A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Robert Orr (1981 – 1989)

Robert Orr was not the star defenceman for the Boston Bruins. Rather, he was the son of an industrialist from Evansville. He mostly went to public schools but then enrolled in Yale where he received his bachelor’s degree before enrolling in Harvard Business School in 1940. However, World War II broke out, and he did not complete that degree. He joined the Army and served in the Pacific theater, eventually rising to the rank of major.

During his service, he met a girl, and after the war, they returned to his home in Evansville, and he joined the family business — primarily held in the Orr Iron Company.

The transition away from a wartime economy created opportunities for Orr. With implements of war no longer needed, several companies were forced to close. Orr purchased, refurbished, and sold some of the factories. He became part of an economic development committee and involved in Republican politics. “His business and holding expanded rapidly and by 1953 he was on the board of twenty local businesses including Erie Investments, Sterling Brewers, and Grand Junction, and was director of twelve other companies.”

Beginning in the early 50s, Orr held a variety of positions in the Evansville and Vanderburgh County Republican Party apparatus. He was elected to the state senate in 1968 and served for five years until he was chosen to run as Gov. Bowen’s running mate. As lieutenant governor, he was in charge of the department of agriculture and department of commerce. Two of his initiatives during this time were creating Ohio River ports at Mount Vernon and Jeffersonville (the third Indiana port is up north at Burns Harbor).

In 1980, Bowen supported Orr’s nomination for governor, and he ran unopposed for the party nomination. In the general election, the Democratic challenger was John Hillenbrand. Bowen had been popular, and Orr ran on that popularity (with the slogan “Let’s Keep a Good Thing Going”), citing among other things, Bowen’s efforts to lower property taxes. The Kokomo Tribune described both men as trying to take advantage of Bowen’s legacy — Orr as the lieutenant governor, Hillenbrand as Orr’s chairman of the Department of Natural Resources. (The Tribune also described Orr as “a 62-year-old millionaire Evansville businessman” and Hillenbrand as “a 48-year-old millionaire businessman from Batesville.) Orr got much the better of that battle, defeating Hillenbrand by over 15% and 300,000 votes of 2.2 million cast.

Orr won a second term in 1984 by a closer margin than his first election. He ran against Democrat Wayne Townsend. Townsend was a state senator and the grandson of former governor, Clifford Townsend who had been governor from 1937-1941. Townsend lost by 5% in a year when Ronald Reagan had a landslide win over Walter Mondale. (Out of 2.2 million votes cast in the election, Townsend did about 200,000 votes better than Mondale, but still lost to Orr by 110,000.)

During his term, Orr took action to remove the state’s license branches from political control — undoing a piece of what had been an extensive patronage system in the state. Orr also oversaw an overhaul of the state’s educational system:

Mr. Orr’s major achievement was passage of a sweeping educational overhaul package in 1987. The ”A-Plus” package required student achievement exams, a new school accreditation system based on performance and rewards for schools that showed improvement.

Shortly after the end of the 1987 session of the General Assembly, the Chicago Tribune described the passage of the educational proposal:

Orr had championed education reform this year as critical to improving the lackluster performance of Indiana`s public schools and ensuring future economic growth. He proposed a $400 million plan in January that called for 10 more school days and 30 other initiatives designed to inject incentives and accountability into the education system.

The package received a chilly reception in the legislature, prompting Orr to launch a direct mail campaign to nearly 200,000 parents in the state. Ten thousand responded to the governor`s call for assistance.

In addition, leaders of some of the largest businesses in the state spent $300,000 on a media campaign to tell the public about Orr`s program.

The legislators eventually passed the governor`s $550 million, two-year program. They also added $81 million for other programs to increase state spending on primary and secondary schools by 9.3 percent in 1987-88 and 12.8 percent the following year.

The measure adds five more days to what has been the shortest school year in the nation, requires comprehensive testing of students and evaluations of teachers, offers financial rewards to schools that improve the most, and imposes financial penalties on schools that promote students who have not met achievement goals.

Students who fall behind will have to attend summer school, and school days lost due to bad weather will have to be made up.

The legislature also gave Orr some things he did not ask for, including a $20 million grant program for students at risk of underachievement because of poverty, broken homes and uneducated parents.

