"What I'd really like to do is go down in history as the president who made Americans believe in themselves again."

Ronald Reagan's eight years in the White House marked a shift in the way America saw itself. His supporters say he restored America's confidence in the wake of the disaster of the Vietnam War and the economic uncertainty triggered by the OPEC oil crisis of the 1970's. His controversial supply-side economics set the stage for the strongest economic growth America has experienced in the 20th century. And many say he was the driving force behind the end of the Cold War and the West's "victory" over communism.

Still, Reagan was constantly the butt of jokes from late night comedians. He was accused of knowing little of what was going on in the White House, and of being unable to lead and manage his staff. Many blame his economic policies for the recessions of 1982 and 1987 and for saddling his country with a massive debt.

Despite the critics, Reagan was arguably one of the most-loved serving presidents in American history. When he was elected for his second term, in 1984, he garnered the largest margin of victory in the history of American presidential votes. When he left office, his poll ratings were still the highest of any president since the Second World War.

From Humble Beginnings

In many ways, Ronald Reagan personified the American dream. He was born into modest means in the small town of Tampico, Illinois, in 1911 but eventually worked to elevate himself to the highest position in the country. His political nature was already apparent in high school, where he was student president. As a freshman in Eureka College, Reagan led a student strike when the administration tried to eliminate courses. The revolt succeeded; the courses were re-instated and the college president resigned.

After graduating, Reagan was convinced by friends that his deep voice and good looks made him a natural for film. He took a screen test in 1936 and the Warner Brothers studio offered him a seven-year contract. Reagan appeared in more than 50 films, most of them “B” pictures. But he did get good reviews for his performance of doomed football player George Gipp in 1940’s “Knute Rocke – All-American”. In one scene, Reagan’s dying character urged his team to go out and “win one for the Gipper.” The line stuck with Reagan and won him a new nickname, “Gipper.”

When movie work began to dry up Reagan moved to television. He hosted “General Electric Theatre,” which led him into the lucrative position as GE’s corporate spokesman.

In 1940, Reagan married actress Jane Wyman. They had one child, Maureen, and adopted other, Michael. Reagan’s mounting political involvement put a lot of strain on the marriage, and the couple divorced in 1949. In 1952, Reagan married another actress, Nancy Davis. The couple had two more children, Patricia and Ronald. Nancy would later become a strong presence in the White House during his administration, often accused by critics of being the real driving force behind the presidency.

While Reagan loved all of his children, his relationship with them was at best, cool. It is said that he seldom spent time with them during his presidential years, except when it had been pre-scheduled at holiday time.

Both Michael and Patti Reagan became estranged from their parents in the early 1980s. Patti caused a stir in 1985 when she published a scathing novel about an overly-ambitious politician and his clothes-horse wife that many agreed was semi-autobiographical.

The outspoken Maureen disagreed with her Republican father too in many ways. But when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, she took on the cause and helped bring the need for a cure to the media’s attention. In August 2001, she died at the age of 60, from malignant melanoma, a form of skin cancer.

After several years of sometime-public tension, the family members reconciled, brought together again by Reagan’s heartbreaking illness and decline.

Before the White House

Politically, Reagan came from a family of Democrats. He started out that way too, leading a Hollywood union and using his notoriety as a film star to campaign for Democratic candidates. Reagan’s political stripes slowly changed during the early 1950s. In 1952 and 1956, Reagan led a group of Democrats supporting Republican candidate/president Dwight Eisenhower. By 1962, Reagan was a registered Republican.

Reagan was pushed to change political stripes by a number of factors. His second wife, Nancy, came from a wealthy conservative Chicago family, and several of his friends were strong conservatives as well. Reagan’s association with General Electric allowed him to associate with wealthy corporate executives and he soon became one of the best-known Republican spokesmen in the nation.

In 1966, Reagan ran for governor of California. He won in convincing style, and served two terms.

Reagan took two stabs at the Republican presidential nomination, one in 1968 and another in 1975, trying to unseat sitting President Gerald Ford. When Ford was soundly defeated by Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election, there was little doubt to Republicans that it was Reagan’s race to run in 1980.

Carter entered the election race battling tough odds. At home, inflation was spiralling almost out of control and in Tehran, Iranian students had taken dozens of Americans hostage. The country wanted change. By election day, Reagan had pulled ahead and won easily. At 69, Reagan became the oldest man ever elected president.

Almost as soon as he made his acceptance speech in January 1981, the militants released the 52 hostages who had been held for more than a year since Iran’s Islamic revolution.

