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Ronald Reagan

“My family and I would like the world to know that President Ronald Reagan has passed away after 10 years of Alzheimer’s disease at 93 years of age. We appreciate everyone’s prayers,” Nancy Reagan said in a statement.

Nancy Reagan, along with children Ron and Patti Davis, were at the couple’s Los Angeles home when Reagan died at 1 p.m. PDT of pneumonia complicated by Alzheimer’s disease, said Joanne Drake, who represents the family. Son Michael arrived a short time later, she said.

In Paris, President Bush called Reagan’s death “a sad day for America.”

The U.S. flag over the White House — along with flags elsewhere — was lowered to half-staff. At ballparks and at the Belmont Stakes, there were moments of silence.

Reagan’s body was expected to be taken to his presidential library and museum in Simi Valley, Calif., and then flown to Washington to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda. His funeral was expected to be at the National Cathedral, an event likely to draw world leaders. The body was to be returned to California for a sunset burial at his library.

The White House was told his health had taken a turn for the worse in the last several days.

The president planned to participate in D-Day ceremonies in Normandy on Sunday and then fly back to the United States for an international economic summit in Georgia.

A White House spokeswoman said it was not known at this point whether Bush would change his travel plans because of Reagan’s death.

Alzheimer's Disease
Five years after leaving office, the nation’s 40th president told the world in November 1994 that he had been diagnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer’s, an incurable illness that destroys brain cells. He said he had begun “the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life.”

Reagan lived longer than any U.S. president, spending his last decade in the shrouded seclusion wrought by his disease, tended by his wife, Nancy, whom he called Mommy, and the select few closest to him. Now, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton are the surviving ex-presidents.

Although fiercely protective of Reagan’s privacy, the former first lady let people know his mental condition had deteriorated terribly. Last month, she said: “Ronnie’s long journey has finally taken him to a distant place where I can no longer reach him.”

Reagan’s oldest daughter, Maureen, from his first marriage, died in August 2001 at age 60 from cancer. Three other children survive: Michael, from his first marriage, and Patti Davis and Ron from his second.

Over two terms, from 1981 to 1989, Reagan reshaped the Republican Party in his conservative image, fixed his eye on the demise of the Soviet Union and Eastern European communism and, with a Congress that was largely controlled by Democrats through much of his two terms, helped triple the national debt to $3 trillion in his competition with the other superpower.

The former president died Saturday at his home in California. He was 93 years old and had suffered for more than a decade with Alzheimer's disease.

President Bush, who is in France for D-Day ceremonies, was notified of Reagan’s death in Paris at about 4:10 p.m., EDT, by White House chief of staff Andy Card.

The president said he had talked to Reagan’s widow, Nancy, and offered her the nation’s prayers and condolences.

In remarks, Bush expressed the nation’s thanks to Reagan for his contributions to the United States and the world.

Bush said Reagan “had the confidence that comes with conviction, the strength that comes with character, the grace that comes with humility, and the humor that comes with wisdom.”

Bush said that during the years of Reagan’s presidency, the nation “laid to rest an era of division and self-doubt and because of his leadership the world laid to rest an era of fear and tyranny.”

Reagan’s two terms in office were marked by a thaw in the Cold War with the Soviet Union, a nation he had called the “Evil Empire, that had begun at the end of World War II.

Bush hastily summoned reporters to the residence of the U.S. ambassador in Paris where Bush was staying overnight in between meetings with French President Jacques Chirac and Sunday’s D-Day ceremony in Normandy.

Bush walked somberly down an arcing staircase into a sitting room and assumed his position behind a lectern with the presidential seal.

He blinked back tears as he said this line: “He always told us for America the best is yet to come.

“We comfort ourselves in the knowledge that this is true for him too,” Bush said. “His work is done. And now a shining city awaits him.”

Nancy Reagan issued a short statement on Saturday. “My family and I would like the world to know that President Ronald Reagan has passed away after 10 years of Alzheimer’s disease
at 93 years of age. We appreciate everyone’s prayers.”

TRIBUTES TO A FORMER PRESIDENT
Tributes to the former president began pouring in from around the world Saturday.

