President Ronald Reagan example essay topic

Reagan haters and supporters alike agree on one thing, he was a popular guy. Alonzo L. Hamby remembers him as an "outstanding national cheerleader... Reagan successfully lifted the morale of the nation that in 1980 was wallowing in pessimism and uncertainty" (Hamby). The Vietnam War and the Nixon administration had left a negative impact on the country that Jimmy Carter did not improve. Along with inflation, long gas lines, and the American hostages in Iran, Reagan came into his presidency during a shadowy time. Not only did his dynamic personality help to lift the morale of the people, his economic policies led to economic growth, and his foreign policies led to the end of the Cold War.

He not only worked to put the economy on the right path, he made the country feel safer and more patriotic at the same time. The first executive order of Reagan abolished price controls on oil and gasoline. He also eliminated environmental and regulatory obstacles to domestic production to reduce our independence on foreign suppliers (Low Oil Prices). This ended the long gas lines and buoyed businesses, but he did not stop there. He persuaded Saudi Arabia to increase oil production from 2 million to 9 million barrels per day. These moves paid handsome dividends.

The sharp drop in crude oil prices lowered gasoline prices below $1.00 per gallon (Low Oil Prices). The increase in domestic oil production and from Saudi Arabia effectively smashed the OPEC cartel's ability to fix worldwide oil prices. Finally, the sharp plunge in oil prices crippled the bellicose Soviet Union, which derived most of its income from oil production (Regan Homepage). Reagan based his economic program on supply side economics (Encyclopedia Britannica). This theory is a very complex idea that President Reagan developed himself, causing people to call it "Reaganomics" (Encyclopedia American). The theory of Reaganomics called for a significant reduction in all forms of taxes and an adequate cutback on governmental spending so there will be more money in the hands of the American citizens.

The main goal of the supply side economic theory is to give a boost to the United States economy, which would cause the economy to expand. This economic expansion and boost would occur through citizens who would spend the extra tax money on products and services in their geographical region or who would invest money into businesses in their area. In theory the economic growth would eventually increase taxable incomes. This increase in taxable incomes should cause the governmental revenues to grow in the long run. With the idea of Reaganomics in mind President Reagan persuaded Congress to pass the Economic Recovery Tax Act, which was the cornerstone of "Reaganomics". This tax act called for a 25 percent tax cut that was implemented over a three-year period (Reagan homepage).

This indexed tax rates to stop inflation from pushing taxpayers into higher brackets. His 1986 tax relief act lowered the top personal income tax rate from 70% to 28% (Reagan homepage). Taking on the problem of inflation inherited from Jimmy Carter, Reagan supported Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker's efforts to tighten the money supply. This triggered a brief recession, but ended inflation as a national issue. Reagan's economic program launched the greatest peacetime economic expansion in U.S. history. Save for a brief recession from 1990-91 that coincided with the Persian Gulf War, the United States enjoyed a sustained period of economic growth.

Reagan's detractors try to belittle this achievement, pointing to the large deficits incurred during the Reagan years. While it is a historical fact that government spending exceeded revenues by $1.4 trillion during Reagan's years in office, it was the Democratic Congress that resisted the Reagan Administration's efforts to cut domestic spending (comments). In the end, the deficits helped rebuild our military, which had been weakened and neglected during the Carter years, and helped bring down the Soviet Union and win the Cold War. The fall of the Soviet Union was an amazing event for most Americans. For many years, the USSR was seen as a threat. For those who grew up with fallout shelters and civil defense drills, the rapid disintegration of the Soviet empire in the early 1990's was akin to winning the lottery -- staggering, elating and totally unexpected.

We celebrated the disintegration of our old foe and heralded a great victory for the West and President Ronald Reagan in particular. Our champion anti-Communist had accomplished what seven U.S. Presidents before could or would not -- he had stopped and then reversed the tide of Communism. When President Reagan was elected in 1981, the strategy of detente described the relationship that existed between the United States and the USSR. President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had advanced this strategy in the 1970's and it had remained fundamentally unchanged by both the Johnson and Carter administrations until 1979 (Garthoff 35).

While Webster defines detente as a relaxation or reduction, as of tension between nations, President Reagan believed the leadership of the USSR was interpreting detente as "freedom to pursue whatever policies of subversion, aggression and expansionism they wanted anywhere in the world (Schweizer 77). President Reagan believed the United States had lost its hard-earned edge over the USSR and that President Carter's administration was foolish to believe the USSR had any other goal but their historically stated one of destroying democracy and replacing it with Communism. President Reagan saw the Soviet leaders as moral and mortal enemies and believed that, by surrendering the initiative to the USSR, Carter had sent a dangerous message that America was prepared to accept, as inevitable, the advance of Soviet expansionism (Lenczowski 3). Early proposals to "rollback" the Russians from their European and Far East holdings vanished with the explosion of the first USSR atomic bomb in August 1949 and the Communist victory in China in October of the same year. The United States found itself with less and less leverage over the Soviet Union due to the rapid build up of their nuclear arsenal (Ibid 34). Secretary of State George Schultz described President Reagan's new approach to containment in a statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1983: "The policy of detente represented an attempt to induce Soviet restraint.