Surviving an assassin’s bullet

Just two months after he took office, Reagan was faced with his most precarious moment. In March 1981, a deranged man tried and almost succeeded in murdering Reagan. The gunman, John Hinckley, had no political agenda. He was obsessed with actress Jodi Foster and believed he could impress her by killing Reagan.

Reagan, of course, survived the attack. The administration made a big show the next day of Reagan signing legislation in from his hospital bed. It was an effort to show Reagan was still in charge. He was back on the job after several weeks’ recovery.

Reagan self-effacing humour during his convalescence helped his popularity. When it came time to face the voters again in 1984, Reagan was swept back into office, defeating Democratic candidate Walter Mondale with the largest margin of victory ever recorded by a presidential candidate. Even his mistakes and scandals didn’t seem to leave a dent in Reagan’s popularity. He came to be known as “the Teflon president.”

Foreign Relations

In his second administration, Reagan wanted to take on the Soviet Union, reversing Washington’s decades long quiet acceptance of its communist rival. Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and believed in the dictum of “peace through strength.”

“I believe that Communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages, even now, are being written,” Reagan declared. He demanded that Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev “tear down the walls” of Soviet oppression.

As part of Reagan’s stand against the Soviets, he proposed the controversial Strategic Defence Initiative, better known as Star Wars. Reagan asked the military to develop a system of Earth-based and space-based laser-type weapons to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles. The idea was dismissed by some as pure fantasy and the costs were enormous. Reagan offered to share the system with the Russians, but the plan only deepened tensions between the superpowers.

Reagan’s hard rhetoric about the Soviet Union didn’t stop him from seeking agreement. Reagan met Gorbachev at a summit in Switzerland in 1985. Two years later, the two signed a historic treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear weapons. In 1988, they began talks on controlling their arsenals of long-range nuclear missiles.

Reagan’s supporters saw him as the man who started the United States on the road to victory in the costly and sometimes bloody Cold War.

Reagan also ushered in an era of active American involvement overseas. American soldiers stormed ashore on the Caribbean island of Grenada on the pretext of protecting American students threatened by a communist rebellion. That attack came just two days after 241 U.S. Marine peacekeepers were killed in an attack by a suicide bomber in Lebanon. U.S. warplanes shot down Libyan fighter jets during an exercise in the Mediterranean Sea. Later, American jets attacked Libya after it was linked to bombings in Europe.

Reagan’s administration was later linked to the embarrassing Iran-Contra scandal in November 1986. Members of Reagan’s staff admitted they illegally sold arms to Iran and then illegally used the profits to prop up right wing Contra rebels fighting to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. A presidential commission placed much of the blame on National Security Adviser Adm. John Poindexter and Lt. Col. Oliver North. The commission decided that the president’s role in the scandal could not be determined, but criticized Reagan for being out of touch and confused on the issues.

In a nationally televised address, Reagan accepted that judgment with little disagreement.

Domestic Policies

Domestically, Reagan brought along the traditional right wing idea of a smaller government, less involved in the day-to-day affairs of its citizens. The economic ideals of the former actor came with their own name: Reaganomics. Reagan embraced so-called supply-side economics. The idea was to use tax cuts to encourage increased demand for goods, which was supposed to trigger job growth. Not everybody bought it. Reagan’s own vice-president, George Bush, once described the theory as “voodoo economics.” It was argued that supply side economics merely gave more to the well-to-do in the vain hope that they would hand more down to the lower classes.

Reagan’s stated aims were to reduce taxes, government budgets and the size of government itself. There was a 25 per cent tax cut and a $39 billion budget reduction early in Reagan’s administration. Critics said he merely shifted the tax burden around. Reagan also tried to shrink the size of the federal government. He shifted several responsibilities to state and municipal governments and also reduced government expenditures by deregulating some industries.

Reagan struggled with a recession through his first term, but during his second, America prospered. The United States experienced the longest sustained peacetime prosperity in its history, during his tenure. But instead of using the years of prosperity to pay down back the deficits and federal debt, he allowed them to grow. Coupled with the massive military spending during his time in office, by the end of Reagan’s presidency, the American deficit had soared to its highest point ever: almost $2 trillion US.

While formers staffers and aides later published memoirs in which they criticized Reagan as a poor leader who was detached and uninformed, Reagan left office on a wave of popularity. Many say his unabashed optimism and patriotism re-instilled in his country a sense of pride in Americanism.