Ronald Reagan

B

2

The Middle East

In the Middle East, Reagan intervened several times with U.S. forces. In the early 1980s, armed conflict broke out in Lebanon between the Christian government and a number of Muslim groups. In 1982, in an effort to strengthen the Christian government, Reagan sent marines to Lebanon. In October 1983 a bomb killed nearly 250 marines and other U.S. service members at their Beirut headquarters. Reagan withdrew the surviving marines early in 1984. The Beirut bombing and incidents elsewhere created a strong reaction against Middle East-based terrorists in U.S. public opinion.

In 1986 a bomb in a West German dance club killed two U.S. soldiers and injured others. The Reagan administration claimed that Libya was responsible for the bombing and other terrorist activities, and retaliated with air strikes against several Libyan cities on April 15, 1986.

In 1987 U.S. naval forces were sent to the Persian Gulf after Kuwait asked for both U.S. and Soviet protection of its shipping during the Iran-Iraq War. The Reagan administration was anxious to prevent Iran from defeating Iraq, which would diminish U.S. influence in the region, and the naval patrols exchanged fire with Iranian gunboats.

B

3

The Iran-Contra Scandal

The last two years of Reagan’s presidency were marred by the Iran-Contra Affair, a political scandal that turned public attention to the effectiveness of Reagan’s hands-off management style and damaged his reputation.

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As a result of the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 and 1980, Congress had designated Iran as a terrorist nation and had outlawed the sale of arms to the Iranian government. In November 1986 newspapers reported that the U.S. government had secretly sold weapons to Iran in order to win Iranian support in freeing U.S. hostages held by Lebanese terrorists friendly to Iran. This incident was particularly embarrassing because Reagan had taken a strong public stand against governments that supported terrorism and had repeatedly urged other governments not to deal with nations that supported terrorists.

Newspaper accounts also revealed that the United States had diverted profits from the weapons sales to help the Contras fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The diversion of the funds was a direct violation of the Boland amendment, a law that had forbidden U.S. military aid to the Contras. Reagan denied any knowledge of the diversion of funds to the Contras, and he claimed that the weapons deal with Iran was an attempt to open a dialogue with moderate elements in the Iranian government and did not involve negotiations over hostages in Lebanon. Nevertheless, Reagan later called the weapons deal “a mistake.”

When congressional hearings were held in 1987, attention centered particularly on how deeply Reagan was personally involved in the affair. A congressional report found no clear evidence that the president had known of the diversion of funds to the Contras. However, the report criticized the incompetence of the administration’s secret operations as well as the president’s lack of supervision over his advisers’ actions. A seven-year investigation by independent counsel Lawrence Walsh concluded that Reagan had “knowingly participated or acquiesced in covering up the scandal,” but Walsh found “no credible evidence that the president authorized or was aware of the diversion of the profits from the Iran arms sale to assist the contras.”

C

End of the Reagan Administration

The Iran-Contra scandal tarnished Reagan’s public image. His claim that he had been unaware of what his staff was doing was not well received, and his original assertion that the arms were not ransom payments for hostages seemed to contradict the facts revealed at the hearing. Reagan’s political influence was also diminished by the efforts of politicians to position themselves for the 1988 elections, in which Reagan would not be a candidate. Congress began to reject some Reagan initiatives. The Iran-Contra scandal was followed by the rejection of the Bork nomination, a congressional override of Reagan’s veto of a civil rights enforcement bill, and another congressional refusal to fund Contra military operations.

V

Later Years

After retiring to California, Reagan supported conservatives on many issues. He published his autobiography, An American Life, in 1990, and he presided at the opening of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, in 1991.

In November 1994 Reagan announced that he had Alzheimer’s disease, a degenerative disease of the brain. One year later Reagan and his wife, Nancy, announced that they, along with the national Alzheimer’s Association, would establish the Ronald and Nancy Reagan Research Institute to help find treatments and eventually a cure for the disease. Reagan died in Bel Air, California, on June 5, 2004.

VI

Reagan’s Legacy

Many historians regard Reagan’s chief legacy to be his resurrection of the conservative wing of the Republican Party and its political agenda. In doing so Reagan redefined the parameters of American political debate. After U.S. voters soundly rejected Goldwater’s conservatism in the 1964 election by electing Johnson with the largest popular majority ever at 61 percent, conservatives appeared to occupy the far-right extreme of the U.S. political spectrum. Republican presidents Nixon and Ford were largely moderates who did not challenge the social policies and government economic regulation put in place by the New Deal policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson. At one point in his presidency, Nixon even proposed a guaranteed income for all Americans.

Reagan made conservatism mainstream. He reversed the trend toward greater government spending on social welfare programs by cutting spending on many of those programs, with the exception of Social Security and Medicare. He also freed businesses of government restraints through deregulation.

Reagan succeeded in convincing many Americans that “government is the problem,” as he stated in his first inaugural address. Both deregulation and cuts in social spending continued in subsequent administrations, including the Democratic presidency of Bill Clinton who seemed to echo Reagan when he proclaimed the end of “big government.”

In achieving this aspect of the conservative agenda, however, Reagan abandoned one of the chief components of the Republican Party’s traditional political philosophy—namely, fiscal conservatism. In reducing tax rates while doubling military spending, Reagan produced record deficits and nearly tripled the national debt from $995 billion to $2.9 trillion.

On issues of foreign policy, some historians believe Reagan’s chief contribution was his forceful stand against the Soviet Union, which he called the “evil empire.” These historians credit Reagan with helping bring about the dissolution of the Soviet Union and ending the Cold War by putting strains on the Soviet economy, which was unable to match the increased U.S. military spending. Other historians, however, argue that the Soviet Union fell apart mainly due to its own internal contradictions and that the U.S. role only strengthened hardliners within the Soviet Union, thereby delaying the Gorbachev reforms that ultimately led to the Soviet collapse.

Some critics of the Reagan era argue that his administration may be judged more harshly by future historians in light of the current U.S. war against terrorism. By agreeing to swap arms for hostages in the Iran-Contra scandal, Reagan indirectly rewarded the terrorists who seized the hostages and may have thereby encouraged future terrorist attacks against the United States. By attempting to keep the arms deal secret, these critics say he undermined democratic procedures and the credibility of the executive branch.

At the time of his death, however, Reagan was widely agreed to have been one of the most popular presidents in U.S. history, who made conservatism mainstream and whose legacy continued long after his years in the White House.

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