• Former President George H.W. Bush: “We had been political opponents and became close friends. Barbara and I mourn the loss of a great president and for us a great friend,” Bush said. “He could take a stand ... and do it without creating bitterness or creating enmity on the part of other people.”

• Former President Bill Clinton: “Hillary and I will always remember President Ronald Reagan for the way he personified the indomitable optimism of the American people, and for keeping America at the forefront of the fight for freedom for people everywhere. It is fitting that a piece of the Berlin Wall adorns the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington.”

• Former President Gerald Ford: “Betty and I are deeply saddened by the passing of our longtime friend, President Reagan. Ronald Reagan was an excellent leader of our nation during challenging times at home and abroad. We extend our deepest condolences and prayers to Nancy and his family.”

• Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass: “Even when he was breaking Democrats hearts, he did so with a smile and in the spirit of honest and open debate,” Kerry said. “The differences were real, but because of the way President Reagan led, he taught us that there is a big difference between strong beliefs and bitter partisanship,” Kerry said. “Today in the face of new challenges his example reminds us that we must move forward with optimism and resolve. He was our oldest president, but he made America young again.”

• Queen Elizabeth the Second led British tributes. A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman says “the queen is saddened by the news” of Reagan’s death at the age of 93.

• Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Reagan’s ideological soulmate and personal friend, mourned “a truly great American hero.” Thatcher called Reagan “one of my closest political and dearest personal friends.” She added: “He will be missed not only by those who knew him and not only by the nation that he served so proudly and loved so deeply, but also by millions of men and women who live in freedom today because of the policies he pursued.”

• French President Jacques Chirac: “A great statesman who through the strength of his convictions and his commitment to democracy will leave a deep mark in history.”

• Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill: "A giant left us today," Hyde said. "Ronald Reagan had a sense of principles he believed in, and no amount of polling data or press could cause him to alter these principles. He was a great patriot, a great optimist and one of the greatest presidents in our history. We should thank God for letting us have him as long as we did,” Hyde said.

• Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich: “President Ronald Reagan proved that an American, raised in difficult family circumstance, in a small town, with no personal money could not only could succeed but could rise to lead the cause of freedom and declare victory over the tyranny of the former Soviet Union," Gingrich said. “All free people stand on Reagan’s shoulders. His principled policies proved that free markets create wealth, that the rule of law sustains freedom, and that all people everywhere deserve the right to dream, to pursue their dreams, and to govern themselves."

• Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist: “President Reagan’s bold leadership in difficult times provided Americans with tremendous strength and inspiration. Above all, he was a true patriot, whose endless optimism inspired America’s continued ascent to greatness. Undoubtedly, Ronald Reagan has left an indelible mark on our country and our global community.”

• Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle: “America has lost an icon. Ronald Reagan’s leadership will inspire Americans for generations to come. His patriotism and devotion to our country will never be forgotten.”

• House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif: “Ronald Reagan served our country with dignity and he died with dignity. As an American, I appreciate Ronald Reagan’s great leadership and service to our country. As a Californian, I admire the special grace and humor that endeared him to millions. I hope it is a comfort to Nancy Reagan and the entire Reagan family that so many people mourn their loss and are praying for them at this sad time.”

• Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass: “We often disagreed on issues of the day, but I had immense respect and admiration for his leadership and his extraordinary ability to inspire the nation to live up to its high ideals. The warmth of his personality always shown through, and his infectious optimism gave us all the feeling that it really was ‘morning in America.’ On foreign policy he will be honored as the President who won the Cold War, and his ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall’ will be linked forever with President Kennedy’s ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’

• Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie: “Ronald Reagan was a president of great historic impact who led the United States with strength and conviction, and the positive impact of his policies is still felt today here and around the world. More than two decades after he was first elected president, the Republican Party still bears his imprint. Because Ronald Reagan lived, people across the globe live in greater freedom and prosperity.”

• Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe: “Democrats faced off against Ronald Reagan in many battles but he was always the Republican Party’s Happy Warrior. Reagan represented the best of civility in American politics and the finest traditions of standing up nobly for what you believe in. Even during the toughest political fights, he and former House Speaker Tip O’Neill could always sit down together after the workday was done, as friends and fellow patriots. Today there is mourning in America because this is not just a loss for Republicans -- it is a loss for all Americans."

