Ronald Reagan

President Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 - June 5, 2004) was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989) and the 33rd Governor of California (1967–1975). He was the leader of American conservatism, moving the nation to the right in terms of reducing federal regulation and lowering taxes. He cut taxes but spending, and the federal deficit went up. After a short sharp recession the economy was strong by 1984. Proclaiming "Morning in America," Reagan carried 49 of 50 states to win reelection. He moved the Supreme Court and the federal courts to the right with his appointments. In foreign affairs he rejected détente with the Soviet Union, but not with China. His massive defense buildup forced the Soviets to confront their crumbling financial base. By 1986 they came to terms with Reagan, and in 1989 dismantled their Communist Empire. Reagan is thus credited with achieving victory in the Cold War. As a great communicator, and leader of the Republican party, he added a new base of "Reagan Democrats" (blue collar workers who were social conservatives), religious evangelicals, and neoconservative intellectuals; his succeses became the model for Republicans well into the 21st century.

Family background

Reagan's father was a working class Irish Catholic, a Democrat. He held a minor position in the WPA during the New Deal. His son recalled numerous alcoholic episodes. Reagan was influenced more by his mother, a devout member of the Disciples of Christ, and Reagan was a lifelong Protestant. The family lived in various small towns in northern Illinois until Reagan attended Eureka College, a small Disciples school where he was a "big man on campus" and active in theatre and student government.

Hollywood star

After a radio job in Iowa, Reagan moved to Hollywood in 1937, where he starred in numerous "B" movies for Warner Brothers and became President of the Screen Actors Guild (the labor union for film actors). He was a prominent Democrat who supported the New Deal Coalition in the 1940s, and was a leading opponent of Communism in Hollywood. Reagan moved to the right in the early 1960s; he became a Republican and supported Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election.

Governor of California: 1966-74

After Goldwater's defeat many conservatives supported Reagan, who ran against Pat Brown, the liberal governor of California in 1966. Reagan's strategists wanted to emphasize libertarian support for smaller government and less taxation, as the state verged on a revolt against high property taxes. However the highly controversial student unrest at the University of California, Berkeley, forced him to campaign on social issues, law and order, and the morality of the war in Vietnam. Reagan's victory marked the end of New Deal liberalism in California.

Although Reagan sought to defuse student protest, it grew more strident in California and nationwide, allowing Reagan to showcase his populist themes of morality, law and order, strong leadership, and defense of traditional values. Reagan was reelected in 1970, after firing the president of the state university and sending in armed force to confront student demonstrators trying to shut the university. Reagan's handling of this crisis helped to make him into a national politician known for strength and courage.

Welfare spending was a major issue in the 1970 election; with 10% of the nation's population, California had 16% of its welfare recipients. Reagan promised to cut the welfare spending by rooting out fraud and abuse, by requiring recipients to take jobs, and by collecting from dead-beat fathers. Democrats in the legislature supported a much more liberal bill, which advocated the welfare rights of the poor. Reagan personally worked out a compromise that passed and won considerable praise and some criticism. Its savings to taxpayers proved small, but it represented an important political achievement for both parties. Reagan benefited as well, emerging from the compromise as a more experienced and effective politician.

He supported and signed laws to liberalize abortion in California (before Roe v. Wade), but later turned against the practice.

Reagan's gubernatorial style carried over into his presidency. He was interested only in the big picture, choosing talented staffers who had free reign to handle the details. Reagan was a powerful communicator, through press conferences and public appearances, with an uncanny knack for precise timing to make the maximum impact.

Liberals across the country were puzzled by Reagan, and decided that he was a weak reactionary who would be easy to defeat if he ran for president. California liberals explained they were all wrong, that Reagan was the most formidable Republican since Eisenhower.

