Ronald Reagan
From The UCSC Wikipedia Trust Project
Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989) and the 33rd Governor of California (1967–1975). At 69, he was the oldest person ever to be elected President of the United States. Before entering politics, Reagan was a successful Hollywood and television actor, head of the Screen Actors Guild, and a spokesman for General Electric. He was a prominent New Dealer in the 1940s, but by 1960 Reagan had become a conservative Republican. He strongly opposed communism and socialism, and as president he sought a reduction to regulation, free-trade agreements, welfare cutbacks, and tax cuts.
He married Jane Wyman in 1940, and they divorced in 1948. In 1952, he married Nancy Davis, with whom he remained for the rest of his life, fifty-two years.
Reagan is credited with restoring America's power and prosperity after a period of stagflation in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the withdrawal from Vietnam. He rejected Détente and escalated the Cold War with the Soviet Union through a military build-up and a firm foreign policy of "peace through strength," but also negotiated with Mikhail Gorbachev to shrink both countries' nuclear arsenals and help bring a peaceful end to the Cold War.
Reagan's persuasive quotable speaking style earned him the sobriquet "The Great Communicator," while his survival of numerous scandals earned him the nickname "The Teflon President."[1] Notable appointments included Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who was the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court, and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.
After leaving office, Reagan wrote a well-received autobiography titled An American Life. In several recent ratings of American presidents, Ronald Reagan ranked high.[1] After suffering from Alzheimer's disease for at least a decade, he died in 2004 at the age of 93 in Bel-Air, California. He is the second longest-lived president in U.S. history, just behind Gerald Ford by 45 days.
Early life
Reagan was born on February 6, 1911, in a flat above the local bank in Tampico, Illinois. He was the second of two sons born to John Edward Reagan (1883–1941), an Irish American Catholic, and Nelle Clyde Wilson (1883–1962), who was of Scottish, Canadian, and English descent, and a member of the Disciples of Christ. Reagan was raised in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) faith. Reagan's father was a problem drinker and sporadically unemployed.
His paternal great-grandfather, Michael Reagan, came to the United States from Ballyporeen, County Tipperary, Ireland, in the 1860s, and the rest of his paternal family also immigrated from Ireland in the 1800s. [2] Prior to his immigration, the family name was spelled Regan. His maternal great-grandfather, John Wilson, immigrated to the United States from Paisley, Scotland, in the 1840s and married Jane Blue, a Canadian from Queens, New Brunswick. Reagan's maternal grandmother, Mary Anne Elsey, was born in Epsom, Surrey, England.
Reagan's family lived in several small Illinois towns and, briefly, Chicago during Reagan's earliest years. In 1920, when Reagan was nine years old, the Reagan family settled in the small town of Dixon, Illinois. The midwestern "small universe" made a lasting impression on Reagan "where I learned standards and values that would guide me the rest of my life", Reagan recounted in his autobiography. "I learned that hard work is an essential part of life - that by and large, you don't get something for nothing - and that America was a place that offered unlimited opportunity to those who did work hard. I learned to admire risk takers and entrepreneurs, be they farmers or small merchants, who went to work and took risks to build something for themselves and their children, pushing at the boundaries of their lives to make them better. I have always wondered at this American marvel."
In Dixon, Reagan attended Dixon High School, where he developed a gift for storytelling and acting. In 1926, Reagan's first job was that of a lifeguard at the Rock River in Lowell Park, near Dixon. He was credited with saving 77 lives during the seven summers he worked there.
After High School, Reagan attended Eureka College, where he majored in economics and sociology. He was a member of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, and was very active in sports.
