Today (6 February 2011) marks the centennial of the birth of Ronald Wilson Reagan, a man who lived the American Dream from stardom on the silver screen to serving as governor of the most populace state and finally leader of the free world. Reagan was also the last American President to hale from a non-Ivey League background. He was born in Tampico, Illinois to an alcoholic father, Jack, and supportive mother, Nelle, who were relatively poor, and struggled at times to put food on the table. Reagan had a particularly strong faith in the goodness of people, which stemmed from the optimistic faith of his mother. Reagan’s first job was as a lifeguard on Illinois’ Rock River and chalked up 77 rescues from 1926 to 1933. In 1932, he graduated with a B.A. degree in economics and sociology from Eureka College (Illinois). During college, Reagan gained a love for politics which lead to him being elected student-body president. He also was captain of the swim team and a member of the football team.
Having graduated in the middle of the Great Depression, Reagan struggled to find a job, but eventually landed one in Davenport, Iowa, working for a radio station. His main tasks were to re-create broadcasts of Chicago Cubs baseball games from telegraph scripts. In 1937 Reagan first travelled to California to cover the Cubs’ spring training. While in California, Reagan launched his acting career by landing a role in the film,
Love is on the Air, also that same year he enlisted in the US Army Reserves as a private. By the end of the year Reagan was commissioned a second lieutenant. In 1942 Reagan was ordered to active duty, unfortunately his terrible eyesight limited his service. He was reassigned to the Army Air Force Public Relations division and subsequently to the 1st Motion Picture Division. By the end of the Second World War, Reagan’s unit had produced nearly 400 military training and promotional films.
By 1940, Reagan had acted in 19 films, including
Dark Victory and a role in the film,
Knute Rockne, All American, in which he acquired the lifelong nickname of “The Gipper”; having played the coach, George “The Gipper” Gipp. In 1940 Reagan was in the film
Santa Fe Trail, which ensured his success as an actor, also that same year he married actress Jane Wyman and together they had two children, Maureen (1941-2007) and Christine (who died as an infant) and adopted a third, Michael (born 1945). Reagan’s personal favorite was his 1942 film,
Kings Row in which his starred as a double amputee and declared, “Where is the rest of me?” This quote also served as the title of his 1965 autobiography. Reagan hired his mother to answer fan mail and she would sign his name to photographs and letters – a habit which he was later criticized. Unfortunately Reagan’s stardom was knocked down when he was ordered to active duty by the army in 1942.
After World War II, Reagan was elected third-vice president of the Screen Actors Guild and subsequently elected president (1947-1952), leading the organization through the Red Scare of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Reagan provided the FBI lists of the names of actors with communist leanings. Reagan held true to his principles of democracy, freedom and capitalism even as an actor in southern California. In 1949 Reagan and Wyman were divorced (Reagan is the only American President to have ever been a divorcee). In 1949, Reagan met actress Nancy Davis, whom had mistakenly appeared on a Hollywood Black List, the two were married on 4 March 1952. Together they had two children: Patti (born in 1952) and Ron (born 1958). Throughout the 1950s Reagan starred in the GE Theater, a series of television dramas, which earned him $125,000 per annum ($1.25 million per annum in 2011 USD). While working for GE, Reagan was paid to tour the company’s factories, giving a series of speeches, it was this experience which served him well for his future career as a politician. His acting career wound-up as the presenter on the TV show Death Valley Days (1964-65).
Reagan began his campaign for governor of California in 1965 and his “Time for Choosing” speech at the state convention ensured his nomination as the Republican candidate. In November 1966, Reagan defeated two-term incumbent Pat Brown and was sworn in on 3 January 1967. The UC Berkley protests resulted in Reagan showing decisive leadership in reigning in anarchy and restoring order to California. Reagan also inherited a terrible economic situation and froze hiring and raised taxes to balance the budget and pay off the debt. Reagan was re-elected in 1970. In 1974, Reagan opted not to seek a third term as governor, but to focus his attention on challenging President Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination in 1976. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, succeeded Reagan as governor; ironically, the same Jerry Brown was elected to succeed another actor turned politician, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in January 2011. Ford narrowly defeated Reagan at the convention and then subsequently lost to the presidency to Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. The terrible economy of the 1970s (inflation had reached 12.5 per cent and un-employment was close to 10 per cent) and the Iran Hostage situation lead Reagan to challenge and defeat Carter in the 1980 cycle. During the election, Reagan famously said, “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his."
On 20 January 1981 Ronald Reagan was sworn-in as the 40th President of the United States of America. In his first inaugural address, he declared, "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Hours after taking office, the remaining 52 hostages taking from the American Embassy in Tehran by militant students were released. Only 69 days after taking office, Reagan and three others were shot by John Hinckley, Jr. while he was leaving a speaking engagement at the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C. The assassination attempt resulted in a punctured lung and Reagan joking with his doctors prior to surgery by saying, “I sure hope you guys are Republicans.” The event also resulted in Secretary of State Alexander Haig controversially declaring, “I am in charge here!” – forgetting that Vice President George H.W. Bush was acting president during Reagan’s recovery. Reagan famously quipped to his wife, “Honey, I forgot to duck!”
