When I see current situation of this country, it makes me mad. We are going through recession that President Obama inherited from President George Bush, President Bill Clinton, President George Bush Sr., and President Jimmy Carter. President Barack Obama is trying his best to repeat the history by becoming an hero like Ronald Reagan who took this country out of the worst economic recession since Great Depression that he inherited from President Jimmy Carter. My whole introduction was based upon some accomplishments of President Ronald Reagan. It makes you think that who Reagan the superhero is. Who made my mind to consider him as my mentor. How his policies took country out of one of the worst economic downturn that America has ever faced.Ronald Wilson Reagan was born in February 6, 1911 in Tampico, IL. This reminds me to wish President Reagan happy birthday. If he was alive now, he would be 98 years old. He attended Dixon High School and he got first job at the Rock River in Lowell Park as a life guard. Then, Reagan attended Eureka College. After college, he moved to Iowa where he got a job of broadcasting University of Iowa home football games for the Hawkeyes. Then, he joined the showbiz industry by working in number of movies such as Love is on the Air (1937; debut), Hollywood Hotel (1937), Cowboy from Brooklyn (1938), Brother Rat (1938), Dark Victory (1939), Hell's Kitchen (1939), An Angel from Texas (1940), The Bad Man (1941), King's Row (1942), Stallion Road (1947), The Hasty Heart (1949), The Last Outpost (1951), Prisoner of War (1954), The Young Doctors (1961), and others. After that he joined United States Army and United States Air Force. He also served for the country in World War II. He also served as a president of SAG (Screen Actors Guild).A registered Democrat and admirer of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Reagan supported the New Deal. By the early 1950s, Reagan began to shift rightwards out of a desire for a more limited federal government, endorsing presidential candidacies of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 as well as Richard Nixon in 1960. Reagan formally switched to the Republican Party in 1962, saying "I didn't leave the Democratic Party. The party left me." Reagan opposed certain civil rights legislation, although he later reversed his opposition to voting rights and fair housing laws. His opposition to such laws was based on his preference for small government and states' rights. He strongly denied having racist motives. Reagan joined the campaign of conservative presidential contender Barry Goldwater. Speaking on Goldwater's behalf, Reagan stressed his belief in the importance of smaller government.He revealed his ideological motivation in a famed speech given on October 27, 1964: "The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing." The speech raised $1 million for Goldwater's campaign, and soon became known as the "Time for Choosing" speech.California Republicans were impressed with Reagan's political views and charisma after his "Time for Choosing" speech, and nominated him for Governor of California in 1966.Reagan was elected, defeating two-term governor Pat Brown, and was sworn in on January 3, 1967. In his first term, he froze government hiring and approved tax hikes to balance the budget.Shortly after the beginning of his term, Reagan tested the presidential waters in 1968 as part of a "Stop Nixon" movement, hoping to cut into Nixon's Southern support and be a compromise candidate if neither Nixon nor second-place Nelson Rockefeller received enough delegates to win on the first ballot at the Republican convention. However, by the time of the convention Nixon had 692 delegate votes, 25 more than he needed to secure the nomination, followed by Rockefeller with Reagan in third place.In 1969, during the People's Park protests at UC Berkeley, Reagan sent the California Highway Patrol and other officers to quell the protests, in an incident that became known as "Bloody Thursday." Despite an unsuccessful attempt to recall him in 1968, Reagan was re-elected in 1970, defeating "Big Daddy" Jesse Unruh. He chose not to seek a third term in the following election cycle. One of Reagan's greatest frustrations in office concerned capital punishment, which he strongly supported. His efforts to enforce the state's laws in this area were thwarted when the Supreme Court of California issued its People v. Anderson decision, which invalidated all death sentences issued in California prior to 1972, though the decision was later overturned by a constitutional amendment.In 1976, Reagan challenged incumbent President Gerald Ford in a bid to become the Republican Party's candidate for president. Reagan soon established himself as the conservative candidate.Reagan ended up losing New Hampshire and later Florida. As the party's 1976 convention in Kansas City, Missouri neared, Ford appeared close to victory. Acknowledging his party's moderate wing, Reagan chose moderate Republican Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania as his running mate. Nonetheless, Ford narrowly won, with 1,187 delegates to Reagan's 1,070.The 1980 presidential campaign between Reagan and incumbent President Jimmy Carter was conducted during domestic concerns as well as the ongoing Iran hostage crisis. His campaign stressed some of his fundamental principles: lower taxes to stimulate the economy, less government interference in peoples' lives, states' rights, and a strong national defense. After receiving the Republican nomination, he selected one of his primary opponents, George H.W. Bush, to be his running mate. Reagan won the election, carrying 44 states with 489 electoral votes to 49 electoral votes for Carter (representing six states and Washington, D.C.). Reagan won 50.7% of the popular vote while Carter took 41%.In his first inaugural address on January 20, 1981, which Reagan himself wrote, he addressed the country's economic malaise arguing: "Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem." The Reagan Presidency began in a dramatic manner: as Reagan was giving his inaugural address, 52 U.S. hostages, held by Iran for more than a year were set free.Only a short time into his administration, federal air traffic controllers went on strike, violating a regulation prohibiting government unions from striking. Reagan stated that if the air traffic controllers "do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated." Despite fear from some members of his cabinet over a potential political backlash, on August 5, Reagan fired 11,345 striking air traffic controllers who had ignored his order to return to work busting the union. When