After receiving the Republican nomination, Reagan selected George H. Bush, one of his primary opponents, to be his running mate. Reagan was a proponent of supply-side economics, which argues that economic growth can be created most effectively by offering incentives for people to produce supply goods and services. Such incentives included adjusting income tax and capital gains tax rates.
Accordingly, Reagan promised an economic revival that would affect the entire population. Reagan theorized that cutting tax rates would actually increase tax revenues because the lower rates would encourage people to work harder in order to be able to keep more of their money. Weeks before the election, Reagan had trailed Carter in most polls. Additionally, Reagan received Anderson, a liberal Republican, received 6.
Republicans captured the Senate for the first time since , and gained 34 House seats, but the Democrats retained a majority. 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 s and s.
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 s and s.
They favored the tax revolts that swept the nation in the late s under the leadership of predominantly older, white, middle-class Americans, which had succeeded in imposing radical reductions in local property and state income taxes. Voter turnout reflected this new conservative swing, which not only swept Reagan into the White House, but created a Republican majority in the Senate. Those who did cast a ballot were older, whiter, and wealthier than those who did not vote.
President Ronald Reagan during the s. Influenced by economist Arthur Laffer of the University of Southern California, Reagan cut income taxes for those at the top of the economic ladder the wealthiest of Americans , which was supposed to motivate the rich to invest in businesses, factories, and the stock market in anticipation of high returns.
Economic growth would also increase the total tax revenue—even at a lower tax rate. Reaganomics also included the deregulation of industry and higher interest rates to control inflation; however, these initiatives preceded Reagan and were conceived in the Carter administration.
Opponents argued that the tax cuts would benefit the rich and not the poor, who needed help the most. In response, Reagan presented his plan directly to the people.
Reagan was an articulate spokesman for his political perspectives and was able to garner support for his policies. In his campaign speeches, Reagan presented his economic proposals as merely a return to the free-enterprise principles that had been in favor before the Great Depression. Americans found this rhetorical style extremely compelling. Following his less-government intervention views, Reagan cut the budgets of non-military programs, including Medicaid, food stamps, federal education programs, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
While he protected entitlement programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, his administration attempted to purge many people with disabilities from the Social Security disability rolls. Reagan also focused on deregulating industry and weakening the power of labor unions. Banks and savings and loan associations were deregulated. Pollution control was enforced less strictly by the Environmental Protection Agency, and restrictions on logging and drilling for oil on public lands were relaxed.
His action effectively destroyed the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization PATCO , and ushered in a new era of labor relations in which, following his example, employers simply replaced striking workers. The weakening of unions contributed to the leveling off of real wages for the average American family during the s. In its effort to curb high inflation with dramatically increased interest rates, the Federal Reserve also triggered a deep recession.
Homelessness became a significant problem in cities, a fact the president made light of by suggesting that the press exaggerated the problem and that many homeless people chose to live on the streets. Economic growth resumed in , and gross domestic product GDP grew at an average of 4. Low income groups were also affected by the reduction of social spending, and inequality throughout the nation increased.
In contrast, the share of total income of the lowest fifth of households fell from 4. The Reagan years were a complicated era of social, economic, and political change, with many trends operating simultaneously and sometimes at cross-purposes. While many suffered, others prospered. Unlike hippies, however, yuppies tended to be materialistic and focused on image, comfort, and economic prosperity. He was also asked to intervene by the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, a group of six former British colonies that felt threatened by the events in Grenada.
Reagan welcomed the opportunity to act because he saw Grenada, on which Cuban laborers were building a new airport with a 10,foot runway, as a Soviet and Cuban beachhead in the region. The U. Tip O'Neill, questioned the wisdom and morality of U. The amendment, however, imposed no penalties for violation, which encouraged the administration to ignore it. Two years later, revelations that the CIA had aided in the mining of Nicaraguan ports and provided the Contras with an instructional manual that condoned terrorism and assassination caused an uproar on Capitol Hill.
The Senate passed a resolution condemning the mining. After much debate, Congress prohibited White House-supported funding for the Contras in the fall of In the summer of , the Reagan administration was drawn into military involvement in Lebanon, a precarious democracy in the Middle East and a cauldron of conflict among competing military and confessional groups, as the various religious and ethnic factions are known.
Reagan and his policymakers, including both his secretaries of state, believed that the United States had national security interests in the region to combat the Soviet influence. The United States also had an historic alliance with Israel, supported by every U.
President since the Jewish state was created in Reagan himself had been committed to Israel from its inception, which did little to endear him to Arab nations—or to Israel's chief adversary, the Palestine Liberation Organization PLO. At the same time, Reagan's relations with Israeli leader Menachim Begin were less than harmonious and worsened considerably early in the President's first term when Reagan watched in horror on White House television as Israeli bombers leveled Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon, killing many civilians.
Reagan became so angry that on August 12, , he telephoned Begin and told him the bombing had gone too far. Begin did, but the United States had moved a step closer toward involvement in Lebanon. Two months earlier, in June , Israel had invaded neighboring Lebanon in the hope of depriving the PLO of a base of operations.
The invasion, and particularly the bombing and shelling of Beirut, was globally condemned. Within the Reagan administration, the invasion touched off latent conflicts between the diplomats and the warriors. Secretary of State Haig and Secretary of State Shultz after him believed that the United States should become involved in working out a peace process in Lebanon. Reagan followed a middle course and in August sent U. Marines to Lebanon as part of a multinational peacekeeping force that also included French and Italian contingents.
