Ronald Reagan made a controversial visit to a military cemetery at Bitburg, Germany. Nazi SS soldiers were among the dead, and the President’s visit sparked protests from both Americans and Germans. Reagan, who also visited the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, justified the visit as an attempt to strengthen relations with Germany.
In the presidential election of 1984, incumbent Republican Ronald Reagan defeated Democratic challenger Walter Mondale with a record 525 electoral votes to Mondale’s 13.
Following the passage of the 1981 Economic Recovery Tax Act, the United States experienced what came to be known as the Reagan Recession—worse than the economic crisis of the Carter years and in fact the worst recession since the Great Depression. Unemployment peaked at nine million and 17,000 businesses failed. The economy began to recover in 1983.
At a speech at the Brandenburg Gate near the Berlin Wall, Ronald Reagan called on the Soviet Union to open the Eastern Bloc: “Mr. Gobachev, tear down this wall!”
The US Senate voted down Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court as Senate Democrats considered Bork far too conservative on social issues.
Reagan’s presidential re-election campaign introduced its “Morning in America” theme, promoting an image of America as hopeful and moving toward a better future. One of the campaign’s advertisements asserted, “It’s morning again in America, and under the leadership of President Reagan, our country is prouder and stronger and better. Why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?”
Nominated by President Reagan to replace Warren Burger, William Rehnquist became cChief justice of the Supreme Court.
Republican Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Jimmy Carter for the presidency. Reagan’s campaign was aided by the poor economy and Carter’s failure to successfully put an end to the Iranian hostage crisis.
The Tax Reform Act of 1986 marked the broadest overhauls of the federal tax code in history. It reformed capital gains, deductions, and tax credits, lowered the top income tax rate, and eliminated federal income tax liability for those below the poverty line.
In August 1982, the United States sent 1,200 US marines to Lebanon as part of an international peacekeeping force to intervene in the Israeli invasion. After continuous conflicts and attacks on the marines by Syrian and insurgent forces, President Reagan finally withdrew them permanently in February 1984.