Reagan, dealing skillfully with Congress, obtained legislation to stimulate economic growth, curb inflation, decrease un-employment and strengthen America’s national defense. He embarked upon a course of cutting taxes and Government expenditures. Reagan pledged to end the Cold War and realized the US could out spend the Soviet Union and economically bring an end to communism. Federal defense spending resulted in a giant deficit, but by 1989 the Berlin had fallen and the Iron Curtain had collapsed. Reagan also took on the Air Traffic Controllers who had gone on strike, nearly shutting down the entire nation. From the Rose Garden, he told air traffic controllers that if they did not report for work within 48 they would forfeit their jobs and be terminated. On 5 August 1981, Reagan fired 11,345 air traffic controllers who failed to report to work and were thus in breach of the Labor–Management Relations Act 1947.
In 1984 Reagan easily won re-election, carrying every state except Minnesota, Democrat challenger Walter Mondale’s home state. The American prosperity was such, that citizens overwhelmingly answered the president’s question in the affirmative – “ask yourselves, are you better off today than you were four years ago?” In 1986 Reagan and Congress agreed to an overhaul of the income tax code, which eliminated many deductions and exempted millions of people with low incomes. By the end of the Reagan Administration, Americans were enjoying the longest peacetime prosperity without recession. By the end of the decade, inflation was at 4 per cent, un-employment was below 5 per cent and Reagan had managed to not only cut taxes across the board, but decreased the size of the Federal Government by 2 per cent per annum. Reigning in spending slowly continued though to the early 2000s. The economic policies of the Reagan Administration opened the doors for the tech boom of the 1990s.
A “war against international terrorism” was declared after evidence revealed Libya was involved in an attack on American soldiers in a West Berlin nightclub. During the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), Reagan ordered the Navy to escort oil tankers through the Persian Gulf ensuring the free movement of oil. Also a war on drugs was declared and Nancy Reagan lead a campaign aimed at American school children to “just say no” to drugs. In keeping with the Reagan Doctrine, he gave support to anti-Communist insurgencies in Central America, Asia, and Africa. The most famous gave rise to the Iran-Contra Affair of 1986, in which the US sought to improve Iranian relations by agreeing to supply arms to Iran. Israeli middlemen sold hi-tech arms in exchange for Iran negotiating with Lebanese Shia group, Hezbollah, to release six American hostages. Meanwhile, the proceeds from the arms sales were used to fund the Contras in Nicaragua, who were battling a communist regime. Congress has specifically outlawed such deals. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in Nicaragua v United States (1986) held the US was in breach of their obligation to respect state sovereignty. In less than a week Reagan’s approval rating dropped from nearly 70 per cent to less than 46 per cent. Reagan’s critics dubbed him the “Teflon President”, as in a couple weeks his popularity rating was in the mid-60s again. Reagan was the “Great Communicator” and spoke frankly with the American people and the world.
Reagan’s foreign policy plan of “peace through strength”, which was the re-creation of President Teddy Roosevelt’s policy of “walk softly and carry a big stick” had fully developed after his second inauguration. In four dramatic meetings, between 1986 and 1988 in Geneva, Reykjavík, Washington, D.C., Moscow, with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Reagan recognized the shift in mentality from adversary to conciliation and used diplomacy to negotiate the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty at the White House, which eliminated intermediate-range nuclear missiles. Reagan's personal mission was to achieve "a world free of nuclear weapons". The two leaders laid the framework for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START I, which was recently renewed by President Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev after ratifications in both the US Senate on 22 December 2010 and in the State Duma on 24 December 2010 and entered into force when the United States and Russia exchanged instruments of ratification on 5 February 2011 in Munich, Germany. On 12 June 1987, while speaking in front of the Berlin Wall's Brandenburg Gate, President Reagan declared, "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" The final sentence of this quote was taken out of the speech by the President’s speech writers and his advisors warned against such a bold statement, but after the cheers from the crowd, Reagan looked not to his notes or teleprompter, but to the crowd and uttered those now infamous words.
On 20 January 1989, the Reagans left office and retired to Bel Air, California a suburb of Los Angeles. Reagan, throughout his presidency enjoyed spending time at his ranch, “Rancho del Cielo”, near Santa Barbara. Reagan’s last speech was on 3 February 1994 in Washington, D.C. and his last official public appearance was at the funeral of the late President Richard Nixon. In August 1994, Reagan announced to the country he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, an incurable neurological disorder which destroys brain cells and ultimately causes death. In 2001 the former president fell at his home and broke his hip. President Reagan passed away on 5 June 2004. His body was flown to Washington, D.C. to lie in state in the rotunda of the Nation’s Capitol.
A hallmark of Reagan was his witty sense of humor and his grandfatherly image of strength and wisdom. As a sound check prior to his weekly radio address in August 1984, Reagan made the following joke as a way to test the microphone: "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." Ronald Reagan’s legacy continues to be influential on the development of the United States today. President Barak Obama’s Christmas 2010 reading list included two books: “President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime” and “Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power”, by Lou Cannon.