Their mission was to maintain a cease fire during which PLO fighters in Lebanon would be allowed passage to neighboring Syria. But with the international force withdrawn, violence broke out again. Lebanese militia with ties to Israel massacred refugees at two camps in mid-September , including at least three dozen women and children. President Reagan, appalled by the massacre, ordered the U. The Americans found themselves in the midst of a full-fledged civil war, one in which they unwittingly became targets as Israeli troops withdrew.
In April , Lebanese terrorists from a group called Hezbollah—which received financial and logistical support from Iran and Syria—detonated a truck bomb in front of the American Embassy in Beirut; seventeen Americans died, including eight employees of the CIA. American forces continued to come under attack sporadically throughout the summer of In response to the deaths of six soldiers, Reagan ordered U.
The most deadly attack against the United States occurred on October 23, , when terrorists blew up the Marines' barracks at the Beirut airport, killing U. More than others were wounded in the attack, many of whom suffered permanent injuries.
Reagan subsequently called it, "the saddest day of my presidency…the saddest day of my life. The destruction of the Marine barracks forced Reagan to reassess his Lebanon policy. The small remaining U.
Against the opposition of the diplomats, Secretary Weinberger and the Joint Chief pushed for withdrawal of all U. In February , the surviving Marines were withdrawn to U. Reagan described the withdrawal as "redeployment," but he would not again send ground troops into Lebanon or any other place in the Middle East. Reagan's problems in the Middle East did not end with the withdrawal of U.
Beginning in late , anti-American terrorist groups stepped up their attacks on the United States. In December of that year, a terrorist group bombed the U. One year later, hijackers commandeered a Kuwaiti airliner and killed two American passengers.
In June , Hezbollah terrorists hijacked another airliner, forced it to land in Beirut, and killed a U. Navy diver who was among the passengers.
Shiite terrorists in and took hostage seven Americans living in Lebanon, hoping to force a shift in U. Reagan desperately wanted to free the hostages, but he and his advisers were publicly adamant that they would not negotiate with terrorists. The longer the hostages remained captive, however, the more Reagan longed for their release.
In , terrorists with connections to Libya also began a series of audacious attacks against Americans. Relations between the two countries had deteriorated severely after Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi had threatened Americans in , prompting a military encounter in which U.
Navy jets downed two Libyan warplanes. The conflict flared anew in and After U. Thirty-seven people died, but Qaddafi escaped. The air strike restrained Libya for a time but did not bring an end to the terror. Two days after the bombings, a pro-Libyan Palestinian group in Lebanon killed three hostages one American and two Britons in retaliation. The first was the clandestine sale of a small amount of U.
The Contra part of the affair was the attempt by a small group of National Security Council staff members and former military men to funnel proceeds from the sale of these weapons to the Contra rebels opposing the Nicaraguan government.
Reagan said in his diary and later acknowledged to the American people that he authorized the Iran arms sales, but he insisted he had no knowledge of the diversion of funds to the Contras. The Iran arms sale, which had the support of the Israeli government, was first proposed to Reagan by his national security adviser Bud McFarlane.
Reagan was told that U. McFarlane presented the initiative to Reagan as an opportunity to make useful contacts with reformist forces in Iran and also counter Soviet influence in the region. In , the Americans and Soviets signed a historic agreement to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles. Twenty-nine months later, Gorbachev allowed the people of Berlin to dismantle the wall.
After leaving the White House, Reagan returned to Germany in September —just weeks before Germany was officially reunified—and took several symbolic swings with a hammer at a remaining chunk of the wall. In November , Ronald Reagan was reelected in a landslide, defeating Walter Mondale and his running mate Geraldine Ferraro , the first female vice-presidential candidate from a major U. Reagan was given a state funeral in Washington, D. Nancy Reagan died of heart failure in at age 94 and was buried alongside her husband.
But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Nancy Reagan was an American first lady , the wife of Ronald Reagan, 40th president of the United States, and actress, noted for her efforts to discourage drug use by American youths.
On the second day of the highly contested Republican National Convention, it was still far from clear which candidate the party delegates intended to choose: sitting president Gerald Ford or his challenger, former actor and California governor Ronald Reagan. Amidst this Elected in as the 35th president of the United States, year-old John F.
Kennedy became one of the youngest U. Harry S. Truman , the 33rd U. In the White House from to , Truman made the decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan, helped rebuild postwar Europe, worked to Abraham Lincoln, a self-taught lawyer, legislator and vocal opponent of slavery, was elected 16th president of the United States in November , shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War.
Lincoln proved to be a shrewd military strategist and a savvy leader: His Emancipation Internationally, Reagan demonstrated a fierce opposition to the spread of communism throughout the world and a strong distrust of the Soviet Union, which in he labeled an "evil empire. During the campaign Reagan promised to restore the free market from excessive government regulation and encourage private initiative and enterprise.
Reagan's economic policies highlighted his long-standing dislike of high federal income taxes. Reagan embraced the theory of "supply side economics," feeling that tax cuts encouraged economic expansion which would result in increases in federal government revenue at a lower tax rate. Higher revenues would then be used to increase defense spending and balance the federal budget.
Bush once called it, "voodoo economics. At the same time, he insisted on, and for the most part, was successful in gaining increased funding for defense. Although inflation dropped from The administration modified its economic policy after two years by proposing selected tax increases and budget cuts to control rising deficits and higher interest rates.
As Reagan left office, the nation was experiencing its sixth consecutive year of economic prosperity. The economic gains, however, came at a cost of a record annual deficit and a ballooning national debt.
The budget deficit was exacerbated by a trade deficit. Americans continued to buy more foreign-made goods than they were selling. He also signed, reluctantly, trade legislation designed to open foreign markets to U. Reagan's domestic policies had a major impact on the American people and have had for many years. He followed up the passage of the largest tax cut in U.
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