identified politically as a liberal Democrat, but his distaste for communism, along with the influence of the social conservative values of his second wife, actress Nancy Davis, edged him closer to conservative Republicanism. By 1962, he had formally switched political parties, and in 1964, he actively campaigned for the Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater.

Link to Learning

Watch this clip from Bedtime for Bonzo (1951) starring Ronald Reagan to get a sense of his acting skill.

Reagan launched his own political career in 1966 when he successfully ran for governor of California. His opponent was the incumbent Pat Brown, a liberal Democrat who had already served two terms. Reagan, quite undeservedly, blamed Brown for race riots in California and student protests at the University of California at Berkeley. He criticized the Democratic incumbent’s increases in taxes and state government, and denounced “big government” and the inequities of taxation in favor of free enterprise. As governor, however, he quickly learned that federal and state laws prohibited the elimination of certain programs and that many programs benefited his constituents. He ended up approving the largest budget in the state’s history and approved tax increases on a number of occasions. The contrast between Reagan’s rhetoric and practice made up his political skill: capturing the public mood and catering to it, but compromising when necessary.

The Election of 1980

Domestic challenges, combined with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the hostage crisis in Iran, hobbled Jimmy Carter heading into his 1980 reelection campaign. Many Democrats were dismayed by his policies. The president of the International Association of Machinists dismissed Carter as “the best Republican President since Herbert Hoover.”[1] Angered by the White House’s refusal to back national health insurance, Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy challenged Carter in the Democratic primaries. Running as the party’s liberal standard-bearer and heir to the legacy of his slain older brothers, Kennedy garnered support from key labor unions and left-wing Democrats. Carter ultimately vanquished Kennedy, but the close primary tally exposed the president’s vulnerability.

In the general election, Ronald Reagan challenged Carter’s policy record. Reagan ran as a staunch fiscal conservative and a Cold War hawk, vowing to reduce government spending and shrink the federal bureaucracy. Reagan also accused his opponent of failing to confront the Soviet Union and vowed steep increases in military spending. Carter responded by calling Reagan a warmonger, but the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the confinement of 52 American hostages in Iran discredited Carter’s foreign policy in the eyes of many Americans.

Carter fared no better on domestic affairs. Unemployment remained at nearly 8 percent. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve’s anti-inflation measures pushed interest rates to an unheard-of 18.5 percent. Reagan seized on these bad economic trends. On the campaign trail he brought down the house by proclaiming: “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job, and a depression is when you lose your job.” Reagan would then pause before concluding, “And a recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his job.”[2]

The Religious Right Embraces Reagan

A photograph shows Ronald and Nancy Reagan on the campaign trail. They stand amidst a cheering crowd, surrounded by red, white, and blue balloons. Nancy Reagan waves to the crowd; Ronald Reagan smiles and places a hand on her back.

Figure 2. Ronald Reagan campaigns for the presidency with his wife Nancy in South Carolina in 1980. Reagan won in all the Deep South states except Georgia, although he did not come from the South and his opponent Jimmy Carter did.

Although Reagan was only a nominal Christian and rarely attended church, the religious right embraced him. Reverend Jerry Falwell directed the full weight of the Moral Majority behind Reagan. The organization registered an estimated two million new voters in 1980. Reagan also cultivated the religious right by denouncing abortion and endorsing prayer in school. The IRS tax exemption issue resurfaced as well, with the 1980 Republican platform vowing to “halt the unconstitutional regulatory vendetta launched by Mr. Carter’s IRS commissioner against independent schools.”[3] Early in the primary season, Reagan condemned the policy during a speech at South Carolina’s Bob Jones University, which had recently sued the IRS after the school’s ban on interracial dating led to the loss of its tax-exempt status.

The Growth of the New Right

Reagan defeated Carter soundly to win the presidency in 1980. His victory was the result of a combination of dissatisfaction with the presidential leadership of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in the 1970s and the growth of the New Right. This group of conservative Americans included many very wealthy financial supporters and emerged in the wake of the social reforms and cultural changes of the 1960s and 1970s. Many were evangelical Christians, like those who joined Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, and opposed the legalization of abortion, the feminist movement, and sex education in public schools.

Reagan also attracted people, often dubbed neoconservatives, who would not previously have voted for the same candidate as conservative Protestants did. Many were middle- and working-class people who resented the growth of federal and state governments, especially benefit programs, and the subsequent increase in taxes during the late 1960s and 1970s. They favored the tax revolts that swept the nation in the late 1970s under the leadership of predominantly older, white, middle-class Americans, which had succeeded in imposing radical reductions in local property and state income taxes.

Republicans Back in the White House

Voter turnout reflected this new conservative swing, which not only swept Reagan into the White House but created a Republican majority in the Senate. Only 52 percent of eligible voters went to the polls in 1980, the lowest turnout for a presidential election since 1948. Those who did cast a ballot were older, whiter, and wealthier than those who did not vote. Strong support among White voters, those over forty-five years of age, and those with incomes over $50,000 proved crucial for Reagan’s victory.

Having Republican control of the Senate, and significant Republican inroads in the House of Representatives, meant that Reagan and the conservatives believed they had a mandate to make policy changes. In the 1980 election, Republicans gained a net of 35 seats from the Democratic Party in the House, but Democrats retained a significant majority. However, many Democratic congressmen from the South (known as “Boll weevils”) frequently took conservative stances on issues, allowing Republicans to have a working ideological majority for some of President Reagan’s proposals during his first two years in office.

Watch It

Watch this campaign advertisement to see Reagan’s rhetorical style and critique of incumbent Jimmy Carter in the 1980 general election.

Try It

Glossary

Moral Majority: The Moral Majority was a prominent American political organization associated with the Christian right and Republican Party. It was founded in 1979 by Baptist minister Jerry Falwell Sr. and associates It played a key role in the mobilization of conservative Christians as a political force and particularly in Republican presidential victories throughout the 1980s.

New Right: a loose coalition of American conservatives, consisting primarily of wealthy businesspeople and evangelical Christians, which developed in response to social changes of the 1960s and 1970s

  1. William Winpisinger, quoted in Cowie, Stayin’ Alive, 261. ↵
  2. Patterson, Restless Giant, 148. ↵
  3. Crespino, “Civil Rights and the Religious Right,” 103. ↵