The session saw a significant increase in taxes to pay for $754 million in additional spending. The personal income tax was raised from 3 – 3.4%, the state cigarette tax was raised by 5 cents per pack, and a 15% increase was imposed on other tobacco products. This was the second major tax increase during Orr’s tenure. In 1982, to cope with the recession, Indiana raised income and sales taxes. 1987 also saw legislation to increase the speed limit from 55 to 65 miles per hour, sharp restrictions on smoking in government buildings, and approval of a referendum on whether Indiana’s ban on lotteries should be lifted.

Orr appointed Chief Justice Randall Shepard (of Evansville) to the Indiana Supreme Court in 1985 and Justice (later Chief Justice for a relatively brief period) and Brent Dixon (of Lafayette) in 1986. These two men were very influential jurists. Shepard served for 27 years and was active in reviving the Indiana Constitution into something more than an afterthought as compared to the U.S. Constitution, and in asserting authority over trial courts and making them more part of an independent judicial branch and less part of county government. Justice Dixon served for 30 years and became the second longest serving Indiana Supreme Court Justice after Isaac Blackford (who served from 1817 to 1853).

After Orr’s term of governor came to an end, he was appointed by President Bush to the post of ambassador to Singapore which he held until 1992. In 2000, he divorced his wife of 54 years and, in 2001 — at the age of 82 — he was remarried. He would die in 2004, at the age of 86.

We’re really getting into recent memory here, so I’ll just be hitting some highlights here as I finish reviewing the national scene and the Presidents.

George W. Bush (2001 – 2009)

George W. Bush was, of course, the son of George H.W. Bush. If the spoon in H.W.’s mouth was silver, I guess that makes W’s spoon platinum or something. Nevertheless, he was able to campaign as an aw-shucks Texan to some degree. The commentariat was maybe tired of the Clinton years to some degree because they pounded on his opponent, Al Gore, for nonsense like wearing earth tones and sighing during a debate and insisting on using math. In the end, Gore was the people’s choice, but Bush was the beneficiary of the Electoral College’s affirmative action for voters in less populous states. And he had the advantage of having his brother oversee the election in Florida where Bush won by an apparent margin of 537 votes. However, the United States Supreme Court stopped the recount, so whether that was the true margin is unknown.

Eight months into Bush’s term, the U.S. was attacked by Osama bin and his group, al-Qaeda when four planes were hijacked. Two were flown into the Twin Towers in New York, one into the Pentagon, and one crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to overpower the hijackers. The attacks resulted in the deaths of 3,000 people, but — as is the intent of terrorist attacks — the psychological impact outstripped the actual loss. The divided country rallied around the President in the aftermath, and the Bush administration reacted by invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan had a relationship to the attacks. Iraq did not.

In 2004, Bush once again won the electoral college. And, in what is becoming a rarity for Republican Presidential candidates, he won the popular vote over John Kerry by 2.4%. As we know because of our recent 2016 election, that 2.4% majority will represent the only such popular vote victory for the GOP for a period spanning 30 years. However, the goodwill strengthened by post-9/11 unity would not last. In the midterm elections of 2006, Democrats took control of the House, the Senate, and the majority of governor’s seats. That momentum would largely continue into the 2008 elections.

During the Bush administration, deficit spending resumed after a brief hiatus during the Clinton administration. The stock market stagnated. In 2008, the market collapsed in the biggest recession since the Great Depression. However, its effects appear to have been mitigated by spending measures implemented at the end of the Bush administration and the beginning of the Obama administration.

Barack Obama (2009 – 2017)

Barack Obama was born in Hawaii to a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya. He became our first black president. Obama’s father and mother split up soon after he was born. When Obama was 3, his mother remarried a man from Indonesia. Obama lived in Jakarta from age 6 to 10. When he was 10, he returned to Hawaii and lived with his maternal grandparents. After high school, he moved to the continental U.S. and, among other things, attended college at Columbia, became a community organizer in Chicago, attended law school at Harvard, and taught constitutional law at the Chicago Law School. From 1996 – 2004, he served in the Illinois state senate. In 2004, he decisively won a crowded Democratic primary field for the Illinois U.S. Senate seat. The anticipated Republican opponent, Jack Ryan dropped out of the Senate race due to the breaking of some scandalous news related to his divorce from actress Jeri Ryan. Instead, Obama ended up facing conservative activist Alan Keyes and won easily. His Senate victory and his well-received keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention made him a rising star. He soon made the decision to run for the Presidency in 2008.

After a long and contentious primary battle, Obama beat Hillary Clinton who had been the frontrunner. In the 2008 election, he went up against John McCain who was fighting some pretty serious anti-Republican headwinds following the Bush administration and exacerbated by the collapse of the financial markets due to sketchy housing market practices on Wall Street. Obama won that race decisively.

