Ronald Reagan's "Legacy"

Ronald Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois on February 6, 1911 to John and Nelle Reagan. He was the youngest of four children. Because they were poor, Reagan’s family constantly moved, searching for a better life. Finally, when Reagan was nine, his father was offered a job in Dixon, Illinois, where his family settled permanently.
In high school, Ronald Reagan had admired the football team and wanted to join. Because of his small build, he was not accepted until his sophomore year. Even then he was underestimated and was usually a benchwarmer. Eventually he was given a chance to play as the right guard, and he ended up being one of his team’s best players.
Reagan also took an early interest in acting. As a small child his mother would sometimes take him with her to her theater group. At first, Reagan was shy and did not want to participate. But eventually he was persuaded to join in and loved performing ever since. When he reached high school, Reagan joined the theater group there.
Although few people attended college during that time period, Reagan was determined to go. He was accepted to Eureka University where he graduated in 1932 as an economics major.
Reagan had his first taste of politics during his freshman year of college. Due to a lack of funds, Eureka University planned to get rid of some of the faculty. If this happened, many of the upperclassmen would not have been able to take the classes necessary to graduate. Outraged, the students organized a strike. Reagan was chosen as the leader of his freshman class and was asked to speak on their behalf. The university was forced to call off the staff layoffs.
After graduation Reagan aspired to be a sports announcer. He started looking for work in Chicago, asking big time radio stations to give him a job. He was rejected, however, due to his lack of experience. He finally found a job in Davenport, Iowa. He became a radio announcer for WOC.
A year later WOC shut down, and Reagan and his coworkers were given jobs at WHO in Des Moines, Iowa. Here, Reagan was given a job as a sports announcer.
As a sports announcer, Reagan was asked to report from the training camp of the Cubs in Los Angeles, California. There he met with a former co-worker, who introduced him to Bill Meiklejohn, an agent who worked for actors. After an interview with Meiklejohn, Reagan was given the script to his first movie, Love is on the Air. After that, Reagan was given parts in mediocre movies, until he was finally cast as George Gipp in Knute Rockne - All American. From then on he was cast in better movies.
During his career as an actor, Ronald Reagan was drafted to serve in WWII. However, he was put on limited duty because of his poor eyesight. He was sent to a division created to make air force training films and documentaries, train camera crews, and accompany planes on combat missions. There he was asked to recruit Hollywood producers and directors to make training videos.
After the war, Reagan continued his acting career, and started speaking out about the fascism he had fought against during the war. Soon enough, he was also speaking out about communism. During that time, many of the actor’s unions were run by communist sympathizers. This left an impact on Reagan, who helped to get rid of the communist influence in Hollywood.
It was during this time that Reagan met Nancy Davis, a fellow actress. He was asked to meet with her because she was being confused with another Nancy Davis, who was a member of several communist groups. After a few months of dating, they were married. They had two children, Patricia Ann and Ron.
During the 1964 presidential election, Ronald Reagan campaigned for the Republican candidate Barry Goldwater. Although Goldwater was defeated by Lyndon Johnson, this experience made some members of the Republican Party ask Reagan to run for governor of California. At first Reagan was reluctant, but after giving several speeches he decided to run. In 1966, Ronald Reagan won the governorship against Democratic Governor Pat Brown.
Upon entering the governorship, Reagan discovered that the state of California had a large spending deficit. Through spending cutbacks and a tax increase, Reagan was able to turn the deficit into a surplus. He gave this surplus back to the citizens of California by taking the money off of their income tax.
After his first term, Reagan ran for a second term for governor of California against Jesse Unruh. Reagan won the election fifty-three percent to forty-five percent.
During his second term, Reagan worked to reform California’s welfare system. He believed that many people were taking advantage of welfare and was determined to stop the abuses. By better specifying who could and could not receive welfare, the state of California encountered another surplus.
After his second term as governor, Reagan began to campaign for the 1980 presidential election. There were seven other candidates vying for the Republican nomination. These candidates were: George Bush, Sr., Bob Dole, Howard Baker, John Anderson, John Connally, and Phil Crane. However, the two leading candidates were Bush and Reagan. Eventually George Bush dropped out of the race, and Ronald Reagan was approved as the Republican candidate for president. Reagan chose George Bush to be his vice president.
In the 1980 election, Reagan ran against the incumbent President Jimmy Carter and his Vice President, Walter Mondale. He focused his campaign on the military, unemployment, economy, and Communism. Reagan believed that the Carter administration had devastated the U.S. military and ruined the economy. He pointed out that under the Carter administration the unemployment rate had gone up more than twenty percent and inflation had risen into double digits. Reagan was also concerned that the U.S. military may become inferior to that of the Soviet Union.
Another major issue that affected the 1980 election was the Iranian hostage situation. During the end of Jimmy Carter’s presidency in 1979, the American supported leader of Iran, Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlevi, was overthrown and replaced by the Ayatollah Khomeini. To protest the shah’s leadership and its support from the U.S. revolutionaries took hostages from the U.S. embassy in Iran. Carter’s failure to free the hostages cost him the 1980 election. The hostages were finally released on January 20, 1981, the day of Reagan’s inauguration.
Because of the timing of the release of the American hostages, there has been speculation that the Reagan administration made secret dealings with Ayatollah Khomeini before the election to make sure that the hostages were not released until Carter was out of office. Evidence suggests that George Bush, Sr., and William Casey, Reagan’s campaign manager, met with Iranian officials on October 19, 1980, to discuss the hostage situation. These allegations have not yet been proven or disproved.
