Ronald Reagan: First Inaugural Address

About the Author

As president, Ronald Reagan earned a reputation as the “Great Communicator” because he conveyed ideas in striking, vivid, and memorable ways. While he was president from 1981 until 1989 and for several years afterward, many people attributed his success as a speaker mainly to his experience as an actor in films and on television. There was another important reason, however, why Reagan became the “Great Communicator”: He often wrote the words that he read so effectively. The release of his personal and presidential papers beginning in the late 1990s revealed that Reagan wrote extensively. He was an avid correspondent, kept a diary during his White House years, and penned some of the most memorable speeches that he gave as private citizen, governor of California, and president. He often revised speeches that staff assistants prepared, replacing their drafts with pages he wrote in longhand on yellow legal pads. Reagan preferred to use his own words when he could because, as he said soon after leaving the White House, “I came with a script” (Cannon, p. 771). He meant that he brought to the presidency a set of core convictions—opposition to high taxes, mistrust of big government, abhorrence of Communism, and an abiding faith in the goodness of the American people—that shaped his outlook throughout his years in politics. His ideas resonated with so many of his fellow citizens because he expressed them with a simplicity and sincerity that made people believe the best about themselves and their nation.

Reagan was born on February 6, 1911, in Tampico, Illinois, into a poor family that moved several times before settling in Dixon, Illinois. Despite the hardships of his youth, Reagan developed a strong sense of optimism that he carried with him throughout his life. His mother, a member of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), taught him that everything occurred according to God's plan. Reagan graduated from Eureka College in 1932, when the Great Depression was most severe, yet he still found a job as a sports announcer at a radio station in Davenport, Iowa. Sports announcing soon allowed Reagan to embark on a movie career. In 1937 he signed a contract with Warner Bros. Pictures, and he gave solid performances mainly in what were then called B movies, low-budget films that were the second halves of the double features that commonly played in theaters. Between April 1942 and December 1945, Reagan served in the Army Air Forces and made official films connected to the U.S. war effort during World War II.

After the war, as his film career declined, Reagan became involved in politics. Between 1947 and 1952 he was president of the Screen Actors Guild, a union that represented performers in film and television. As the cold war emerged and fears about Communist influence in the motion picture industry rose, Reagan testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 and provided names of alleged Communists to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Although he had been a liberal Democrat, his politics became more conservative, especially after he began working for General Electric (GE) in 1954. He was the host of the weekly television drama series General Electric Theater, and he also spoke at GE plants around the country. His talks became increasingly political, as he developed those core convictions that shaped his thinking on public issues. In 1962 he registered as a Republican. Four years later he made his first run for office, winning the governorship of California; he gained a second term in 1970. Reagan left the governor's mansion in 1975 and challenged President Gerald R. Ford for the Republican nomination for president in 1976. Ford won a narrow victory over Reagan but lost the election to Jimmy Carter. In 1980 Reagan easily secured his party's nomination and overwhelmed Carter in November.

As president, Reagan proposed sweeping changes in both domestic and foreign policy. Reagan's first priority when he took office on January 20, 1981, was to lift the nation's economy out of stagflation, a severe and persistent combination of high inflation and unemployment. Reagan secured cuts in income tax rates, reductions in federal economic regulations, and decreases in the rate of spending on social welfare programs. Although the economy fell into a severe recession during 1981–1982, it recovered the following year, with inflation falling to its lowest level in more than a decade. Reagan also made drastic changes in national security policies. He persuaded Congress to approve sharp increases in defense spending, which he said were necessary to protect against Soviet efforts to gain power and influence around the world. Reagan easily won reelection in 1984, and during his second term there was a remarkable improvement in Soviet-American relations after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in Moscow in 1985. Reagan and Gorbachev held several meetings, established a cooperative relationship, negotiated important treaties, and made progress in ending the cold war. Despite the Iran-Contra scandal over the provision of arms to secure the release of U.S. hostages in Middle East and the illegal support of counterrevolutionaries in Nicaragua, Reagan left office a popular president in January 1989. He died of complications related to Alzheimer's disease on June 5, 2004.