Reagan's Impact on the American Family Promoting Traditional Values

Excerpted from an essay by Peggy Noonan: In a president, character is everything. A president doesn't have to be brilliant; Harry Truman wasn't brilliant, and ... as reactions to U.S. policy choice, but that perspective overstates the effect of U.S. policy ... In public policy, Ronald Reagan is remembered as a foe of big ... Shortly after the 1980 presidential election, former President Richard Nixon sent an eleven-page memorandum to then-President-elect Ronald ... President Reagan initially engineered large tax cuts, but as deficits grew proposed select tax increases. Over the course of his presidency, inflation and ... Reagan wrote, “As the foundation of my foreign policy, I decided we had to send as powerful a message as we could to the Russians that we weren' ... Ronald Reagan associated himself with optimism and renewal for the United States of the 1980s; under his presidency it was, as his famous 1984 ... Despite the idolatry of the last fifteen years, Reagan's average popularity as president was only, well, average, lower than that of a half-dozen modern ... For 30 years Ronald Reagan has been a hero to Republicans and conservatives, his presidency regarded as the crucial moment when America ... During his presidency, Reagan escalated the military budget while slashing funds for domestic programs that assisted working-class Americans and ... Reagan became president in 1981, when Americans had grown weary of a government that had been expanding incessantly since Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.