Using the Democratic control of Congress and the Presidency, Obama passed a stimulus bill that did much to mitigate the financial collapse. He was also able to pass a healthcare bill modeled on the Massachusetts program passed by future GOP candidate, Mitt Romney. Republicans were united in political opposition to a health care success by Obama and did not participate in meaningful negotiations for their votes. Conservative Democrats also gummed up the works; the upshot being what is, by almost all accounts, an unwieldy system. However, it did result in  the availability of health insurance for 11.4 million more Americans and has, in particular, been beneficial to those Americans with pre-existing medical conditions.

On May 1, 2011, an operation under the Obama administration was successful in killing Osama bin Laden.

In 2012, Obama was able to defeat Mitt Romney by a smaller margin than in 2008, but still with 51.1% of the popular vote and 332 electoral votes. He appointed two Supreme Court Justices – Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotamayor. A third vacancy opened up upon the death of Antonin Scalia, but the Senate Republicans blocked consideration of his appointment for a year, using the specious argument that 25% of a Presidential term was too close to the end to allow his nominee to receive consideration.

During Obama’s second term, significant progress was made in recognizing that gay Americans should not be second class citizens. The Supreme Court recognized their right to marry.

In 2016, the Republicans nominated reality star and alleged billionaire Donald Trump to represent them. As in 1876, 1888, and 2000, the Republicans won enough electoral votes to win the White House but did so with a minority of the total votes. What this means for the future of the country remains to be seen.

Bill Clinton (1993 – 2001)

Bill Clinton was born to modest circumstances in Hope, Arkansas. His father died before he was born. His mom went off to nursing school and left him with his grandparents. When his mom returned, she married Roger Clinton, Sr., an alcoholic gambler who apparently beat his mom and step-brother. He got a scholarship to Georgetown, then a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, and then went to Yale Law School. He was sharp. While at Yale, he met Hillary.

He returned to Arkansas and became a law professor for a time. He ran unsuccessfully for Representative in 1974 but put up a good fight. In 1976, he successfully ran for Attorney General. In 1978, he was elected governor then lost again in 1980. He joked that he was the youngest ex-governor in the nation’s history. In 1982, he was re-elected and kept the job for 10 years. He became part of the Democratic Leadership Council — a group of economically more conservative Democrats who sought to move away from liberal positions they felt contributed to Reagan’s large victories.

In 1988, he considered running for President, but ultimately endorsed Dukakis. He gave the keynote address which was, as he’s known for, a bit of a stemwinder. In 1992, he got into the race. He lost the Iowa race and was behind in New Hampshire, suffering from talk about his extramarital affair. He and Hillary gave an interview after the Super Bowl that got the media talking about “momentum.” That let him hang on until Super Tuesday where he won some southern states. Jerry Brown gave him competition, but he won New York and Brown couldn’t keep up.

Initially, Bush seemed too popular to beat. But, his “no new taxes” broken pledge, the souring economy, and the lack of communism as a unifying issue caused Bush’s popularity to plummet. Then populist billionaire, Ross Perot entered the race and all bets were off. The Cold War no longer had the same strength as an energizing issue, and the Republicans – nodding to the influence of the Buchanan wing of the party – turned to Christianity as a unifying issue. This was alienating to some sectors. Meanwhile, Clinton pointed to his “New Democrat” approach in Arkansas to attract the “Reagan Democrats” who had defected in the 80s.

Ultimately, Clinton won the election by 5% and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. Clinton passed a budget that reduced taxes on small businesses and most Americans but raised taxes on the wealthiest 1% of the country. A well-organized opposition from conservatives defeated Clinton’s attempt to pass universal health care legislation. Conservatives also began their persistent investigations into Clinton. These investigations amplified after 1994 when Newt Gingrich helped engineer sweeping midterm electoral success for the Republicans. The investigations were mostly a waste of time that fed the relatively new 24 hour news channels, but one of these investigations ultimately hit pay dirt in the form of discovering marital infidelity. This was used to force him into an embarrassing deposition which, in turn, was used as a pretext to move for his impeachment. On a personal note, that disingenuous abuse of power by Congressional Republicans is what started me voting for Democrats in the Presidential elections.

Clinton adopted the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in the military, allowing gay people to serve so long as they did not talk about their sexuality. As regressive as that sounds today, it was a step forward at the time. In 1994, Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which had a mix of support and opposition. The DLC and pro-commerce Republicans supported it while it was opposed by a mix Republicans, Democrats, and Perot supporters. It has long been criticized as an important reason for the decline of manufacturing in the U.S.