• Lt. Col Oliver North, National Security Council  official under Reagan: “Ronald Reagan was easily the greatest president of my lifetime -- and he will be regarded as one of the greatest leaders this country has ever had ... a man of extraordinary vision, great compassion and resolute leadership. He brought down the Evil Empire and made the world safer for my children and theirs.”

• Sen Chris Dodd, D-Conn: “Ronald Reagan was a patriot who reflected the eternal optimism of our nation. His charm, wit and character were evident throughout his long life, and his public service will never be forgotten.”

FUNERAL PLANS
At ballparks and at the Belmont Stakes on Saturday there were moments of silence in honor of former President Reagan.

Reagan’s body was expected to be taken to his presidential library and museum in Simi Valley, Calif., and then flown to Washington to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda. His funeral was expected to be at the National Cathedral, an event likely to draw world leaders. The body was to be returned to California for a sunset burial at his library.

President Bush, after attending D-Day 60th anniversary ceremonies on the Normandy beaches,  planned to arrive in Sea Island, Georgia, late on Sunday to play host to a Group of Eight summit. The White House left open the possibility of a change in his schedule later in the week for Bush to attend to Reagan memorial duties.

Ronald Reagan, 1911-2004

An indefatigable optimist who set America on a conservative course

Derided by his adversaries as glib, doctrinaire and uninformed — a mere actor, they scoffed — Reagan demonstrated throughout his political career the power that comes from being underestimated.

He won power by defeating overconfident Democratic incumbents — Gov. Pat Brown in California in 1966 and President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election.

“It was said of Dwight Eisenhower (and could have been said of Ronald Reagan) that his smile was his philosophy,” wrote columnist George Will. And many Americans found Reagan’s smiling optimism appealing.

Federal spending little changed
But Reagan never was able to bring about the conservative revolution that his disciples had hoped for.

When he became president in 1981, federal spending accounted for 22 percent of the Gross Domestic Product; when he left office eight years later, federal spending was 21 percent of the GDP.

“Ultimately, the fact that Ronald Reagan left office as the most popular president in modern history means that he settled for less change than either he or his supporters wanted or could have gotten,” Wall Street Journal editorialist John Fund wrote in 1989.

Another conservative, Ralph Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition, viewed the Reagan presidency with chagrin: “His eight years in office did little to transform a political culture that had become insensitive to religious values and uncaring about innocent human life.”

Reed said conservatives “woke up the morning after Reagan’s two terms to discover that many maladies still afflicted our nation and many pathologies had grown worse.”

Out of the wilderness
Reed did give Reagan credit for helping to lead conservatives “out of the wilderness,” calling him “the midwife of a new political movement.”

Reagan was limited in what he could accomplish by a Democratic-controlled Congress. But the ideas that he championed — lower taxes, giving more power to state and local governments and an end to welfare entitlements for single mothers — did reach fruition in the Clinton presidency after the Republicans took control of Congress in 1995.

One could argue that one of the high points of Reaganism came long after he left the presidency, on Aug. 22, 1996, when President Bill Clinton signed the welfare reform bill into law.

Son of a shoe salesman
Ronald Reagan was born on Feb. 6, 1911, in Tampico Ill., the son of an itinerant shoe salesman named Jack Reagan and his wife, Nelle.

Jack Reagan was a Democrat, an alcoholic and something of a ne’er-do-well. Ronald Reagan recounted in his autobiography in 1965 that as a boy he came home one day to find his father “drunk, dead to the world,” flat on his back on the front porch.

Jack Reagan ended up working for the presidential campaign of Franklin D. Roosevelt and later got a job with the Works Progress Administration, one of FDR’s job-creation efforts.

Roosevelt became a hero to young Reagan, his fireside chats making an imprint on Reagan’s own radio style.

After graduating from Eureka College, a small Illinois liberal arts college, in 1932, Reagan landed a job broadcasting University of Iowa football games over WOC, a radio station in Davenport, Iowa.

Later, Reagan broadcast Chicago Cubs games over WHO in Des Moines. In 1937, when he covered the Cubs spring training in California, Reagan was discovered by a Warner Bros. agent and began his film career.

