Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911–2004) served as the 40th President of the United States from January 20, 1981 to January 20, 1989, after two terms as Governor of California (1967–1975). A former Hollywood actor and Screen Actors Guild president, he became a leading voice of American conservatism and won the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections as the Republican nominee.

In foreign policy, Reagan pursued a strategy often summarized as "peace through strength." His administration oversaw a large peacetime military buildup, announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in March 1983, and labeled the Soviet Union an "evil empire" in a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals that same month. The Reagan Doctrine extended U.S. support to anti-communist insurgencies, including the Afghan mujahideen, Nicaraguan Contras, and UNITA in Angola. U.S. forces invaded Grenada in 1983 and conducted airstrikes on Libya in 1986.

From 1985 onward, Reagan engaged in a series of summits with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev — Geneva (1985), Reykjavík (1986), Washington (1987), and Moscow (1988). These talks produced the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed December 8, 1987, which eliminated an entire class of ground-launched missiles with ranges of 500–5,500 km. In June 1987 at the Brandenburg Gate, he delivered the line, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."

His second term was damaged by the Iran–Contra affair, in which administration officials secretly sold arms to Iran and diverted proceeds to the Contras in violation of the Boland Amendment. The Tower Commission reported in February 1987.

Domestically, Reagan cut marginal tax rates (Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981; Tax Reform Act of 1986), appointed Sandra Day O'Connor as the first woman on the Supreme Court (1981), and reshaped Republican economic orthodoxy around supply-side principles often called "Reaganomics."