Ronald Reagan
/ˌrɒnld ˈreɪɡən/
/ˌrɑːnld ˈreɪɡən/
- (1911-2004) a US film actor and later Republican politician who became the 40th US President (1981-9). He was also governor of California (1966-74). He was a popular president, especially because of his ability to explain the government's plans and problems in a simple way to ordinary people. He was strongly conservative, reducing taxes and increasing government spending on defence, and is still very popular with people on the American right. He was strongly opposed to Communism and famously described the Soviet Union as ‘the evil empire ’ but reached agreements with it to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the two countries. In 1981 Reagan was shot and wounded in an attempt to assassinate him. In his last years in power, he was criticized for the Iran-Contra affair. He was diagnosed as having Alzheimer's disease in 1992. see also INF Treaty, Reaganomics “You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jelly beans.”
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Ronald Reagan