The Internet, which had its roots in ARPAnet — launched in late 1969 — started to explode in the mid-90s during the Clinton administration. It was aided significantly by the development of the Mosaic browser, launched in 1993. The browser had been developed with funding by a federal initiative initiated by Al Gore when he was a Senator. Gore’s chances of becoming President in his own right would be hindered by his opponents’ false characterization of one of his statements which they argued represented him claiming to invent the Internet. The Internet would, of course, be instrumental in spreading that characterization. In any event, the Clinton White House was the first to have a web page.

Military action during the Clinton administration was generally low scale. There was conflict in Somalia which resulted in two U.S. helicopters shot down and 18 American soldiers dead as well as an operation in Yugoslavia in response to ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Al Qaeda bombed U.S. embassies in East Africa which killed 12 Americans. With respect to the United States Supreme Court, Clinton appointed Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Ultimately, Clinton would leave office with high approval ratings (which counterintuitively seemed to be bolstered by the impeachment proceedings.)

George H.W. Bush chose the relatively young and inexperienced Indiana Republican, Dan Quayle as his running mate to appeal to young Americans. Senator McCain apparently found him attractive, saying, “I can’t believe a guy that handsome wouldn’t have some impact.”  Quayle’s grandfather was wealthy publishing magnate, Eugene Pulliam who owned, among other things, the Indianapolis Star and the Arizona Republic. Quayle went to De Pauw and IU Law School. During Vietnam, he served in the national guard. Two years after graduating law school, Quayle ran for and was elected to Congress. In 1980, he upended Birch Bayh in a race for the United States Senate.

During the 1988 Presidential campaign, Quayle tried to battle his reputation as inexperienced by comparing himself to John F. Kennedy who had served only two more years in Congress when he ran for President. Bentsen got off the line of the campaign when he said, “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

At the 1988 convention, Bush gave his “thousand points of light” speech, endorsing the Pledge of Allegiance, government prayer in schools, capital punishment, gun rights, and anti-abortion. The “thousand points” spoke to his idea that poverty and social problems should be dealt with through volunteerism rather than government mandate. Bush made the famous declaration, “Read my lips, no new taxes!” Bush ran a tough campaign and was able to overcome initial deficits in the polls and paint Dukakis as soft on crime. He ultimately beat Dukakis by 8% and took 426 electoral votes. For my part, I was 17 years old and volunteered for the Bush/Quayle campaign, calling people to get them out to the polls and, as I recall, running supplies from one part of Wayne County. I remember attending a Republican Party election-results party with my long-time friend Tom in downtown Richmond and celebrating the victory. Tom and I can now be found on social media arguing vociferously against a Trump Presidency. (As I write this, it’s the Sunday before election day. Holding my breath!) The party of Reagan has changed quite a bit over the last 28 years.

During Bush’s Presidency, the communist world was falling apart. The Berlin Wall came down in the fall of 1989, and the Soviet Union would formally cease to exist by January 1992. In 1989, Bush ordered military operations that resulted in the removal of Panamanian strongman, Manuel Noriega. In 1990, responding to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, Bush sought and received authorization for the use of force. The attack began in January 1991 and culminated in a ground invasion in February which was highly successful from the U.S. point of view. Bush was sometimes criticized for not pursuing Iraqi forces to Baghdad and removing Saddam Hussein from power. “Bush explained that he did not give the order to overthrow the Iraqi government because it would have “incurred incalculable human and political costs…. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq.””

Bush attempted to deal with the deficit that had tripled during the Reagan presidency. His fellow Republicans would not accept his proposal to raise taxes and cut spending to reduce the deficit by $500 billion over five years, so Bush went along with a Democratic proposal that raised spending and taxes. This reduced his popularity (which at one point hit almost 90%), and many Republicans were stung by the failure to honor his pledge of “no new taxes.” Among other things, Bush also signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, and a re-authorization of the Clean Air Act. He appointed David Souter to the Supreme Court as well as the more contentious choice of Clarence Thomas.