Often cast as the foil to leading men like Errol Flynn, Reagan was best known for the 1940 film “Knute Rockne, All American,” in which he played Notre Dame football star George Gipp.

In another drama, “Kings Row,” Reagan played Drake McHugh, who awakes from anesthesia to find his legs amputated by a sadistic surgeon and says, “Where’s the rest of me?”

“No single line in my career has been so effective in explaining to me what an actor’s life must be,” Reagan wrote in his autobiography. He prepared meticulously for the scene, consulting disabled people and psychiatrists.

“At night I would wake up staring at the ceiling and automatically mutter the line before I went back to sleep,” he recalled.

Democrat turned Republican
After making Army Air Force training films during World War II, Reagan shifted from actor to corporate spokesman — and from Democrat to Republican — by hosting the TV series “General Electric Theater” in the 1950s. He toured the country for GE, giving boosterish free-enterprise speeches with such titles as “Our Eroding Freedoms.”

In 1964, Reagan’s nationally televised speech on behalf of Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater made him the darling of Republican activists. The speech was a Reaganesque recasting of FDR rhetoric:

“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny,” Reagan said. “We can preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we can sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness.”

Two years later, Reagan defeated California Gov. Pat Brown by nearly a million votes.

The California Legislature sent Reagan a measure in 1967 that legalized abortion in cases of rape and incest and when a doctor found that a pregnancy would endanger the life or health of the woman. Reagan agonized over the measure, fearing that doctors would exploit a mental heath loophole to approve many abortions. But in the end he signed it.

Despite Reagan’s aversion to taxes, the corporate tax rate doubled during his tenure as California governor, and the top personal income rate jumped by nearly 60 percent.

Challenged Ford in 1976
In 1976, Reagan nearly succeeding in wresting the Republican nomination from President Gerald Ford.

Four years later, with Jimmy Carter hobbled by the Iranian hostage crisis and soaring inflation, Reagan won the presidency, carrying 44 states.

The Iranians who had seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran later said they released the  hostages only because they feared that Reagan might deal with them “like a cowboy.”

But Reagan’s presidency, which began with the exhilarating news of the hostages’ release, almost ended within a few months.

On March 30, 1981, as he left a Washington hotel after giving a speech, he was shot by a deranged would-be assassin, John Hinckley Jr.

Reagan’s penchant for quips didn’t fail him. As he emerged from surgery, he looked up at his wife, Nancy, and repeated the line that boxer Jack Dempsey had used in 1926 when he lost the heavyweight title to Gene Tunney: “Honey, I forgot to duck.”

Reagan survived the assassination attempt, but he faced a series of crises during the next three years.

Weathered 1982 recession
By the end of 1982, the nation was sunk in the deepest recession since the 1930s, with nearly 12 million people out of work.

To stimulate the economy, Reagan had championed Jack Kemp’s across-the-board income tax cuts in 1981, but he blunted their effect when he acceded to a $100 billion tax increase only a year later.

Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., convinced Reagan that Congress would make $3 in spending cuts for every $1 of tax increases. Reagan signed the tax increase — but Congress never made the spending cuts.

Meanwhile, Reagan stood back as Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, a Carter appointee, was squeezing inflation out of the economy by restricting the money supply.

Volcker later commended him, saying “People in the White House and Treasury put pressure on Reagan, but they could never get Reagan to criticize me.” The president, Volcker said, “had this visceral feeling that fighting inflation was a good thing.”

The economy had recovered by the time the 1984 election arrived, and ad man Hal Riney’s soothing “Morning in America” TV ad campaign helped Reagan crush Democrat Walter Mondale in a landslide re-election victory.

In foreign policy, Reagan’s rhetoric was initially combative: In 1983 he called Soviet communism “the focus of evil in the modern world.”

But Reagan eventually held four summits with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. At Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1986, Reagan and Gorbachev were on the brink of a deal to abolish all nuclear weapons, but Reagan scuttled it when Gorbachev insisted that the United States abandon its research and development of a missile defense system.

The following year, the two men signed the most far-reaching disarmament accord since 1945, eliminating their arsenals of medium-range missiles and scrapping 2,600 warheads.

