What Did Reagan Accomplish as President?

Ronald Reagan was the 40th President over the United States. A two-term President who stands widely revered by the Republican Party, he was a controversial figure during his Presidency and remains a moderately controversial figure. Conservatives want people to believe Reagan was a greater President than FDR, a rival to Lincoln and Washington. Leftists tell people he was the worst President of the 20th Century, and second only to George W. Bush overall. Neither version is true.

Time Frame

Ronald Reagan was President of the United States from January 20, 1981 until January 20, 1989. He lived from February 6, 1911 to June 5, 2004.

Effects

A major claim of conservatives is that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. That claim is specious, denying as it does the role of past Presidents--including Republican Presidents--in waging it, and also internal developments inside the Soviet Union that had nothing to do with the United States.

However, Reagan did make his contribution. He was different from any other Cold War era President in that he looked at the Cold War as something that could be won. When Reagan began his Presidency, the US was suffering from the fallout of Vietnam, while the Soviet Union had just conquered Afghanistan and looked stronger than ever. His harsh rhetoric encouraged social activism in Eastern Europe, while his aggressive policies contained Communism in Central America (Nicaragua and El Salvador) and fed the bloody ulcer that was the Soviet Afghan War. Reagan's small military actions, such as the bombing of Libya and the invasion of Grenada, helping the nation psychologically recover from the doubts Vietnam had created regarding the use of military force. That process would be completed by Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush, with the invasion of Panama and the triumph of the Persian Gulf War of 1991.

Later, when Gorbachev came to power and it became clear he was on the course of reform, he worked with the new Soviet leader with an open mind. It is because Reagan was much more of an idealist than a bellicose ideologue that the end of the Cold War began on such a positive footing.

Effects

Reagan's 1980 Republican nomination and subsequent victories were reshaped the Republican Party in ways that continue to be felt to this day. Ronald Reagan picked up the mantle of conservative Senator Barry Goldwater and carried it to victory, spelling out the doom of the role of fiscally conservative, socially moderate Rockefeller Republicans within the Party. This also completed the seizure Republican dominance in the old Confederate states of the South, as Conservative Democrats increasingly became first "Reagan Democrats," and then finally outright Republicans. The modern Republican Party is very much the product of Reagan and his heirs.

Effects

Reagan re-shaped the larger American political landscape. His 1980 and 1984 election victories were built on a program of low taxes, deregulation, a strong military, the war on drugs and other anti-crime measures, and conservative family values. It was Reagan who made being a "tax and spend liberal" such an anathema that Democrats continue to run in terror from the label, making post-1980 America a much more conservative place than it had been during the post-World War II era.

Effects

Reagan's economic accomplishments were more mixed. When he entered office, the United States was suffering under 7.5% unemployment and an inflation rate of nearly 12%. He was not solely responsible for taming the combination of stagnant economic growth and inflation, known as stagflation, that was bedeviling the American economy (Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker was the single most important figure in the struggle to reverse stagflation). However, he did make his contribution. "Reaganomics"--the mixture of tax cuts, social spending cuts, increased military spending, and de-regulation that has defined Republican economic policy ever since--did play an important role in getting the country moving again.

There is something of a myth regarding tax cuts during Reagan's tenure, as he was actually one of the first people to recognize how unsustainable deep tax cuts without deep spending cuts were in the long-run. The first senior Republican to back away from the Reagan tax cuts was Reagan himself. Over the course of his administration, tax revenue fell by an average of only 1%. The tax cuts themselves were a major achievement and not the real source of the country's spiraling debt. It was the tax cuts coupled with a vastly expanded military budget that resulted in the nation's historic indebtedness.

Reagan also broke the back of the labor movement in the United States. When Reagan responded to the Air Traffic Controller's Strike of 1981 by firing the striking workers and busting their union, he sent a message to the country that the government was openly hostile to organized labor. The 1980s saw a serious decline in the power and influence of organized labor.

While Reagan was known as a tax cutter and a social spending cutter, it was actually under his administration that the first major modern effort to put Social Security and Medicare on a sound financial footing was undertaken. He also enacted the first major reform of the Federal Tax Code in many years with the Tax Reform Act of 1986.

Effects

Ronald Reagan appointed the country's first female Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O'Connor. He also appointed Jeane Kirkpatrick as UN Ambassador. These were the first appointments of women to high Federal office.