Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. A member of the Republican Party, his presidency constituted the Reagan era, and he is considered a prominent American conservative figure.

Raised in northern Illinois, Ronald Reagan graduated from Eureka College in 1932 and worked as a sports broadcaster on several regional radio stations. He moved to California in 1937 and became a well-known film actor there. Reagan twice served as the president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1947 to 1952 and from 1959 to 1960. During the 1950s, he worked in television and spoke for General Electric. In 1964, Reagan's speech "A Time for Choosing" launched his rise to become one of the most prominent figures within the American conservative movement. By 1966, he was elected governor of California.

During his governorship of California, Reagan raised taxes, turned the state budget deficit into a surplus, and implemented harsh crackdowns on university protests. After challenging and losing to incumbent president Gerald Ford in the 1976 Republican Party presidential primaries, he won the Republican nomination before obtaining a landslide victory over incumbent Democratic president Jimmy Carter in the 1980 U.S. presidential election.

In his first term as president, Reagan implemented "Reaganomics", which involved economic deregulation and cuts in both taxes and government spending during a period of stagflation. He escalated an arms race, transitioned Cold War policy away from the policies of détente with the Soviet Union, and ordered the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983. Additionally, he survived an assassination attempt, fought public-sector labor unions, expanded the war on drugs, and was slow to respond to the U.S. AIDS epidemic, which began early in his presidency. In the 1984 presidential election, he defeated Carter's vice president Walter Mondale in another landslide victory. Foreign affairs dominated Reagan's second term, including the 1986 bombing of Libya, the secret and illegal sale of arms to Iran to fund the Contras, and a more conciliatory approach in talks with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that culminated in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Reagan left the presidency in 1989 with the American economy having seen a significant reduction of inflation, the unemployment rate having fallen, and the U.S. having entered its then-longest peacetime expansion. At the same time, the national debt had nearly tripled since 1981 as a result of his cuts in taxes and increased military spending, despite cuts to domestic discretionary spending. Reagan's policies also contributed to the end of the Cold War and the end of Soviet communism. Alzheimer's disease hindered Reagan post-presidency, and his physical and mental capacities gradually deteriorated, ultimately leading to his death in 2004. Historians and scholars have typically ranked him among the middle to upper tier among American presidents, and his post-presidential approval ratings by the general public are usually high.