Election of 1980

Governor Reagan tested the presidential waters in 1968, but drew back when he saw Richard Nixon's strength. Reagan challenged incumbent Republican president Gerald Ford in 1976. After a poor start when he lost the first 13 primaries, Reagan turned his campaign around and pulled even. Reagan named a liberal eastern Senator as his running mate, but control of the convention came down to the Mississippi delegation, which swung the nomination to Ford. After Ford was defeated there was little doubt that Reagan was the dominant Republican, and he easily won the nomination in 1980. He named campaign rival George H. W. Bush as his running mate, and crusaded against the failures of incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter. Carter fought back, lashing out at Reagan as a dangerous radical who would unleash nuclear war. A liberal Republican John Anderson ran a third party campaign that faded to unimportance. Reagan won a landslide victory in the 1980 election by denouncing what he called Carter's failures: runaway inflation, soaring interest rates, persistent unemployment, a series of humiliations abroad, and a weakened military in the face of growing Soviet power. His long coattails brought in the first Republican Senate in years, but the Democrats still controlled the House.

The election marked the last hurrah of the New Deal era, and indeed the end of liberalism as a coherent policy.

Reaganomics: economic policies

Social Security Reform 1983

Mounting concerns that rising Social Security benefits were causing a long-term deficit and were growing too fast resulted in a bipartisan compromise in 1983. Brokered by conservative Alan Greenspan and liberal Claude Pepper, the agreement lowered benefits over the next 75 years and brought the system into balance. Key provisions included a gradual increase over 25 years in the retirement age from 65 to 67, to take account of longer life expectancy. (People could retire younger, but at a reduced rate of benefits.) Millions of people were added to the system, especially employees of state governments and of nonprofit organizations.

Foreign Policy: Cold War

President Reagan riding with Queen Elizabeth II of United Kingdom, courtesy Ronald Reagan Library

Reagan forcefully confronted the Soviet Union, marking a sharp departure from the détente observed by his predecessors Nixon, Ford, and Carter. Under the assumption that the Soviet Union could not then outspend the US government in a renewed arms race, he accelerated increases in defense spending begun during the Carter Administration and strove to make the Cold War economically and rhetorically hot.

Reagan had three motivations. First he agreed with the neoconservatives who argued that the Soviets had pulled ahead in military power and the U.S. had to race to catch up. Second, Reagan believed the decrepit Soviet economy could not handle a high-tech weapons race based on computers; it was imperative to block them from gaining western technology. Third, was the moral certainty that Communism was evil and doomed to failure. Reagan was the first major world leader to declare that Communism would soon collapse. On March 3, 1983, he was blunt to a religious group: the Soviet Union is "the focus of evil in the modern world" and could not last: "I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose — last pages even now are being written." His most detailed analysis came on June 8, 1982, to the British Parliament, stunning the Soviets and allies alike. Most experts assumed that the Soviet Union would be around for generations to come, and it was essential to recognize that and work with them. But Reagan ridiculed the USSR as an "evil empire" and argued that it was suffering a deep economic crisis, which he intended to make worse by cutting off western technology. He stated the Soviet Union "runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and human dignity to its citizens."

A year later in 1983 Reagan stunned the world with a totally new idea: the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), labeled "star wars" by the media, after the current movie. Reagan, following the ideas of Edward Teller (who invented the H-Bomb in 1950) called for a defensive missile umbrella over the U.S. that would intercept and destroy in space any hostile missiles. It was an unexpected, new idea, and supporters cheered, as SDI seemed to promise protection from nuclear destruction. To opponents, SDI meant a new arms race and the end of the Mutual Assured Destruction ("MAD") strategy that they believed had so far prevented nuclear war. The Soviets were stunned--they lacked basic computers and were unable to say whether it would work or not. Critics said it would cost a trillion dollars; yes said supporters, and the Soviets will go bankrupt if they try to match it. The SDI was in fact funded (as of 2007 it is still funded and still not finished.)

Iran Contra

The greatest embarrassment to Reagan was the strange Iran-Contra affair that unfolded in his second term and seized national attention in 1986-87. Reagan disregarded warnings by his cabinet leaders and signed off on operations by his national security staff without fully realizing what was at stake. Then he paid no attention to what was going on--an example of his usual distance from government operations. His failure of oversight wounded his public standing. No Reagan official was charged with illegal behavior during Iran-Contra itself; several however were guilty of misdemeanors for later withholding information from Congress.