From radio announcer to Hollywood star
In 1932, after graduating from Eureka, Reagan worked at radio stations WOC in Davenport, Iowa, and then WHO in Des Moines as an announcer for Chicago Cubs baseball games, getting only the bare outlines of the game from a ticker and relying on his imagination to flesh out the game. Once, during the ninth inning of a game, the wire went dead but Reagan smoothly improvised a fictional play-by-play (in which hitters on both teams fouled off numerous pitches) until the wire was restored. As a Headline radio announcer, Reagan took a screen test that led to a seven-year contract with the Warner Brothers studio. Reagan's clear voice, easy-going manner, and athletic physique made him popular with audiences; the majority of his screen roles were as the leading man, beginning with "B" films and carrying on through "A" films. His first screen credit was the starring role in the 1937 movie Love Is On the Air. By the end of 1939, he had appeared in 19 films. Before Santa Fe Trail in 1940, he played the role of George "The Gipper" Gipp in the film Knute Rockne, All American. From this role he acquired the nickname the Gipper, which he retained the rest of his life. Reagan considered his best acting work to have been in Kings Row (1942). He played the part of a young man whose legs were amputated. He used a line he spoke in this film, "Where's the rest of me?", as the title for his autobiography. Other notable Reagan films include International Squadron, Tennessee's Partner, Hellcats of the Navy, This Is the Army, The Hasty Heart, Hong Kong, The Winning Team, Bedtime for Bonzo, Cattle Queen of Montana, Storm Warning, The Killers (1964 remake), and Prisoner of War movie. His many leading ladies included Jane Wyman, Priscilla Lane, Ann Sheridan, Viveca Lindfors, Patricia Neal, Barbara Stanwyck, Rhonda Fleming, Ginger Rogers, Doris Day, Nancy Davis, and Angie Dickinson. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Reagan was commissioned as a reserve officer in the Army in 1935. In November 1941, Reagan was called up for combat duty but disqualified because of his astigmatism. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Lieutenant Reagan was activated and assigned to the First Motion Picture Unit in the United States Army Air Forces, which made training and education films for the war effort. Reagan recalled in his first autobiography Where's the Rest of Me that he witnessed inefficiencies in his Army department because bureaucrats wanted to protect their own jobs and budgets. That's when his enthusiasm for government efforts began to wane and his enthusiasm for free markets - and competition - began to rise, he recalled. Reagan remained in Hollywood for the duration of the war.
Reagan's film roles became fewer in the late 1950s; he moved to television as a host and frequent performer for General Electric Theater. Reagan appeared in over 50 television dramas. Reagan served as the president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) from 1947 until 1952, and again from 1959 to 1960. In 1952, a Hollywood dispute raged over his granting of a SAG blanket waiver to MCA, which allowed it to both represent and employ talent for its burgeoning TV franchises. He went from host and program supervisor of General Electric Theater to producing and claiming an equity stake in the TV show itself. At one point in the late 1950s, Reagan was earning approximately $125,000 per year ($800,000 in 2006 dollars). His final work as a professional actor was as host and performer from 1964 to 1965 on the popular Death Valley Days television series. Reagan's final big-screen appearance came in the 1964 film The Killers, a remake of an earlier version, based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Reagan portrayed a mob chieftain. This film, the first made-for-TV movie, was originally produced for NBC, but the network's censor found it too violent. Reagan's co-stars were John Cassavetes, Lee Marvin, and Angie Dickinson.
In 1989, after leaving office, Reagan was contacted by the producers of the Back To The Future film trilogy about taking the role of the mayor of the fictional town of Hill Valley, "Mayor Hubert" in the third installment. According to Reagan's agent Lew Wasserman, he contemplated taking the role before eventually turning it down.
Marriages
Reagan married actress Jane Wyman on January 24, 1940; they had a daughter, Maureen in 1941; an adopted son, Michael in 1945, and a second daughter, Christine, born and died June 26, 1947. They divorced on June 28, 1948. Reagan is the only United States President to date to have been divorced.
Reagan married actress Nancy Davis on March 4, 1952. His best man was William Holden. Their daughter Patti was born on October 21 of the same year. In 1958, they had a second child, Ron.
From the very start of their marriage, Ronald and Nancy Reagan were "soul mates." This deep relationship was with the Reagans throughout all of their married life. While President and First Lady, the Reagans frequently displayed their affection for each other in public, and in private. Even when the President was debilitated by Alzheimer's Disease, Nancy Reagan reaffirmed their love for each other, stating: "We were very much in love, and still are."