Reagan entered office, the United States inflation rate stood at 11.83% and 10 million people were unemployed, worse than the current situation that is actually at most 4 million unemployed Americans. Reagan implemented policies based on supply-side economics and advocated a classical liberal and laissez-faire philosophy, seeking to stimulate the economy with large, across-the-board tax cuts. Citing the economic theories of Arthur Laffer, Reagan promoted the proposed tax cuts as potentially stimulating the economy enough to expand the tax base, offsetting the revenue loss due to reduced rates of taxation. During Reagan's presidency, federal income tax rates were lowered significantly with the signing of the bipartisan Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981. GDP growth recovered strongly after the 1982 recession and grew during his eight years in office at an annual rate of 3.4% per year. Sixteen million new jobs were created, while inflation significantly decreased. The net effect of all Reagan-era tax bills was a 1% decrease in government revenues. Reagan also revised the tax code with the bipartisan Tax Reform Act of 1986. Reagan did all this by not spending trillion dollars on infrastructure and simply invested on tax-cut that made a rapid economic growth unlike the current government, President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who are planning to spend trillions of dollars on infrastructure and science research and less on tax-relief by making Liberals' Christmas List.Reagan escalated the Cold War, accelerating a reversal from the policy of détente which began in 1979 following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Reagan ordered a massive buildup of the United States Military and implemented new policies towards the Soviet Union: reviving the B-1 bomber program that had been canceled by the Carter administration, and producing the MX missile.Reagan's opponent in the 1984 presidential election was former Vice President Walter Mondale. Reagan was re-elected, winning 49 of 50 states. The president's landslide victory saw Mondale carry only his home state of Minnesota (by 3800 votes) and the District of Columbia. Reagan won a record 525 electoral votes, the most of any candidate in United States history and received 58.8% of the popular vote to Mondale's 40.6%.In 1986, Reagan signed a drug enforcement bill that budgeted $1.7 billion dollars to fund the War on Drugs and specified a mandatory minimum penalty for drug offenses.In 1986, Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). The act made it illegal to knowingly hire or recruit illegal immigrants, required employers to attest to their employees' immigration status, and granted amnesty to approximately 3 million illegal immigrants who entered the United States prior to January 1, 1982 and had lived in the country continuously.After President Reagan's military buildup, the Soviet Union did not further dramatically build up its military; the enormous military expenses, in combination with collectivized agriculture and inefficient planned manufacturing, were a heavy burden for the Soviet economy. At the same time, the Reagan Administration persuaded Saudi Arabia to increase oil production, which resulted in a three times drop of oil prices in 1985; oil was the main source of Soviet export revenues. These factors gradually brought the Soviet economy to a stagnant state during Gorbachev's tenure.Reagan believed that if he could persuade the Soviets to allow for more democracy and free speech, this would lead to reform and the end of Communism.Speaking at the Berlin Wall, on June 12, 1987, Reagan stated,"General Secretary Gorbachev, 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!” The Soviet Leader announced his intention to pursue significant arms agreements. The timing of the announcement led Western diplomats to state that Gorbachev was offering major concessions to the United States on the levels of conventional forces, nuclear weapons, and policy in Eastern Europe;however, Gorbachev denied ever doing so. He and Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty at the White House, which eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons.President Reagan died on June 5, 2004 at the age of 94 due to the Alzheimer's disease that he was diagonsed with in 1993. President George W. Bush declared June 11 a National Day of Mourning. A Gallup Organization February 2001 poll asked respondents to name the greatest president in U.S. history; Reagan came in first, capturing 18% of the vote. In February 2007, another Gallup poll ranked him as number two with 16% of the vote after Abraham Lincoln. He ranked third with a 72% approval rating in a Rasmussen Reports July 2007 poll on presidents who served after World War II, fifth in an ABC 2000 poll of the public, and ninth in another Rasmussen 2007 poll of Americans. (Courtesy Of Wikipedia for statistics and charts for approval ratings)This entire blog was to dedicate Reagan's Legacy on his birthday week. I personally feel like that that 2009 is almost like 1981 when we were in economic recession. It's time for President Obama to start acting like President Reagan to deal with these major issues. If Obama believes that he portrays almost like President Lincoln and Reagan then he has to make his decision on his own without having any kind of consent from partisans in Congress. He needs to imply his own original version of stimulus package and disregard every suggestion from Senators and Congressmen who only care about their parties. He needs to be confident about his own party. He wants to be the best like former presidential conservative or some liberal ideals then he needs to take everything in his own hands because he has everything, confidence of America. He needs to show his major role on his executive or legislative orders that make an outcome of his agenda even better. Barack Obama should take this stimulus package seriously because his presidential career depends on it if he really wants to get re-elected in 2012 for second term. He needs to put more emphasis on tax relief than on spending. This is the only way you can get rid of economic recession. Because economy can only be prospered by either tax-cut or war. Examples are World War II during FDR's presidency and tax-cuts during Reagan's presidential reign.I hope that you will like this blog especially Ronald Reagan if he gets a chance to read my blog. I will wait for your feedback so don't forget to comment.Thank You!Happy Birthday President Reagan!God bless America and all other nations around the world!© 2009 Syed Rizvi – Time To Bring Things Around All Rights Reserved