Reagan's legacy

Foreign policy

Liberals were aghast at Reagan's foreign policy, because it pushed idealism and moralism in dangerous directions; one critic ridiculed it as "crackpot moralism." Liberals preferred a "foreign policy that pursued this national interest -- by pulling back from a preoccupation with the Soviet threat, reducing military expenditure, relying on increased cooperation with our allies, establishing more constructive links to the Third World, restricting the freedom of multinational capital, deemphasizing nuclear weapons, and deepening detente with the Soviet Union."

What scholars label the "orthodox view" of the end of the Cold War is that "the Soviet Union's capitulation and the Cold War victory for the forces of freedom and democracy were ultimately due to the relentless application of the West's military superiority and the dynamism of its ideas and economic system. These factors revealed communism's moral illegitimacy and highlighted its economic stagnation." It is broadly endorsed by both Republicans (who emphasize Reagan's role), and by Democrats (who emphasize the containment policies of Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson.

European leaders of the 1980s give credit to Reagan for winning the Cold War. Lech Wałęsa, leader of the Solidarity movement in Poland, said in 2004, "When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989." Helmut Kohl, chancellor of West Germany, said, "He was a stroke of luck for the world. Two years after Reagan called on Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the wall, he noted, it fell and 11 months later Germany was reunified. We Germans have much to thank Ronald Reagan for." Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said, "President Reagan was a determined opponent of Communism and he played an important role in bringing an end to Communism and to the artificial division of Europe imposed after the Second World War." Václav Havel, who became the Czech president in 1989, said, "He was a man of firm principles who was indisputably instrumental in the fall of Communism."

Domestic Policy

Reagan effected a permanent shift in economic policy, so that the wisdom of deregulation and lower taxes came to be widely accepted. The GOP locked into the lower tax mantra to the extent that it downplayed the theme of balancing budgets and stopped warning against the national debt. Reagan attacked welfare programs as wasteful for the taxpayers and inefficient for the recipients, but he was unable to make major changes. A bipartisan coalition in 1995 did radically reform welfare, but it is unclear how much influence can be attributed to Reagan.

Bibliography

Biographies

• Benze, Jr. James G. Nancy Reagan: On the White House Stage (2005), University Press of Kansas
  • Benze James G. "Nancy Reagan: China Doll or Dragon Lady?" Presidential Studies Quarterly 20 (fall 1990): 777-90
• Cannon, Lou. President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime Public Affairs. (2nd ed 2000) 948 pp. full-length biography online edition
• Cannon, Lou. Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power Public Affairs. detailed biography
• Evans, Thomas W. The Education of Ronald Reagan: The General Electric Years (2006)
• Morris, Edmund. Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (1999), includes fictional material
• Pemberton, William E. Exit with Honor: The Life and Presidency of Ronald Reagan (1998) short biography by historian online edition
• Reeves, Richard. President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination (2005) detailed analysis by historian
• Sullivan, George.Mr. President (1997). for middle schools