Early political career
Reagan was originally a Democrat, a supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal, and a lifelong admirer of FDR's leadership skills. In the late 1940s, Reagan was still a visible speaker defending President Harry S. Truman. But his political loyalties shifted to the Republican Party.
His first major political role was as president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the labor union that represented most Hollywood actors. In this position, he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) on suspected communist influence in the motion picture industry. The Screen Actors Guild, he claimed, was being infiltrated by communists. In private he and his first wife, Jane Wyman, met with FBI agents in 1947 to name "suspected subversives". Among those he allegedly fingered were actors Larry Parks, Howard Da Silva, and Alexander Knox, each of whom was later called before HUAC and subsequently blacklisted in Hollywood. (This information was not revealed until a 2002 Freedom of Information Act request.)[2] FBI files allegedly show that he continually gave the FBI names of people he suspected of communist ties.
Now a staunch anti-communist, Reagan supported the presidential candidacies of Dwight D. Eisenhower (1952;1956) and Richard Nixon (1960), while remaining a registered Democrat. Through these years, Reagan read about American history, the Founding Fathers, and free market economics. (Reagan had also majored in economics in college.) After reading Nobel Prize-winner Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, Reagan came to believe that socialism was a threat to the American way of life. Witnessing what he believed to be inefficient and overreaching government programs firsthand, Reagan believed that liberals were naively leading the country down a road to serfdom.
Following the election of John F. Kennedy, he formally switched parties to become a Republican in 1962 — in time to mount the 1964 bandwagon of conservative Presidential contender Barry Goldwater. Speaking on Goldwater's behalf, Reagan revealed his ideological motivation: "The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government set out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing."[3]
"I didn't leave the Democratic Party", he claimed. "The party left me."[4] Reagan later explained in his autobiography An American Life that Franklin D. Roosevelt warned that welfare programs could destroy the work ethic like "a narcotic" and that Roosevelt liquidated the temporary welfare programs designed to aid the country through the Great Depression once the Depression passed (only to be revived after his death), and Reagan implied that Roosevelt would have also disapproved of the change in the Democratic Party.
Governor of California
In 1966, he was elected the 33rd Governor of California, defeating two-term governor Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, after working with UC Regent Edwin Pauley to crack down on anti-war protesters at UC Berkeley. He was re-elected in 1970, defeating "Big Daddy" Jesse Unruh, but chose not to seek a third term. Ronald Reagan was sworn in as governor of California on January 3, 1967. In his first term, he froze government hiring but also approved tax hikes to balance the budget. Reagan quickly squelched protest movements of the era. During the People's Park protests in 1969, he sent 2,200 state National Guard troops to the Berkeley campus of the University of California. In a speech in April 1970, he stated, "If it's to be a bloodbath, let it be now. Appeasement is not the answer."[5]
He worked with Democratic Assembly Speaker Robert Moretti to reform welfare in 1971. Reagan also opposed the construction of a large federal dam, the Dos Rios, which would have flooded a valley of American Indian ranches. Later, Reagan and his family took a summer backpack trip into the high Sierra to a place where a proposed trans-Sierra highway would be built. Once there, he declared it would not be built. One of Reagan's greatest frustrations in office concerned capital punishment. He had campaigned as a strong supporter; however, his efforts to enforce the state's laws in this area were thwarted when the Supreme Court of California issued its People v. Anderson decision, which invalidated all death sentences issued in California prior to 1972, although the decision was quickly overturned by a constitutional amendment. Despite his support for the death penalty, Reagan granted two clemencies and a temporary reprieve during his governorship. As of 2006, no other clemency has been granted to a condemned person in California. The only execution during Reagan's governorship was on April 12, 1967, when Aaron Mitchell was executed by the state in San Quentin's gas chamber. There was not another execution in California until 1992. When the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped Patty Hearst in Berkeley and demanded the distribution of food to the poor, Reagan suggested that it would be a good time for an outbreak of botulism.[6] After the media reported on the comment, he apologized.