Bitburg, S&L mishaps
During his eight years in the White House, Reagan made some costly miscalculations:

• In 1982, he signed into law the Garn-St. Germain Act, which deregulated the savings and loan industry and ended up costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars as S&L owners plunged into speculative investments. Economist Paul Krugman called it the “biggest single economic policy disaster of the 1980s.”
• Reagan drew criticism from Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel and others in 1985 when he attended a wreath-laying ceremony at the Bitburg cemetery in West Germany, gravesite of 2,000 German soldiers, including 49 Nazi members of Hitler’s SS.
• According to a panel of investigators headed by Sen. John Tower, R-Texas, Reagan allowed Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North and others to operate an extra-constitutional shadow government that diverted Iranian arms sales profits to Nicaraguan rebels.

In the last two years of his presidency Reagan was hobbled both by the Iran-Contra fiasco and by the Republicans’ loss of the Senate in the 1986 elections, before Iran-Contra was revealed.

This in turn led to the Senate’s rejection of the nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987, which was Reagan’s most stinging ideological defeat — and the one with perhaps the most lasting consequences.

But to many conservatives Reagan was — and remains — a heroic inspiration, as much for what he said as for what he accomplished.

Phrases that defined a career

Some of Reagan’s most memorable lines

One for the Gipper’
"Someday when things are tough, maybe you can ask the boys to go in there and win just one for the Gipper." —Portraying football player George Gipp in the film “Knute Rockne, All American,” 1940

'Shining city on a hill'
Let us resolve tonight that young Americans will always ... find there a city of hope in a country that is free.... And let us resolve they will say of our day and our generation, we did keep the faith with our God, that we did act worthy of ourselves, that we did protect and pass on lovingly that shining city on a hill." — Election Eve speech, Nov. 3, 1980

‘We have piled deficit upon deficit’
"For decades, we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.
You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?" —Inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1981

‘Tear down this wall’
“If you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here, to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” —Speech at the Berlin Wall, June 12, 1987

‘Grown beyond the consent of the governed’
"We are a nation that has a government — not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed." —Inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1981

‘A special interest group that has been too long neglected’
"We hear much of special interest groups. Our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected.

"It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and our factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we are sick—professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truck drivers.

"They are, in short, 'We the people,' this breed called Americans." —Inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1981

‘I forgot to duck’
"Honey, I forgot to duck." — 1981, Reagan to his wife, as he recovered gunshot wounds after an assassination attempt by John Hinckley on March 30, 1981

‘A time of reckoning’
"An almost unbroken 50 years of deficit spending has finally brought us to a time of reckoning. We have come to a turning point, a moment for hard decisions. I have asked the Cabinet and my staff a question, and now I put the same question to all of you: If not us, who? And if not now, when? It must be done by all of us going forward with a program aimed at reaching a balanced budget. We can then begin reducing the national debt." —Second inaugural address, Jan. 21, 1985

‘Render nuclear weapons obsolete’
"For decades, we and the Soviets have lived under the threat of mutual assured destruction; if either resorted to the use of nuclear weapons, the other could retaliate and destroy the one who had started it. Is there either logic or morality in believing that if one side threatens to kill tens of millions of our people, our only recourse is to threaten killing tens of millions of theirs?

"I have approved a research program to find, if we can, a security shield that would destroy nuclear missiles before they reach their target. It wouldn't kill people, it would destroy weapons. It wouldn't militarize space, it would help demilitarize the arsenals of Earth. It would render nuclear weapons obsolete." —Second inaugural address, Jan. 21, 1985

‘Whatever else history may say’
“Whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears....

“May all of you as Americans never forget your heroic origins, never fail to seek divine guidance and never lose your natural, God-given optimism.” —Speech to Republican National Convention, Aug. 17, 1992

‘Go ahead, make my day’
"I have only one thing to say to the tax increasers: Go ahead, make my day." —March 13, 1985, in a speech threatening to veto legislation raising taxes.

‘You don't become president of the United States’
"When people tell me I became president on January 20, 1981, I feel I have to correct them. You don't become president of the United States. You are given temporary custody of an institution called the presidency, which belongs to our people." — Address to the Republican national convention. Aug. 15, 1988