Reagan before 1981

• Brennan Mary C. Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the GOP. University of North Carolina Press, 1995
• Burbank, Garin. "Governor Reagan and California Welfare Reform: the Grand Compromise of 1971." California History 1991 70(3): 278-289. Issn: 0162-2897
• Burbank, Garin. "Governor Reagan's Only Defeat: The Proposition 1 Campaign in 1973." California History 72 (winter 1993-94): 360-73.
• Burbank, Garin. "Speaker Moretti, Governor Reagan, and the Search for Tax Reform in California, 1970-1972" The Pacific Historical Review Vol. 61, No. 2 (May, 1992), pp. 193-214 online in JSTOR
• Dallek, Matthew. The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan's First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics. (2004). Study of 1966 election as governor.
• DeGroot, Gerard J. "'A Goddamned Electable Person': the 1966 California Gubernatorial Campaign of Ronald Reagan." History 1997 82(267): 429-448. Issn: 0018-2648 Fulltext: in Swetswise, Ingenta and Ebsco
• DeGroot, Gerard J. "Ronald Reagan and Student Unrest in California, 1966-1970." Pacific Historical Review 1996 65(1): 107-129. Issn: 0030-8684 Fulltext: in Jstor
• Drew, Elizabeth. Portrait of an Election: The 1980 Presidential Campaign. 1981.
• Ferguson, Thomas and Joel Rogers, eds. The Hidden Election: Politics and Economics in the 1980 Presidential Campaign, 1981.
• Germond, Jack W. and Jules Witcover. Blue Smoke & Mirrors: How Reagan Won & Why Carter Lost the Election of 1980. 1981. Detailed journalism.
• Hayward, Steven F. The Age of Reagan, 1964-1980: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order (2001)
• Hamilton Gary G., and Nicole Woolsey Biggart. Governor Reagan, Governor Brown: A Sociology of executive Power. Columbia University Press, 1984.
• Moore, Glen. "Ronald W. Reagan's Campaign for the Republican Party's 1968 Presidential Nomination." Proceedings and Papers of the Georgia Association of Historians (1992) 12[i.e., 13]: 57-70. Issn: 0275-3863

Politics and Domestic issues

• Aldrich, John H., and David W. Rohde. Change and Continuity in the 1984 Elections. (1987)
• Amaker Norman C. Civil Rights and the Reagan Administration. Urban Institute Press, 1988
• Berman, Larry, ed. Looking Back on the Reagan Presidency (1990), essays by academics
• Berman William C. America's Right Turn: From Nixon to Bush. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
• Birnbaum Jeffrey H., and Alan S. Murray. Showdown at Gucci Gulch: Lawmakers, Lobbyists, and the Unlikely Triumph of Tax Reform. 1987.
• Boskin Michael J. Reagan and the Economy: The Successes, Failures, and Unfinished Agenda. ICS Press, 1987.
• Brownlee, W. Elliot and Hugh Davis Graham, eds. The Reagan Presidency: Pragmatic Conservatism and Its Legacies (2003)
• Busch, Andrew E. Reagan's Victory: The Presidential Election of 1980 and the Rise of the Right, (2005) online review by Michael Barone
• Campagna; Anthony S. The Economy in the Reagan Years: The Economic Consequences of the Reagan Administrations Greenwood Press. 1994 online edition
• Cannon, Lou. Ronald Reagan: The Presidential Portfolio. Public Affairs. (2001) online edition
• Cook, Daniel M. and Polsky, Andrew J. "Political Time Reconsidered: Unbuilding and Rebuilding the State under the Reagan Administration." American Politics Research(4): 577-605. ISSN 1532-673X Fulltext in SwetsWise. Argues Reagan slowed enforcement of pollution laws and transformed the national education agenda.
• Derthick Martha, and Paul J. Quirk. The Politics of Deregulation. Brookings Institution, 1985
• Robert R. Detlefsen; Civil Rights under Reagan Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1991 online edition
• Eads George C., and Michael Fix, eds. The Reagan Regulatory Strategy: An Assessment. Urban Institute Press, 1984
• Ehrman, John. The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan. (2005)
• Evans Rowland, and Robert Novak. The Reagan Revolution. 1991.
• Ferguson Thomas, and Joel Rogers, Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics 1986.
• Germond Jack W., and Jules Witcover. Wake Us When It's Over: Presidential Politics of 1984. 1985.
• Marshall R. Goodman; Managing Regulatory Reform: The Reagan Strategy and Its Impact Praeger Publishers, 1987 online edition
• Greider William. The Education of David Stockman and Other Americans. 1982. Stockman was Reagan's budget chief
• Griscom Tom. "Core Ideas of the Reagan Presidency." In Thompson, ed., Leadership, 23-48.
• Hulten Charles R. and Isabel V. Sawhill, eds. The Legacy of Reaganomics: Prospects for Long-Term Growth. C.: Urban Institute Press, 1994.
• Johnson, Haynes. Sleepwalking through History: America in the Reagan Years (1991) online edition
• Jones, Charles O. ed. The Reagan Legacy: Promise and Performance (1988) essays by political scientists
• Thomas Karier; Great Experiments in American Economic Policy: From Kennedy to Reagan Praeger, 1997 online edition
• Nicholas Laham; The Reagan Presidency and the Politics of Race: In Pursuit of Colorblind Justice and Limited Government Praeger Publishers, 1998. online edition
• Levy, Peter B. Encyclopedia of the Reagan-Bush Years (1996), short articles online edition
• Minarik Joseph J. Making America's Budget Policy. From the 1980s to the 1990s. M. E. Sharpe, 1990.
• John L. Palmer and Isabel V. Sawhill. The Reagan Record, 1984. economics and sociology
• Patterson, James T. Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush vs. Gore. (2005), standard scholarly synthesis.
• Rayack; Elton. Not So Free to Choose: The Political Economy of Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan (1987) hostile critiqueonline edition
• Sahu, Anandi P. and Ronald L. Tracy; The Economic Legacy of the Reagan Years: Euphoria or Chaos? Praeger Publishers, 1991 online edition
• Salamon Lester M., and Michael S. Lund. eds. The Reagan Presidency and the Governing of America 1985. articles by political scientists
• Schmertz, Eric J. et al eds. Ronald Reagan's America 2 Volumes (1997) articles by scholars and officeholders vol 1 onlinevol 2 online
• Weatherford, M. Stephen and Mcdonnell, Lorraine M. "Ronald Reagan as Legislative Advocate: Passing the Reagan Revolution's Budgets in 1981 and 1982." Congress & the Presidency (2005) 32:1 pp 1-29. Fulltext in Ebsco; Argues RR ignored the details but played a guiding role in setting major policies and adjudicating significant trade-offs, and in securing Congressional approval.

