Ronald Reagan became President at one of the lowest moments in U.S. history.
Russia was winning the Cold War, Americans were being held hostage by Iran, and the economy was in the gutter as shortages and rationing were hammering working-class Americans.
But the real story behind the Reagan movie is bigger than Ronald Reagan himself.
The 1970s Were Not Good for America
People forget how bad things were during the 1970s – It looked like the Soviet Union was winning the Cold War, as they were installing puppet governments throughout Central America.
There was a major oil shortage because OPEC was bleeding us dry, causing gas prices to skyrocket amid nationwide shortages and government-imposed rationing.
And then the Iranian Government took over the U.S. Embassy and held Americans hostage.
That is the America that former President Ronald Reagan inherited upon taking office in January 1981.
But under his leadership, things quickly turned around.
The hostages were released just before Reagan was sworn in, we started drilling for oil in the U.S., and the former President ultimately defeated the Soviet Union.
That is what is celebrated in the new movie, Reagan.
But this movie has a twist – it is told from the perspective of a communist agent who was spying on President Reagan.
Many people do not realize that the U.S. was full of KGB agents looking to infiltrate American politics and government.
After all, infiltrating the U.S. government and stealing classified information is exactly how the Soviet Union – and now Russia – were able to secure nuclear weapons in the first place.
Reagan came to their attention when he became the President of the Screen Actors Guild and ran a campaign to curtail the influence of communists in Hollywood.
The Russians suspected that Reagan was going to be a problem for them.
And they were more correct than they could even imagine.
Tracking the Rise of #40
The movie shows Reagan’s rise from small-town America to his struggles as an actor and his rise in politics.
He was Governor of California during the turbulent 1960s and became the voice of the conservative movement.
The Washington Examiner rightly reported that “David Trulio, the president and CEO of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, told the Washington Examiner that Reagan ‘helped win the Cold War. He unleashed an economic boom that was unprecedented, and he restored America’s pride in itself.’”
It was a different time in American politics.
Politicians could disagree with each other on some issues, but they would be able to work together on others – it wasn’t as polarized as things are today.
Politics Ended at the Water’s Edge
Back in the 1980s, politicians on both sides of the aisle cared about America and our place in a dangerous world.
Reagan’s central message was “peace through strength,” and he worked to rebuild America’s military after it was left in tatters following Vietnam.
His program to develop protection from nuclear weapons eventually destroyed the USSR, which struggled to keep up with America’s updated nuclear weapons program.
We can learn a great deal from that era because things were very dark right before Reagan was elected.
As the Washington Examiner said, “We had a really tough economy, really high inflation, a sense that the American dream was challenged, that maybe America’s best days were behind her,” Trulio said. “We were facing competition from a communist country with global ambition. All of those parallels are relevant today.”