Describe Reagan's domestic and foreign policy agenda and evaluate the contested legacy of Reaganomics using arguments from supporters and critics.
Ronald Reagan won the 1980 election in a landslide, channeling voter frustration into a clear conservative agenda: lower taxes, reduced federal regulation, and a rollback of domestic government growth accumulated since the New Deal. His economic approach, "Reaganomics" or supply-side economics, rested on the theory that cutting taxes -- especially on businesses and higher incomes -- would spur investment and growth that would eventually benefit everyone, including through increased government revenue despite lower rates. The results remain genuinely contested among economists and historians: supporters point to a strong economic recovery by the mid-1980s that coincided with the end of the previous decade's stagflation; critics point to a near-tripling of the national debt during his presidency and a widening gap between the highest earners and everyone else. Both claims rest on real data, and reasonable people still disagree about how to weigh them against each other.
On the world stage, Reagan combined sharp anti-Soviet rhetoric -- famously calling the USSR an "evil empire" in 1983 -- with a major defense buildup, including the proposed Strategic Defense Initiative missile-defense system, while later, as you will see next week, becoming a genuine negotiating partner with Soviet reformers. Domestically, the AIDS epidemic emerged as a serious public health crisis beginning in 1981, disproportionately affecting gay men in its early years; activist groups later criticized the administration's slow and limited public engagement with the crisis in its first several years, a documented historical criticism this course reports factually and respectfully rather than as present-day political commentary. Reagan's second term was shadowed by the Iran-Contra affair, revealed in 1986-87: officials had secretly sold arms to Iran -- itself under a U.S. arms embargo -- and illegally diverted the proceeds to fund Contra rebels fighting Nicaragua's government, directly violating a congressional funding ban. Reagan took public responsibility for the affair without admitting he had personally authorized every detail, and several officials were later convicted of related charges.
Mastery looks like: They can explain supply-side economics and cite real evidence on both sides of its legacy, and describe both the AIDS crisis's early federal response and the Iran-Contra affair accurately.
Common stumbles: Treating Reaganomics' legacy as a simple success or failure story instead of weighing real, conflicting evidence on both sides, as this course's even-handed approach requires.