Down in the polls, Mondale selected Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in hopes of galvanizing support for his campaign, thus making Ferraro the first female major party vice presidential nominee in U.S. history.[118] She and Bush squared off in a single televised vice presidential debate.[97] Public opinion polling consistently showed a Reagan lead in the 1984 campaign, and Mondale was unable to shake up the race.[119] In the end, Reagan won re-election, winning 49 of 50 states and receiving 59% of the popular vote to Mondale's 41%.[120]

Second term
Vice President Bush standing with President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on the New York City waterfront in 1988
Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union in 1985. Rejecting the ideological rigidity of his three elderly sick predecessors, Gorbachev insisted on urgently needed economic and political reforms called "glasnost" (openness) and "perestroika" (restructuring).[121] At the 1987 Washington Summit, Gorbachev and Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which committed both signatories to the total abolition of their respective short-range and medium-range missile stockpiles.