Obituary

Former President Ronald Reagan dies at 93

 

Appreciation

Reagan had 'love affair with America'

 

On the Web:

Read more about Reagan's presidential campaigns and his terms in office.

 

Quote:

“We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we’re in a time when there are no heroes, they just don’t know where to look.”

— Inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1981

 

John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate Reagan only 70 days into his first term as president. (The Rochester, N.Y., Democrat and Chronicle)

1980-1989

Commander in Chief

1980: Elected president of the United States, beating President Jimmy Carter 51 percent to 41 percent in the popular vote and carrying 44 states, as well as gaining 489 electoral votes to Carter’s 49.

Jan. 20, 1981: Sworn in as 40th president of the United States as 52 U.S. hostages are released from Iran. The $16 million inauguration that followed was the most expensive in history to that date.

March 30, 1981: Seventy days into his presidency, Reagan is shot by John Hinckley Jr., in an assassination attempt. He jokes to surgeons that he hopes they are all Republicans.

April 28, 1981: Greeted by applause when he appears to sell his economic recovery program to Congress. Known as “supply-side economics,” “Reaganomics” and sometimes “voodoo economics,” it cut taxes and increased defense spending — and though the plan had received little support in Congress before the assassination attempt, it was signed into law that summer.

Aug. 3, 1981: Fires 11,000 air traffic controllers who went on strike in what proved to be a turning point in the U.S. labor movement.

June 8, 1982: Delivers his famous “Evil Empire” speech to the British House of Commons, saying the Soviet Union is “the focus of evil in the modern world.”

March 1983: Announces his Strategic Defense Initiative — “Star Wars” — a satellite-operated defense system designed to attack incoming nuclear missiles.

November 1984: Reagan wins his second term iby beating Walter Mondale with 59 percent of the popular vote and winning 49 states.

1985: Secretly agrees to sell arms to Iran in exchange for release of hostages. Reagan said he wanted to keep contact with Iranian moderates. In 1987, national security adviser John Poindexter admits that he approved shifting the arms sales’ profits to anti-Communist Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua to give Reagan “plausible deniability.”

1986: Overhauls the nation’s income tax code, eliminating several deductions and exempting millions of low-income families. The nation enjoys prosperity without depression or recession.

June 12, 1987: Reagan stands in front of the Berlin Wall and before a large crowd exhorts, “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Dec. 8, 1987: Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty to eliminate all U.S. Pershing II and Soviet SS-20 intermediate-range missiles in Europe, effectively ending the Cold War.

Jan. 20, 1989: Ends presidency, but leaves conservative mark on the Supreme Court, having appointed Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Sandra Day O’Connor as justices and elevating William Rehnquist to chief justice. Ronald and Nancy Reagan return to California. Later that year, the Berlin Wall falls, and Chinese students protest in Tiananmen Square.

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