Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 - June 5, 2004) worked as a sports broadcaster in Iowa and then built a career as a Hollywood film actor, appearing in 53 movies, before serving as the 40th President of the United States from January 20, 1981, to January 20, 1989. He won a landslide victory over incumbent Jimmy Carter in 1980 and was reelected in 1984 in one of the largest landslides in American history, defeating Walter Mondale. His first term introduced Reaganomics, a program of economic deregulation and cuts to both taxes and government spending; inflation declined and unemployment fell, but the national debt nearly tripled over his presidency because of the tax cuts combined with increased military spending. He shifted Cold War policy away from detente, escalating the arms race with the Soviet Union before pursuing arms-reduction negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that produced the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty; historians credit his foreign policy with contributing to the end of the Cold War.