The Reagan Years
The Great Communicator
Ronald Reagan
• B-February 6, 1911
• B film actor
• 1966 -Governor of California
• Re-elected in 1970
Reagan’s cabinet
• Secretary of State-Alexander Haig
• Sec of Defense -Caspar Weinberger
• Secretary of Treasury-Donald Regan
"The Troika"
• (from left to right) Chief of Staff James Baker III
• Counselor to the President Ed Meese
• Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Deaver
Assassination attempt
• 69 days after inauguration, he was shot by a would-be assassin, John
Hinckley
• Press Secretary James Brady was also shot
• "Honey, I forgot to duck“
• Left the hospital 12 days later
• Nearly died
• America never knew this.
Brady Bill, 1993
• Named for James Brady
• Purchasers to wait up to five days for a background check to occur before
being allowed to purchase a handgun
• was replaced by a computerized criminal background check prior to any
firearm purchase from a dealer holding a Federal Firearms License
Fighting stagnation
• High inflation
• Combined with economic stagnation
• Unemployment
• Economic recession
Reagan sought a solution
• across-the-board tax cuts
• combined with reductions in social welfare spending
“Reaganomics”
• Two key ideas:
• Lower taxes
• Smaller government controls
• "Trickle-down economics“
• "Voodoo Economics”
ERTA
Economic Recovery and Tax Act, 1981
• Stimulate business activity by lowering taxes overall and slashing rates for the
rich..
• Reduced personal income taxes 25% OVER THE NEXT THREE YEARS
• Free capitalists from government regulations to increase business efficiency
and innovation
OOPS
• But less money for federal programs
• In fact, Congress shifted $70 billion per year from domestic programs to
military
It worked?
• Inflation dipped 3% per year
• National economy boomed in the short term.
• 20 million jobs for professional and managerial workers, support staff
But…
• Record deficit spending
• Tripling of the national debt by the end of his second term.
Balanced Budget ,1984
• America will forgive deficits if we are strong militarily
• Budget Director-David Stockman
• Slash military
• Slash Social Security
PAC
Summer of 1981
• Set limits for public employee unions
• Signaled that it was acceptable for businesses to play hardball with
unions
• Air traffic controllers were on strike
• Reagan fired them
• Proved to be a political coup as the public came to perceive the strikers as
greedy and unconcerned with public safety.
Decline of labor unions
• Lessened by one million members.
• New problems
• Employers might move a factory to a new site.
• Sell out to a new owner.
• Overall there was the decline of blue-collar jobs
But we were looking good!
• YUPPIES
• Young urban professionals
James G. Watt
Secretary of the Interior
• Controversial appointment
• He had worked to open federal lands in the West for more intensive
development
• Once blamed air pollution on the natural emissions from trees and compared
environmentalist to Nazis
What a winner!
• A public controversy erupted after a speech by Watt on Sept. 21, 1983, when
he said about his staff: "I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And
we have talent."
• Within weeks of making this statement, Watt resigned.
1982
Things ain’t looking too good!
• The nation sinks into its worst recession since the Great Depression.
• Reagan fears budget deficits as high as $200 billion.
• On November 1, more than 9 million Americans are officially unemployed
Poverty level rose
• But it usually had more to do with the isolation of many job seekers in poverty
neighborhoods without access to the jobs in suburbia
• Homelessness in America became even more of a problem
• Talked about the poverty in America was due to laziness, poor education or
drugs
The First Lady
• "Just Say No"
Sandra Day O'Connor
• First woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court
Cold war is HOT again
• Renewed arms race
• Oversaw a massive military build-up
• "Peace through strength."
• Goal to win the Cold War
Win the Cold War against the “evil empire”
• Economic
• Military
• Clandestine
Economic
• Decrease Soviet access to high technology
• Diminish their resources, including depressing the value of Soviet commodities
on the world market
Military
• Increase American defense expenditures to strengthen the US negotiating
position
• Force the Soviets to devote more of their economic resources to defense
Get what you need
• Caspar Willard "Cap" Weinberger
• Secretary of Defense
• Don’t worry about the budget
• Spent $34 million per hour
Clandestine
• Support anti-Soviet factions around the world from Afghanistan resistance
fighters in his early years to Solidarity later in his presidency.
“Star wars”
SDI Strategic Defense Initiative
• Space-based systems to protect USA from attack by strategic nuclear missiles
• Spent nearly $50 billion between 1983 and 1993
• Never produced any deployable systems or major technological breakthroughs
Reagan is scary!
• Freeze Movement
• freeze all production of new nuclear arms and to leave levels of nuclear
armament where they currently were
• Patty Davis
“Focus of evil in the modern world”
• Wanted to get into the fight with Communism as a morale battle
• Rhetoric of the 1950’s
• Did not trust DETENTE
• You can’t make a treaty with the Soviets
Murder in the Air
• Korean Air Lines Flight 007 shot down over Soviet air space
• September, 1983
• Over 200 people died
Missiles are put in Europe
• Diplomacy through a show of strength
• Deployment of missiles in Italy and Germany
The super power talks end!