Reagan promoted the dismantling of the public psychiatric hospital system, proposing that community-based housing and treatment replace involuntary hospitalization, which he saw as a violation of civil liberties issue. The community replacement facilities have never been adequately funded, either by Reagan or his successors.Template:Fact Reagan was strongly influenced by the classical liberals. When asked in an interview in 1975 which economists were influential on him, he replied: "Bastiat and von Mises, and Hayek and Hazlitt–I’m one for the classical economists." [3]
Reagan was the first governor to use a corporate business jet for official travel. California received one of the first Cessna Citation jets manufactured. His pilot, Bill Paynter, changed his Democratic voting registration to Republican within six months of meeting Reagan. Paynter often told listeners the Reagan on TV was the same Reagan in person, a man who walked his talk. Reagan would often ask his flight crew if it would be any inconvenience to change the published flight schedule because he did not want to keep his support staff from being with their families and any family planned events.
Presidential campaigns
1976 presidential campaign
Reagan first tested the Presidential waters in 1968 as part of a "Stop Nixon" movement which included those from the party's left led by then-New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Reagan managed to win the pledges of some 600 delegates, but Nixon quickly steamrolled to the nomination; Reagan urged the convention to nominate Nixon unanimously.
In 1976, Reagan challenged incumbent President Gerald Ford, a moderate. Reagan soon established himself as the conservative candidate; like-minded organizations such as the American Conservative Union became the key components of his political base. He relied on a strategy crafted by campaign manager John Sears of winning a few primaries early to seriously damage the liftoff of Ford's campaign, but the strategy quickly disintegrated. Poor management of expectations and an ill-timed speech promising to shift responsibility for federal services to the states without identifying any clear funding mechanism caused Reagan to lose New Hampshire and later Florida. Reagan found himself cornered, desperately needing a win to stay in the race.
Reagan's stand in the North Carolina primary was a do-or-die proposition. Hammering Ford on the Panama Canal, detente with the Soviet Union, busing of school children, and Henry Kissinger's performance as Secretary of State, Reagan won 53% to 47%. He used that bit of momentum to add the major states of Texas and California, but then fell back from losing efforts in Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Michigan. As the party's convention in Kansas City neared, Ford appeared close to victory, thanks to New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania delegates ostensibly under the control of Ford's liberal Vice President Rockefeller. Acknowledging the strength of his party's moderate and liberal wing, Reagan balanced his ticket by choosing as his running mate moderate Republican Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania. Nonetheless, Ford squeaked by with 1,187 delegates to Reagan's 1,070. Reagan's concession speech was a stirring exhortation, emphasizing the dangers of nuclear war and the moral threat posed by the Soviet Union. Although Reagan lost the nomination, he received 307 write-in votes in New Hampshire, 388 votes as an Independent on Wyoming's ballot, and an electoral delegate from Washington voted for him in the November election.
1980 presidential campaign
In 1980, Reagan won the Republican nomination for President. He received 67% of the Popular vote while his opponent only received 33%, handily winning most of the primaries after an early defeat in the Iowa caucuses. During the convention, Reagan proposed a complex power-sharing arrangement with Gerald Ford as Vice President, but nothing came of it. Instead, Reagan selected his opponent in the primaries, George H. W. Bush, who had extensive international experience.
On August 4, 1980, Ronald Reagan, as a candidate, delivered a speech near Philadelphia, Mississippi at the annual Neshoba County Fair. Reagan excited the crowd when he announced, "I believe in states' rights. I believe we have distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended to be given in the Constitution to that federal establishment." He went on to promise to "restore to states and local governments the power that properly belongs to them." Philadelphia was the scene of the June 21, 1964 murder of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Black leaders charged Reagan was signaling a racist message to his audience. When Carter tried to accuse Reagan of racism because of his record, it largely backfired against Carter, who failed to stir up enthusiasm among black Democrats.[7] When one of Carter's main black supporters Andrew Young tried to whip up black anger by stating to an Ohio audience that if Reagan were elected, it would be "okay