Reagan Had Winning Mix of Charisma, Convictions

Ronald Reagan posed a pivotal question to American voters one week before the 1980 election. On Nov. 4, they answered it unequivocally at the polls.

“Ask yourself--are you better off than you were four years ago?” he had said during a debate with President Jimmy Carter.

With that one-liner, Reagan crystallized the central issue for Americans. If they were better off, he suggested, then vote for his opponent; if not, it was time for a change.

Inflation was higher than 12%. The prime interest rate was 15%. Moreover, Americans were not feeling terribly good about the nation’s prestige; 52 of their countrymen had been held hostage in Iran for a year.

No, they certainly were not better off now. And they responded by sending Reagan to the White House in an electoral vote landslide. He carried 44 states.

Although Americans voted for the Republican, many did not know what to expect. His image was unclear, especially among Democratic skeptics. B-movie actor. Right-wing saber-rattler. Naive. Aging. A handlers’ puppet. Who was this guy?

Californians had a better fix than most, having watched Reagan as governor for two terms. They knew that his bark often was louder than his bite.

He had entered the governor’s office in 1967 vowing to “squeeze, cut and trim.” But in his first year, he covered a budget deficit by raising taxes a record $1 billion. During his eight-year tenure, as the population climbed, Reagan’s state budgets more than doubled.

“If you’ve seen one redwood, you’ve seen them all,” he had said. But he turned out to be an environmentalist governor. Although denounced by liberals as a right-wing extremist, Reagan signed the nation’s most liberal abortion rights bill--later saying he regretted it.

Reagan was a political rarity: A man of strong conviction who also was a pragmatist. A true believer who could compromise. That--and being the greatest presidential communicator since FDR--kept his adversaries off balance from Capitol Hill to Moscow.

On Inauguration Day, his impact was felt immediately when Iran released the American hostages. Carter negotiated their freedom, but Reagan had cautioned Iran it wouldn’t get a better deal under him.

Reagan soon endeared himself to Americans with his grace and humor after surviving a would-be assassin’s bullet. “Honey, I forgot to duck,” he told his wife, Nancy.

He also soon earned the respect of world leaders for decisiveness and toughness when he quickly fired striking federal air traffic controllers, even though they had endorsed him the previous year.

The new president’s popularity--enhanced by star-spangled patriotism, eternal optimism and an ability to relate to ordinary Americans--helped him generate public support in his battles with Congress.

He had gone to Washington promising to slash income taxes, increase defense spending and balance the budget--”Reaganomics,” it was dubbed. “Voodoo economics,” asserted George Bush, before Reagan selected him to be vice president. Bush had been right.

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Reagan did chop taxes. That had been his goal since his days in Hollywood, when the movie star’s high salary was eaten up by a maximum 90% tax rate. President Reagan got the top rate down to 28%, but he eliminated several deductions, such as credit card interest and the sales tax.

Some domestic programs were sharply cut, including child nutrition and low-income housing. But he jacked up defense spending to win the arms race and end the Cold War. The annual budget deficit doubled and the national debt quadrupled. It would take a Democratic president and a Republican Congress to balance the budget a decade later.

Deficit spending was the price Reagan paid to attain his top priority: beating the Commies. He stared down the Soviets with tough rhetoric--”an evil empire . . . tear down this wall”--and an unmatched arsenal.

Only two people may have believed in the “Star Wars” anti-missile system the president tried to build: Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The threatened weapon priced the Soviets out of the arms race.

Reagan and Gorbachev hit it off like no previous American and Russian leaders. “Who would have thought,” Gorbachev said, “that it would be President Reagan who would sign with us the first nuclear arms reduction agreement in history?”

Reagan’s focus was long in vision but narrow in scope. On most things, he detached himself from detail. That style--along with his soft heart for American captives in Beirut and “freedom fighters” in Nicaragua--led to the Iran-Contra scandal. He wasn’t paying close enough attention and allowed arms to be traded for hostages, something he had vowed never to do. Moreover, providing money for the Contra rebels was illegal. The scandal tarnished his image.

Nevertheless, Reagan left office at age 77 even more popular than when he arrived. And most Americans, by then, could say they were better off than before.