A short term recession and higher unemployment hit at an inopportune time for his re-election prospects. When he ran for re-election, he faced an insurgent primary challenge from his right in the form of Pat Buchanan who did surprisingly well in New Hampshire with 35% of the vote. Louisiana Klansman, David Duke, managed 120,000 votes in the primary. (By contrast, Bush won 9.2 million.) The Buchanan/Duke insurgency revealed the seeds (or maybe continued presence, considering the longevity of the Birchers) of a nativist unrest in the Republican Party. In the general election, his prospects were further complicated by the candidacy of billionaire Ross Perot. Perot tapped into citizens’ concerns about the deficit and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He led the major party candidates in the polls in June of 1992 but dropped out in July and then re-entered, claiming that he had dropped out due to Republican operatives attempting to disrupt his daughter’s wedding. That severely undermined his credibility and, while his support remained substantial, he did not recover the lead.

George H.W. Bush

George Bush was Ronald Reagan’s Vice-President and the scion of a wealthy political family. His father, Prescott, was a U.S. Senator and a Wall Street banker. His grandfather on his paternal side was Samuel Bush who became associated with the Rockefellers and the Harrimans in the railroad business. Samuel became involved with government when given national responsibility for government assistance to and relations with munitions companies during World War I and also spent some time serving on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. George’s grandfather on his maternal side was George Herbert Walker, a prominent banker and businessman, also with close ties to the Harriman family.

Bush was educated at prestigious New England private schools and was on his way to Yale when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Back in those days, there was a sense of noblesse oblige among prominent families, and I expect that George had been inculcated with that sense of duty. Instead of heading to Yale, he joined the Navy as an aviator, the youngest Navy aviator at the time. IN 1944, he was part of a task force that was victorious against the Japanese at the Battle of the Phillipine Sea. During an attack on Chicijima, Bush piloted an aircraft that took enemy fire, forcing him to bail out and wait in the ocean for four hours until he could be rescued. Through 1944, he flew 58 combat missions and received the Distinguished Flying Cross, three Air Medals, and the Presidential Unit Citation. He was honorably discharged in 1955, and married Barbara Bush. He went to Yale and completed his degree in 2.5 years while, among other things, serving as captain of its baseball team and being inducted into the Skull & Bones secret society.

After graduation, he parlayed his father’s connections into a profitable stint in the oil business; first starting as a clerk with a company where his dad had served on the board of directors, then starting his own oil company which he ran for about 15 years before entering politics. He ran for the U.S. Senate in 1964, losing to the incumbent Democrat – but, in doing so, Bush was part of an effort that co-opted the John Birchers and moved the Texas Republicans to the right, supporting “state’s rights” in opposition to civil rights. Country club Republicans were merging with state’s rights Democrat segregationists under the Republican banner. In 1966, Bush was elected to Congress as the first Republican to represent Houston. He served two terms and decided to try for the Senate seat again. This time, he lost to Lloyd Bentsen who would later be on the ticket that unsuccessfully opposed his run for President in 1988. While Bush lost the Senate race in 1970, he gained Nixon’s gratitude for giving up his Congressional seat to make the run and was appointed Ambassador to the United Nations for two years before becoming chairman of the Republican National Committee. He was loyal to Nixon as long as he could be but, when the scandal grew too big to contain, he joined in the call for Nixon’s resignation.

Ford appointed Bush to be, in effect, ambassador to China (though he didn’t have that title officially because the U.S. did not have a formal embassy with the People’s Republic of China.) In 1976-1977, Bush was appointed to be the Director of Central Intelligence and helped steer the CIA after it was rocked with scandals uncovered by the Church Committee.

In 1980, Bush ran for President, representing centrist Republicans and facing an uphill battle against front runner Reagan who represented the conservative wing of the party. He tagged Reagan’s economic plans as “voodoo economics,” and managed to beat Reagan in Iowa. However, Reagan regrouped and beat Bush in New Hampshire and the rest of the primaries until Bush conceded. Reagan selected Bush as his vice-presidential running mate.

During the vice-presidency, Bush kept a low profile, getting some flack from comedians about how all he ever did was attend funerals. He was involved in deregulation and international efforts to address illegal drugs. There is evidence to suggest that he was aware of the details of the Iran-Contra deal.

In 1988, he was the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to be President. He employed, among others, Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes as campaign staff. Those two have worked significant damage in American politics. But, they got Bush elected. During the primary, Bush initially lost to Bob Dole and Pat Robertson in the Iowa primary, but Robertson was tripped up on embellishments he seems to have made about his military service while the Bush campaign painted Dole as a tax raiser. Bush won New Hampshire and then his organization and money carried him through the nationwide race, making him the Republican nominee. On the Democratic side, Gary Hart was initially the front runner. Hard as this may seem to believe in the days of a viable Trump candidacy, Hart’s marital infidelity and debts sank him. Plagiarism was enough to sink Joe Biden’s candidacy. That still left a crowded field with Mike Dukakis, Jesse Jackson, Al Gore, Dick Gephardt, and Paul Simon. Jackson and Gore split the southern states, Simon took Illinois, Gephardt took a few states in the Midwest, and Dukakis won most of the rest.