• For the first time, in 20 years, no talks were going on.
Reagan Doctrine
• “We must not break faith with those who are risking their lives...on every
continent, from Afghanistan to Nicaragua ... to defy Soviet aggression and
secure rights which have been ours from birth. Support for freedom fighters is
self-defense."
• Doctrine aimed to justify American support of the Contras in Nicaragua,
support of fighters in Afghanistan, and our help to Angola.
Lebanon
• U.S. involvement was limited
• UN mandate for a Multinational Force
• Force of 800 U.S. Marines was sent to Beirut to evacuate PLO forces
• Forces were withdrawn shortly after the October 23,1983 bombing of a
barracks in which 241 Marines were killed.
The saddest day of his life and of his presidency
• We DID NOTHING!
• We just left
• October 23,1983 bombing of a barracks in which 241 Marines were killed.
Operation Urgent Fury
• Communist coup on the small island nation of Grenada in 1983
• Developed an invasion plan to restore the former government
• It worked.
Iran-Iraqi war
• US
• Neutral
• Mainly sided with Iraq
• Believed that Saddam Hussein was less dangerous than Ayatollah
Khomeini
• Americans feared an Iranian victory would embolden Islamic
fundamentalists
1983
• America is working again and this upward trend will continue for 8 more years
Mondale for President?
• D-Mondale
• Ferraro-VP
Issues
• Age-
• TV debate Reagan seemed confused
• Stand on Russia
1984 Election
• R-Reagan
• D-Mondale
• Ferraro-VP
New Chief of Staff
• Don Regan
• He was told to get someone to handle Nancy , and he did not.
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
A New Leader
• Strove for significant reforms to help the economic growth of Russia
• Two key phrases of the Gorbachev era:
• "glasnost" (openness)
• "perestroika" (reform)
•
Let’s go to Europe
• Reagan goes on a goodwill tour
The Bitburg Doctrine?
May 1985
• Visit Kolmesholhe Cemetery near Bitburg to pay respects to the soldiers
interred there.
• White House thought that American and German soldiers were interred
there
• Symbolic of the goodwill between the two countries
BUT…
• 49 of the graves contained the remains of men who had served in the SS
• About 2000 other German soldiers who had died in both World Wars, but no
Americans.
READ
• Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court
The President has cancer?
July 1985
• He did not have cancer, something inside him had cancer and it had been
removed.
• Nancy had wanted to put it off
• (Her astrologer said so)
• But he had the surgery and removed 2 feet of his colon
Rock Hudson is dead
• October 1985
• AIDS came out of the closet and a turning point was reached with the public
awareness and funding for the disease
• Very little response from the White House
• SLOW Help
Summit in Geneva
November , 1985
• Gorbachev and Reagan
• Nuclear war should never be fought and can never be won.
Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act
• "the first binding constraint imposed on federal spending, and its spending
caps have become part of every subsequent U.S. budget. Together with a
rapidly growing economy it produced the first balanced federal budget in a
quarter of a century."
The Challenger
• January 28, 1986
• "We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as
they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and 'slipped the surly
bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.'"
Reykjavik Summit
October, 1986
• Gorbachev proposes drastic cuts in all classes of nuclear weapons.
• Reagan agrees.
• Gorbachev tells Reagan this is alright provided U.S. confines SDI to the
laboratory.
• Reagan walks away from Summit
• READ---Chernobyl disaster
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall."
Arms for Hostages
• Improve U.S.-Iranian relations
• Iran would do there best to try to get the hostages being held by the Lebanese
radical group Hezbollah
Iran-Contra Affair
• Concurrent with the support of Iraq, the Administration also engaged in covert
arms sales to Iran in order to fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
• Reagan professed ignorance of the plot's existence and quickly called for an
Independent Counsel to investigate the scandal.
• “I don’t remember, period”
• READ about the Iran-Contra Affair
Regan resigns
• Howard Baker is the new chief of staff
Reagan admits that he did it!
• “I did not mean it, but it did happen.”
BLACK MONDAY!
• October 19, 1987
• The Black Monday decline was the largest one-day percentage decline in
stock market history.
1987 budget
• Reagan submits his 1987 budget -- deficit of $143.6 billion.
• Cumulative deficits reach one trillion.
• But the interest rates had declined steadily since 1982
Washington Summit
• Reagan and Gorbachev sign the INF, Intermediate Force treaty,, which only
eliminates 4% of the superpowers’ nuclear arsenals.
• First U.S.-Soviet treaty
• to provide for destruction of nuclear weapons
• to provide for on-site monitoring of the destruction.
1988 Election
• R-Bush
• Had been VP under Reagan
• “Read my lips
• NO NEW TAXES”
• D-Dukakis
NO CONTEST!
The 80’s
• “YUPPIES”
Styles
Mass Media invaded
Yuppies
• Published the an annual list of the nation’s 400 richest people
• Dressing from Bloomingdales and Neiman-Marcus
• Helped by catalogs
• Greed is all right, you shouldn't feel guilty
Movies
TV
Immigration
• Refugee immigration
– Southeast Asian immigrants
– Cuban immigrants
– Russian immigrants