Foreign affairs dominated Reagan's second term, including the 1986 bombing of Libya, the secret and illegal sale of arms to Iran to fund the Contras, and engaging in negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, which culminated in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

[28] After obtaining a Bachelor of Arts in economics and sociology from Eureka College in 1932,[29][30] Reagan took a job in Davenport, Iowa, as a sports broadcaster for four football games in the Big Ten Conference.

[37] He broke out of these types of films by portraying George Gipp in Knute Rockne, All American (1940), which would be rejuvenated when reporters called Reagan "the Gipper" while he campaigned for president.

In The Invisible Bridge, Rick Perlstein wrote that Reagan's actions lent legitimacy to the studio's efforts to crush the more radical union by giving liberals in SAG who did not want to strike "a story that turned them into moral innocents instead of scabs".

David S. Broder and Stephen H. Hess called it "the most successful national political debut since William Jennings Bryan electrified the 1896 Democratic convention with his famous 'Cross of Gold' address".

[104] In numerous speeches, Reagan "hit the Brown administration about high taxes, uncontrolled spending, the radicals at the University of California, Berkeley, and the need for accountability in government".

Reagan then commanded the state National Guard troops to occupy Berkeley for seventeen days to subdue the protesters, allowing other students to attend class safely.

[147] Losing the first five primaries prompted Reagan to desperately win North Carolina's by running a grassroots campaign and uniting with the Jesse Helms political machine that viciously attacked Ford.

[148] Reagan won subsequent victories in Texas, Alabama, Georgia, and Indiana with his attacks on social programs, opposition to forced busing, increased support from inclined voters of a declining George Wallace campaign for the Democratic nomination,[149] and repeated criticisms of Ford and Kissinger's policies, including détente.

[150] The result was a seesaw battle for the 1,130 delegates required for their party's nomination that neither would reach before the Kansas City convention[151] in August[152] and Ford replacing mentions of détente with Reagan's preferred phrase, "peace through strength".

[153] Reagan took John Sears' advice of choosing liberal Richard Schweiker as his running mate, hoping to pry loose of delegates from Pennsylvania and other states,[154] and distract Ford.

The Panama Canal Treaty's signing, the 1979 oil crisis, and rise in the interest, inflation and unemployment rates helped set up his 1980 presidential campaign,[157] which he announced on November 13, 1979[158] with an indictment of the federal government.

[159] His announcement stressed his fundamental principles of tax cuts to stimulate the economy and having both a small government and a strong national defense,[160] since he believed the United States was behind the Soviet Union militarily.

[196] Reagan worked with the boll weevil Democrats to pass tax and budget legislation in a Congress led by Tip O'Neill, a liberal who strongly criticized Reaganomics.

[213] As Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker fought inflation by pursuing a tight money policy of high interest rates,[214] which restricted lending and investment, raised unemployment, and temporarily reduced economic growth.

[237] Jeffrey Frankel opined that the deficits were a major reason why Reagan's successor, Bush, reneged on his campaign promise by raising taxes through the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990.

Although "right on the margin of death" upon arrival at George Washington University Hospital, Reagan underwent surgery and recovered quickly from a broken rib, punctured lung, and internal bleeding.

[246] With the assent of Reagan's sympathetic National Labor Relations Board appointees, many companies also won wage and benefit cutbacks from unions, especially in the manufacturing sector.

[255][256] Early in his presidency, Reagan appointed Clarence M. Pendleton Jr., known for his opposition to affirmative action and equal pay for men and women, as chair of the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

Reagan cited a regional threat posed by a Soviet-Cuban military build-up and concern for the safety of hundreds of American medical students at St. George's University.

[293] Cannon later noted that throughout Reagan's 1984 presidential campaign, the invasion overshadowed the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings,[294] which killed 241 Americans taking part in an international peacekeeping operation during the Lebanese Civil War.

[319] Popular opposition to apartheid increased during Reagan's first term in office and the disinvestment from South Africa movement achieved critical mass after decades of growing momentum.

[322][323] President Reagan was opposed to divestiture because he personally thought, as he wrote in a letter to Sammy Davis Jr., it "would hurt the very people we are trying to help and would leave us no contact within South Africa to try and bring influence to bear on the government".

[324] The Reagan administration developed constructive engagement[325] with the South African government as a means of encouraging it to gradually move away from apartheid and to give up its nuclear weapons program.

[330] Contentious relations between Libya and the United States under President Reagan were revived in the West Berlin discotheque bombing that killed an American soldier and injured dozens of others on April 5, 1986.

[354][355][356] In December, Reagan and Gorbachev met again at the Washington Summit[357] to sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, committing to the total abolition of their respective short-range and medium-range missile stockpiles.

[367] In 1989, in his first public appearance after leaving office and shortly after the Stockton schoolyard shooting, he stated: "I do not believe in taking away the right of the citizen to own guns for sporting, for hunting, and so forth, or for home defense.

[404][407] Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Congressional caucuses Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Miscellaneous Other In 2008, British historian M. J. Heale summarized that scholars had reached a broad consensus in which "Reagan rehabilitated conservatism, turned the country to the right, practiced a 'pragmatic conservatism' that balanced ideology with the constraints of government, revived faith in the presidency and American self-respect, and contributed to critically ending the Cold War",[408] which ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Krugman also views Reagan as having initiated the ideology of the current-day Republican Party, which he feels is led by "radicals" who seek to "undo the twentieth century" gains in income equality and unionization.

[425] Reagan's ability to talk about substantive issues with understandable terms and to focus on mainstream American concerns earned him the laudatory moniker the "Great Communicator".