Foreign affairs

• Arnson, Cynthia J. Crossroads: Congress, the Reagan Administration, and Central America Pantheon, 1989.
• Baucom Donald R. The Origins of SDI, 1944-1983. University Press of Kansas, 1992.
• Bell Coral. The Reagan Paradox: American Foreign Policy in the 1980s. Rutgers University Press, 1989.
• Beschloss Michael R., and Strobe Talbott. At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War. 1993
• Busch, Andrew E.; "Ronald Reagan and the Defeat of the Soviet Empire" in Presidential Studies Quarterly. Vol: 27. Issue: 3. 1997. pp 451+.
• Dobson, Alan P. "The Reagan Administration, Economic Warfare, and Starting to Close down the Cold War." Diplomatic History(3): 531-556. Fulltext in SwetsWise, Ingenta and Ebsco. Argues Reagan's public rhetoric against the USSR was harsh and uncompromising, giving rise to the idea that his administration sought to employ a US defense buildup and NATO economic sanctions to bring about the collapse of the USSR. Yet many statements by Reagan and Shultz suggest they desired negotiation with the Soviets from a position of American strength, not the eventual demise of the USSR.
• Draper, Theodore. A Very Thin Line: The Iran-Contra Affair (1991)
• Fitzgerald, Frances. Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War. political history of S.D.I. (2000). ISBN.
• Ford, Christopher A. and Rosenberg, David A. "The Naval Intelligence Underpinnings of Reagan's Maritime Strategy." Journal of Strategic Studies(2): 379-409. Fulltext in Ingenta and Ebsco; Reagan's maritime strategy sought to apply US naval might against Soviet vulnerabilities on its maritime flanks. It was supported by a major buildup of US naval forces and aggressive exercising in seas proximate to the USSR; it explicitly targeted Moscow's strategic missile submarines with the aim of pressuring the Kremlin during crises or the early phases of global war. The maritime strategy represents one of the rare instances in history when intelligence helped lead a nation to completely revise its concept of military operations.
• Raymond Garthoff. Detente and Confrontation: American-Soviet relations from Nixon to Reagan (1994)
• Haftendorn, Helga and Jakob Schissler, eds. The Reagan Administration: A Reconstruction of American Strength? Berlin: Walter de Guyer, 1988. by European scholars
• David Locke Hall; The Reagan Wars: A Constitutional Perspective on War Powers and the Presidency Westview Press, 1991 online edition
• Jeffrey W. Knopf, "Did Reagan Win the Cold War?" Strategic Insights, Volume III, Issue 8 (August 2004)
• Kyvig, David. ed. Reagan and the World (1990), scholarly essays on foreign policy
• Mark P. Lagon; The Reagan Doctrine: Sources of American Conduct in the Cold War's Last Chapter Praeger Publishers, 1994 online edition
• Jack Matlock. Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended. (2004) by the US ambassador to Moscow