Detente was based on expectations that the anticipated benefits from expanding economic relations and arms control agreements would restrain Soviet behavior. Unfortunately, experience has proved otherwise". As a result, the new (Reagan) policy was "based on the expectation that faced with demonstration of the West's renewed determination to strengthen its defenses; enhance its political and economic cohesion, and oppose adventurism, the Soviet Union will see restraint as it's most attractive or only option". (Garthoff 107).

On December 29, President Reagan announced an embargo on American gas and oil equipment and technology bound for the Soviet Union. The plan affected sixty U.S. companies, seriously disrupted the Siberian pipeline project and shut down a joint Soviet and Japanese venture to develop the oil and gas fields on Sakhalin Island (Oberdorfer 246). The loss of the gas pipeline and the Sakha hn Island project cost the Soviet Union several billion dollars a year in income they desperately needed to upgrade their technology, stabilize their economy and shore up their empire. Additionally, U.S. efforts to reduce the credit worthiness of all the Eastern bloc countries placed additional pressure on the Soviet Union to pick up the slack. Support to offset U.S. sanctions against Poland alone cost the Soviet Union $1 to $2 billion dollars per year (Rodman 324). In his memoirs, President Ronald Reagan takes credit for conceptualizing a purely defensive system that would allow the world to break out of the cycle of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).

He claims the idea of a purely defensive anti-missile system came to him While he was reflecting on the sobering responsibilities he had assumed as the new commander in chief -- particularly how little time he would have to decide whether or not to order American's nuclear forces into action. He wanted to render nuclear weapons impotent (Reagan 606). President Reagan believed nuclear weapons and the policy of MAD in which each side checks the other with the threat of annihilation were immoral. He seized on the idea of finding a way out of the nuclear dilemma and putting the nuclear genie back into the bottle.

Whatever other motives he might have had, President Reagan really believed that SDI could work. Despite the controversy in the United States over the viability and advisability of SDI, the Soviets took the attempt at a strategic defense very seriously. They feared we would be able to do Something they were unable to do and that we would make some sort of break through. The revolution in super-computer technology as it applied in particular to battlefield management systems was something the Soviets realized they had left themselves out of and this only reinforced their fears. By 1987, the U.S. led the Soviet Union by 8 to 9 years in microprocessors; 8 to 12 years in computer-operated machine tools; 8 to 10 years in minicomputers; 8 to l 2 years in mainframe computers; 10 to 12 years in supercomputers; 7 to 11 years in software and 7 to 10 years in flexible manufacturing systems (CIA / DIA). Soviet leadership saw that, in theory at least, SDI was possible and the U.S. might do it.

If it could be done, SDI would strike at the heart of their military doctrine and economic insecurities and nullify their nuclear force advantage. It was by this nullification that Reagan was able to remove the threat of the USSR and establish an American supremacy. Ronald Reagan led America through almost a decade of confidence building greatness. His economic policies brought us out of inflation and began an era of economic growth that could only be undone by preceding presidents. He also brought the Soviet Union to its knees with some of those policies and his defensive strategy called SDI. I admire him as a president because of his moral convictions about our country.

By working on this paper I have discovered a new liking for him throughout my research. My favorite quote I found about him was by Margaret Thatcher, who said "Ronald Reagan set out to challenge everything that the liberal political elite of America accepted and sought to propagate. They believed that America was doomed to decline; he believed it was destined for further greatness. They imagined that sooner or later there would be a convergence between the free Western system and the socialist Eastern system, and that some kind of social democratic outcome was inevitable. He, by contrast, considered that socialism was a patent failure which should be cast onto the trash heap of history. They thought that the problem with America was the American people, though they didn't quite put it like that.

He thought that the problem with America was the American government, and he did put it just like that" (courage).

Bibliography

CIA / DIA Gorbachev's Modernization Program: A Status Report, A paper submitted to the Subcommittee on National Security Economics of the Joint Economic Committee, March, 1987.
Comments on the Kudrow Speech Defending Ronald Reagan "Courage"-Margaret Thatcher's thoughts on Ronald Reagan, July 2002 Encyclopedia Americana article, July 2002, Encyclopedia Brittanica.
com, an article on Reagan, July 2002 Hamby, Alonzo L.
How Great a president was Ronald Reagan July, 2002 Garthoff, Raymond L.
Detente and Confrontation: American-Soviet relations from Nixon to Reagan. Washington D.C. 1985 Ibid.
The Soviet Estimate: US Intelligence Analysis and Russian Military Strength. New York 1982.
Lenczowski, John. Soviet Perceptions of US. Foreign Policy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982.
Low oil prices: A Fill Up of Good News Web Page by Stephen Moore on oil prices from the 1980's to present Oberdorfer, Don The Turn: How the Cold War Came to An End: The United States and the Soviet Union 1983-1990.
New York: Posidon Press, 1991.
Ronald Reagan Homepage July 2002, Schweizer, Peter Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union.
New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press 1994.
New York 1982.