Reagan as President

Reagan hoped to change the direction in which the country was moving. He demanded steep reductions in federal spending and the deficit, to be accomplished by cutting social expenditures such as welfare, food stamps and student loans, and by turning many functions of the federal government over to the states. The marketplace, not federal bureaucratic regulations, should govern most economic decisions.

He asked Congress to lower income taxes by 30 percent. When critics objected that this would increase the deficit, the president and his advisers reasoned that the tax cut would leave people with more money, which they would invest in productive ways. The new investment would generate more goods and jobs—and, ultimately, taxes for the federal government. This scheme became known as Reaganomics.

Helped by the votes of conservative Democrats, Reagan won congressional approval of the Budget Reconciliation Act, which reduced government expenditures on domestic programs by $39 billion.

Ronald Reagan rides a horse—a familiar photo opportunity for presidents. (Recall the similar picture of LBJ on page 773.) But Reagan was an amiable cowboy; his smile and sense of humor were his most disarming weapons. In 1966 just after the election, when reporters asked him what sort of governor he would be, Reagan, a former actor, answered, ”I don't know. I've never played a governor.” Three months into his presidency, moments after he was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt, he took his wife's hand. "Honey,” he said, "I forgot to duck.” While being wheeled into the operating room, he quipped to the surgeons, "I hope you are all Republicans.”

Congress enacted most of the tax cuts the president had asked for, lowering individual income taxes by 25 percent over three years, but it resisted reducing the politically popular “entitlement” programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, which accounted for about half of the budget. Reagan himself refused to reduce the military budget to bring the government’s income more nearly in line with its outlays. Instead he called for a military buildup to ensure that the United States would prevail in any war with the Soviet Union, which he called an “evil empire.” In particular, he sought to expand and improve the nation’s nuclear arsenal. He made no secret of his wish to create so formidable a nuclear force that the Soviets would have to back down in any confrontation. The deficit worsened.

In Central America Reagan sought the overthrow of the left-wing government of Nicaragua and the defeat of communist rebels in El Salvador. He even used American troops to overthrow a Cuban-backed regime on the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada. When criticized for opposing leftist regimes while backing rightist dictators, Jeane Kirkpatrick, U. S. ambassador to the United Nations, explained that “rightist authoritarian regimes can be transformed peacefully into democracies, but totalitarian Marxist ones cannot.”

In 1982 the continuing turmoil in the Middle East thrust the Reagan administration into a new crisis. Israel had invaded Lebanon to destroy Palestine Liberation Organization units that were staging raids on northern Israeli settlements. Israeli troops easily overran much of the country, but in the process the Lebanese government disintegrated. Reagan agreed to commit American troops to an international peacekeeping force.

Tragedy resulted in October 1983 when a fanatical Muslim crashed a truck loaded with explosives into a building housing American marines in Beirut. The building collapsed, killing 239 marines. Early the next year, Reagan removed the entire American peacekeeping force from Lebanon.