Only a few months into his presidency, Ronald Reagan was shot. On March 30, 1981, Reagan was giving a speech at the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C. As he left the hotel shots were fired, and Reagan was hit in the chest. The bullet had just missed his heart and punctured his lung. He survived having no long term effects on his health. Reagan’s press secretary James Brady, secret-service agent Tim McCarthy, and police officer Thomas Delahantey were also shot. James Brady was paralyzed by the bullet, leaving him confined to a wheelchair. The attempted assassin, John Hinckley, Jr., was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Reagan’s injury did not slow him down. One of his first priorities as president was to fix the economy. He believed in what was called supply-side economics, cutting taxes to encourage activity in the free market. He also believed that the economy worked best when it was not restricted by government regulations. Reagan’s economic plans eventually became better know as Reaganomics.
There is still a debate whether Reaganomics helped or hurt the American economy. During the Reagan era, inflation was decreased, interest rates fell, the unemployment rate fell, and private wealth grew. However, the number of people below the poverty level grew, the national deficit grew, and the trade deficit grew.
Another main focus of the Reagan administration was the War on Drugs. Near the beginning of his presidency, both Reagan and his wife Nancy took a zero tolerance stance on drugs. Nancy started the “Just Say No” campaign, telling children that if someone offered them drugs that they should “just say no.” Reagan continued passing tough anti-drug laws during his second presidential term. In 1986 he passed a law implementing minimum sentencing for people guilty of drug-related crimes.
During Reagan’s first year as president, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart retired. Reagan nominated Sandra Day O’Conner to replace him. She was accepted and became the first woman to be on the Supreme Court. Later he promoted William Rehnquist to replace Chief Justice Warren Burger and nominated Antonin Scalia to take Rehnquist’s place. He also nominated Anthony Kennedy to replace Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr.
In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon. In response to this, Reagan sent peacekeeping troops to Beirut. But soon these troops made a switch from peacekeeping to militant. By Reagan’s order, the military fired long range shells into Muslim villages, killing many civilians. In retaliation, on October 23, 1983 suicide bombers killed 241 U.S. soldiers. Reagan finally recalled the troops on February 7, 1984.
Two days after the suicide bombing in Beirut, American troops invaded Grenada. On October 19, 1983, the prime minister of Grenada, Maurice Bishop, was arrested and later killed by a military coup lead by Bernard Coard. Ronald Reagan, concerned that Grenada would become a haven for Cuban communism and also concerned about the safety of American students attending St. George’s University School of Medicine, decided to take over. However, Cuba had not supported the new government led by Coard, and Grenadian officials told the University staff that no one on the campus was in danger. It is believed that the real reason for the invasion was because the American government did not like the idea of a small, independent, successful socialist government. Nevertheless, the victory in Grenada caused many Americans to look past the Beirut incident and increased Reagan’s popularity.
In 1984 Reagan ran for reelection with George Bush, Sr., against former Democratic Vice President Walter Mondale and his vice presidential candidate, Geraldine Ferraro. The main issue of the election was the economy. Mondale frequently accused Reagan of hurting the economy and stated that if reelected Reagan would raise taxes. However, because unemployment had gone down and so had inflation, Reagan had a strong lead over Mondale throughout the campaign. On Election Day, Reagan won the electoral votes from every state except Minnesota and Washington, D.C.
From the very beginning of his political career, Reagan had been an adamant fighter against communism. He spent most of his budget on building up the military. In 1985 Reagan met for the first time with Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Union at the time. By then the Soviet Union was crumbling, and Reagan pushed to end it. On June 12, 1987, Reagan made a speech in West Berlin near the Berlin Wall. There he said the phrase that he may be most remembered for: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Two years later on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall was torn down.
Reagan used the Cold War as an excuse to support repressive right-wing regimes in Central America, including those in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. These countries are responsible for some of the most brutal human rights violations in recent history. However, because of their extremist view against liberal communism, Reagan supported them to weaken the influence of the Soviet Union.
In November 1986, information was leaked that the American government was selling weapons to Iran, a known supporter of terrorists and the country that had held American hostages several years earlier. The money gained from these transactions was given to the Contras, a guerilla group in Nicaragua opposed to a liberal government. This went against the Boland amendments, which stated that no government organization was allowed to fund the Contras. Several members of the Reagan administration were indicted for involvement in what came to be known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Reagan claimed to have known nothing about it.
Although most widely respected for “ending the Cold War,” Reagan should be remembered for how it was won. By supporting savage governments opposed to communism, many innocent people accused of “supporting communists” were tortured and killed, including men, women, and children. Reporters who exposed these horrible war crimes were often discredited by Reagan and other members of his administration, while those who covered up the stories were rewarded.
On a scale of one to ten, I would have to rate Ronald Reagan with a two. Being one of the most widely known and respected presidents of the United States, I would have thought that Reagan would have had a very impressive presidential record. However, from my research, it seems that the only thing he succeeded in doing was helping the economy, and even then he still increased the government’s budget deficit. People praise him for ending the Cold War, but for the price that was paid, I do not believe it was worth it. I would have to say that, based on what I have learned, Ronald Reagan was one of the worst presidents in the history of the United States.