Ronald Wilson Reagan Frontpage

American President Frontpage

Ronald Wilson Reagan was born in 1911 in Tampico, Illinois, the second son of Jack and Nelle Reagan. He had a difficult childhood. His father was an itinerant shoe salesman and an alcoholic. In school, his undiagnosed nearsightedness held him back until a writing teacher named B. J. Frazier brought out the boy's native talent. "I was always called on to read [my papers]," Reagan remembered. "Maybe that's where the 'ham' began." Public speaking would become Reagan's passion, a practice he combined with his own brand of humor and optimism. The caption beneath his high school yearbook picture read, "Life is just one grand sweet song, so start the music."

In 1937, after an initial career as a radio sportscaster, Reagan took a screen test at Warner Bros.' Studio, which led to a seven-year contract. Hollywood cast him as the All-American boy, a role he played so many times that he became identified with it. Reagan eventually appeared in more than fifty feature films, and by 1941, Warner Bros. reported that only Errol Flynn received more fan mail.

During World War II, Reagan served in the army's motion picture unit, narrating training films. But his film career fizzled after the war, and he was increasingly relegated to the nightclub circuit, which he hated. When his wife, the actress Jane Wyman, divorced him in 1948, he entered the lowest period of his life. But Reagan was not Reagan unless he was upbeat. Four years later he married another actress, Nancy Davis, who became his greatest ally and friend. Then, "like the cavalry to the rescue," he said, came a new opportunity-he was offered the job as host of the weekly television program General Electric Theater. It climbed to be the number-one show in its time slot, making Reagan one of the most recognizable men in America. And when he became a part owner of the series, it also made him rich. Selected to serve as the company's national spokesperson, Reagan began traveling to GE factories around the country, where he spoke to employees and at corporate banquets, gaining a valuable political apprenticeship. His speeches were part patriotism, part pro-business pep rally. And though he was a Democrat, his message was becoming increasingly conservative. "I began to talk more and more," he remembered, "of how government had expanded and was infringing on liberties and interfering with private enterprise. . . . It finally grew to the point that one day I came home from a speaking tour and said to Nancy, 'I go out there and make these speeches which I believe-they are my own speeches -and then every four years I find myself campaigning for the people who are doing the things that I am speaking against.' And I said, 'I am on the wrong side.'"

Reagan switched political parties in 1962 and began a rapid ascent in Republican party circles. His televised speech for Barry Goldwater two years later drew more contributions than any political speech in American history. It also established Ronald Reagan as a political force in his own right, with strong support in the business community in southern California. "When I was beset in 1965 by a group that insisted that I had to seek the governorship against the incumbent governor," he later said, "I fought like a tiger not to. Finally, I couldn't sleep nights, and Nancy and I said yes." Reagan served as governor of California for eight years, making his mark as an aggressive and popular conservative and slowly building a strong financial and political base from which to make his own run at higher office. During his quest for the presidency in 1980, Reagan cast himself as a revolutionary outsider-a crusader out to restore the American way of life.

By November of that year, the country was ready for new leadership. Jimmy Carter had struggled unsuccessfully for twelve long months to free fifty-two American hostages held in Iran. And with the economy in trouble and inflation reaching into double digits, Carter's repeated calls for sacrifice and for lower expectations left many Americans pessimistic about the future. Ronald Reagan saw his job as teaching Americans how to dream again.

To Reagan, big government was the enemy of the American way. His vision was one of individual enterprise and a return to what he called the self-confident spirit of the founding fathers. When defeated Carter in an electoral landslide, he called it "the Reagan revolution of 1980."