• Pach, Chester. "The Reagan Doctrine: Principle, Pragmatism, and Policy." Presidential Studies Quarterly(1): 75-88. Fulltext in SwetsWise and Ingenta; Reagan declared in 1985 that the U.S. should not "break faith" with anti-Communist resistance groups. However, his policies varied as differences in local conditions and US security interests produced divergent policies toward "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Mozambique, Angola, and Cambodia.
• Salla; Michael E. and Ralph Summy, eds. Why the Cold War Ended: A Range of Interpretations Greenwood Press. 1995.
• Schmertz, Eric J. et al eds. Ronald Reagan and the World (1997) articles by scholars and officeholders
• Shultz, George P. Turmoil and Triumph My Years As Secretary of State 1993)
• Schweizer, Peter. Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism (2002)
• Thomas W. Walker; Reagan Versus the Sandinistas: The Undeclared War on Nicaragua Westview Press, 1987 online edition
• Wallison, Peter J. Ronald Reagan: The Power of Conviction and the Success of His Presidency. Westview Press, 2003. 282 pp.
• Wills, David C. The First War on Terrorism: Counter-Terrorism Policy during the Reagan Administration. 2004.

Rhetoric, media and values

• Aden, R. C. "Entrapment and Escape: Inventional Metaphors in Ronald Reagan's Economic Rhetoric." Southern Communication Journal 54 (1989): 384-401
• Dallek, Robert. Ronald Reagan: The Politics of Symbolism. (1999)
• Denton Jr., Robert E. Primetime Presidency of Ronald Reagan: The Era of the Television Presidency (1988) online edition
• Diggins, John Patrick. Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History (2007) Reagan as follower of Emerson, by leading historian of ideas
• Jane Feuer; Seeing through the Eighties: Television and Reaganism Duke University Press, 1995 online edition
• FitzWater, Marlin . Call the Briefing! Bush and Reagan, Sam and Helen, a Decade with Presidents and the Press. 1995. Memoir by Reagan's press spokesman.
• Goodnight, G. Thomas. "Ronald Reagan's Re-formulation of the Rhetoric of War: Analysis of the 'Zero Option,' 'Evil Empire,' and 'Star Wars' Addresses." Quarterly Journal of Speech 72 (1986): 390-414.
• Greffenius, Steven. The Last Jeffersonian: Ronald Reagan's Dreams of America. June, July, & August Books. 2002.
• Hertsgaard Mark. On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency 1988. criticizes the press
• Hoeveler J. David. Watch on the Right: Conservative Intellectuals in the Reagan Era. University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.
• Houck, Davis, and Amos Kiewe, eds. Actor, Ideologue, Politician: The Public Speeches of Ronald Reagan (Greenwood Press, 1993) W. Houck&dcontributors=Davis+W.+Houck online edition
• Jones, John M. "'Until Next Week': The Saturday Radio Addresses of Ronald Reagan" Presidential Studies Quarterly. Volume: 32. Issue: 1. 2002. pp 84+.
• Kengor, Paul. God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life Regan Books, 2004. ISBN.
• Kiewe, Amos, and Davis W. Houck. A Shining City on a Hill: Ronald Reagan's Economic Rhetoric, 1951-1989. 1991.
• Lewis, William F. "Telling America's Story: Narrative Form and the Reagan Presidency", Quarterly Journal of Speech): 280–302
• Meyer, John C. "Ronald Reagan and Humor: A Politician's Velvet Weapon", Communication Studies 41 (1990): 76-88.
• Moore, Mark P. "Reagan's Quest for Freedom in the 1987 State of the Union Address." Western Journal of Communication 53 (1989): 52-65.
• Muir, William Ker. The Bully Pulpit: The Presidential Leadership of Ronald Reagan (1992), examines his speeches
• Noonan, Peggy. When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan (2001) memoir by a Reagan speechwriter
• John Orman; Comparing Presidential Behavior: Carter, Reagan, and the Macho Presidential Style Greenwood Press, 1987 online edition
• Ritter, Kurt W. Ronald Reagan: The Great Communicator. Greenwood, 1992. online edition
• Shogan, Colleen J. "Coolidge and Reagan: The Rhetorical Influence of Silent Cal on the Great Communicator", Rhetoric & Public Affairs 9.2 online at Project Muse; argues that Coolidge and Reagan shared a common ideological message, which served as the basis for modern conservatism. Even without engaging in explicitly partisan rhetoric, Reagan's principled speech served an important party-building function.
• Stahl, Lesley. "Reporting Live" (1999) memoir by TV news reporter
• Stuckey, Mary. Getting Into the Game: The Pre-Presidential Rhetoric of Ronald Reagan. Praeger, 1989
• Stuckey, Mary. Playing the Game: The Presidential Rhetoric of Ronald Reagan. Praeger, 1990. online edition
• Thomas, Tony. The Films of Ronald Reagan (1980)
• Troy, Gill. Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s (2004). Study of Reagan's image.
• Michael Weiler and W. Barnett Pearce; Reagan and Public Discourse in America University of Alabama Press, 1992 online edition
• Wills, Garry. Reagan's America: Innocents at Home. (1987)