Bush attacked Dukakis as a liberal. Dukakis had a photo-op in a tank, trying to improve his military bona fides. Unfortunately, he looked ridiculous and the Bush campaign capitalized. Atwater and Ailes pummeled him with the racist Willie Horton ad, and Dukakis was unable to respond effectively.

Reagan was inaugurated on January 20, 1981, less than a month shy of his 70th birthday. A little over two months later, John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate Reagan, apparently in an effort to impress actress Jodie Foster. Reagan was shot, but surgery was successful and he was released 11 days later. In the summer of 1981, an air traffic controllers union went on strike. He fired 11,345 of them and used supervisors and military controllers to handle air traffic until new controllers could be hired and trained. It was open season on unions.

As I write this, I find that I am getting to a part of history that I’m tempted to re-litigate. There are at least three threads I want to follow for each issue – what actually happened, what Reagan claimed he was trying to do, and the story that current Reagan enthusiasts put forward. Rather than go through all of that, I am just going to touch the surface. Reagan advocated tax cuts and increased military spending. The budget deficit increased significantly despite an economy that started improving in 1982 after the recession ended. There’s a lot of argument about whether Reagan was an anti-tax hero. Most of the cuts in 1981 were restored later on. He raised taxes 11 times over the course of his Presidency.

Reagan was a Cold Warrior, and a lot of the increased deficit under his watch came from the military build up he wanted. In 1984, the theory with respect to the USSR was:

Their society is economically weak, and it lacks the wealth, education, and technology to enter the information age. They have thrown everything into military production, and their society is starting to show terrible stress as a result. They can’t sustain military production the way we can. Eventually it will break them, and then there will be just one superpower in a safe world—if, only if, we can keep spending.

One of the most famous of these initiatives was “Star Wars” — the Strategic Defense Initiative “that would have used ground- and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles.” When Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet leader, Regan shifted from aggression to diplomacy. He held four summit conferences with Gorbechev, pursuing significant arms reduction. Reagan and Gorbachev seemed to develop warm feelings for one another and the relationship between the two countries thawed considerably. In 1989, 10 months after Reagan left office, the Berlin Wall came down, the Cold War ended, and in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed.

By the time of the 1984 election, Reagan was immensely popular. He declared it “morning again in America,” and beat Walter Mondale in a landslide (18.21%) comparable to LBJ in 1964 (22.58%) and Nixon in 1972 (23.15%). On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded killing the seven astronauts aboard. Reagan gave a memorable speech, saying,

“The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave … We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of Earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’”

Reagan announced a “War on Drugs” in 1982. Nancy Reagan urged us to “Just Say No.” The Fourth Amendment took a beating, government spending increased, and our jails filled up. It’s not clear how effective those measures were in actually deterring drug use. His administration’s response to the AIDS epidemic was slow. After a year when the epidemic killed 1,000 people, the CDC had spent $1 million which compared unfavorably to its response to Legionnaire’s disease which killed fewer than 50 and merited spending of over $9 million.

In 1986, Reagan granted amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants as part of a bill that was designed to strengthen penalties on employing illegal aliens. In 1986, the administration became embroiled in the Iran-Contra scandal. Funds from covert sales of arms to Iran were used to illegally fund Contra rebels fighting the government of Nicaragua. Reagan denied knowledge of the deal and was never directly proven to have known about the deal. Reagan would, after his Presidency, be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and it is unclear whether the effects of the disease may have set in sometime during his Presidency.

He was able to push the Supreme Court to the right. He appointed Sandra Day O’Connor as the first woman on the Supreme Court. When Warren Burger stepped down, Reagan promoted Justice Rehnquist to Chief Justice and nominated Antonin Scalia to fill the vacancy. Finally, after unsuccessfully nominating Robert Bork, Reagan nominated Anthony Kennedy to fill the vacancy.

In August 1994, at the age of 83, Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. As the years went on, the disease slowly destroyed his mental capacity. In 2001, Nancy explained that very few visitors were allowed to see her husband because she felt that “Ronnie would want people to remember him as he was.” On June 5, 2004, Ronald Reagan passed away at the age of 93 years old.