Ronald Reagan

RONALD REAGAN d2004. American politician and actor who served as the 40th President of The United States from 1981 to 1989. Before his presidency, he was the 33rd Governor of California from 1967 to 1975, after a career as a Hollywood actor and union leader. Raised in a poor family in small towns of northern Illinois, he graduated from Eureka College in 1932 and worked as a sports announcer on several regional radio stations. After moving to Hollywood in 1937, he became an actor and starred in a few major productions. He was twice elected President of the Screen Actors Guild (the labour union for actors)where he worked to root out Communist Influence. In the 1950s, he moved into television and was a motivational speaker at General Electric factories. He had always been a Democrat until 1962 when he became a conservative and switched to the Republican Party. His 1964 speech "A Time for Choosing" supporting Barry Goldwater's foundering presidential campaign, earned him national attention as a new conservative spokesman. Building a network of supporters, he was elected Governor of California in 1966. As governor, Reagan raised taxes, turned a state budget deficit to a surplus, challenged the protesters at the University of California, ordered National Guard troops in during a period of protest movements in 1969 and was re-elected in 1970. He twice ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for the US presidency in 1968 & 1970. Four years later, he easily won the nomination outright, becoming the oldest elected US president up to that time, defeating incumbent Jimmy Carter in 1980. Entering the presidency in 1981 he implemented sweeping new political and economic initiatives. Over his two terms, the economy saw a reduction of inflation from 12.5% to 4.4% and an average annual growth of real GDP of 3.4. During his re-election bid, he campaigned on the notion that it was "Morning in America", winning a landslide in 1984 with the largest electoral college victory in American history. Foreign affairs dominated his second term including ; ending of the Cold War / bombing of Libya and the Iran conta affair. Reagan's presidency came during the decline of the Soviet Union and just ten months after the end of his term, the Berlin Wall fell. When he left office in 1989, he held an approval rating of sixty-eight percent, one the highest ratings for any departing president in the modern era. In August 1994, at the age of 83, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease. He died of pneumonia aged 93 in Los Angeles on June 5th 2004.