Primary sources

• Reagan Ronald, and Richard G. Hubler. Where's the Rest of Me? 1965. first autobiography
• Reagan Ronald. An American Life. Simon and Schuster, 1990. second autobiography
• Reagan Ronald. The Creative Society: Some Comments on Problems Facing America. 1968.
• Reagan Ronald. Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation. 1984.
• Reagan Ronald. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan. 1981-1989. 8 vols. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1982-91.
• Reagan, Ronald. Reagan, In His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan That Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America (2001)
• Skinner, Kiron K. et al, eds. Reagan's Path to Victory: The Shaping of Ronald Reagan's Vision: Selected Writings (2004), 450 radio talks from late 1970s
• Reagan, Nancy. My Turn: The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan (1989)
• Reagan Maureen. First Father, First Daughter: A Memoir. 1989.
• Reagan Michael and Joe Hyams. On the Outside Looking In. 1988.

By aides

• Anderson, Martin. Revolution: The Reagan Legacy (1990)
• Haig, Alexander. Inner Circles: How America Changed the World (1994). Haig was Secretary of State 1981-82
• Deaver, Michael, and Mickey Herskowitz. Behind the Scenes. 1987. Memoir by a top aide.
• Meese Edwin. With Reagan: The Inside Story. Regnery Gateway, 1992.
• Niskanen William A. Reaganomics: An Insider's Account of the Policies and the People. Oxford University Press, 1988.
• Regan Donald T. For the Record. From Wall Street to Washington. 1988; Treasury Secretary and Chief of Staff
• Shultz, George P. Turmoil and Triumph My Years As Secretary of State 1993) Schulz was Secretary of State 1982-89
• Stockman David A. The Triumph of Politics: How the Reagan Revolution Failed. 1986. Stcokman was Budget Director in 1981-82
• Thompson Kenneth W., ed. Foreign Policy in the Reagan Presidency: Nine Intimate Perspectives. University Press of America, 1993.
• Thompson Kenneth W., ed. Leadership in the Reagan Presidency: Seven Intimate Perspectives. 1992.
• Thompson Kenneth W., ed. Leadership in the Reagan Presidency, Part II: Eleven Intimate Perspectives. University Press of America, 1993.
• Weinberger, Caspar. In the Arena: A Memoir of the 20th Century (1991), by the Defense Secretary

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• Council of Economic Advisors. Economic Report of the President, (annual, 1981-1988), detailed analysis of economic iccues