Reagan was raised in a poor family in small towns of northern Illinois . He graduated from Eureka College in 1932 and worked as a sports announcer on several regional radio stations . After moving to California in 1937 , he found work as an actor and starred in a few major productions . Reagan was twice elected President of the Screen Actors Guild — the labor union for actors — where he worked to root out Communist influence . In the 1950s , he moved into television and was a motivational speaker at General Electric factories . Reagan had been a Democrat until 1962 , when he became a conservative and switched to the Republican Party . In 1964 , Reagan 's speech , " A Time for Choosing " , supported Barry Goldwater 's foundering presidential campaign and earned him national attention as a new conservative spokesman . Building a network of supporters , he was elected governor of California in 1966 . As governor , Reagan raised taxes , turned a state budget deficit to a surplus , challenged the protesters at the University of California , ordered in National Guard troops during a period of protest movements in 1969 , and was re-elected in 1970 . He twice ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination , in 1968 and 1976 . Four years later in 1980 , he won the nomination and then defeated incumbent president Jimmy Carter . At of age at the time of his first inauguration , Reagan was the oldest person to have been elected to a first-term , until Donald Trump ( aged ) in 2017 . Reagan is still , however , the oldest president elected , at of age at his second inauguration . Reagan faced former vice president Walter Mondale when he ran for re-election in 1984 , and defeated him , winning the most electoral votes of any U.S. president , 525 , or 97.6 % of the 538 votes in the Electoral College . This was the second-most lopsided presidential election in modern U.S. history after Franklin D. Roosevelt 's 1936 victory over Alfred M. Landon , in which he won 98.5 % or 523 of the ( then-total ) 531 electoral votes . Soon after taking office , Reagan began implementing sweeping new political and economic initiatives . His supply-side economic policies , dubbed " Reaganomics " , advocated tax rate reduction to spur economic growth , economic deregulation , and reduction in government spending . In his first term he survived an assassination attempt , spurred the War on Drugs , and fought public sector labor . Over his two terms , the economy saw a reduction of inflation from 12.5 % to 4.4 % , and an average annual growth of real GDP of 3.4 % . Reagan enacted cuts in domestic discretionary spending , cut taxes , and increased military spending which contributed to increased federal outlays overall , even after adjustment for inflation . Foreign affairs dominated his second term , including ending the Cold War , the bombing of Libya , the Iran – Iraq War , and the Iran – Contra affair . In June 1987 , four years after he publicly described the Soviet Union as an " evil empire " , Reagan challenged Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to " tear down this wall ! " , during a speech at the Brandenburg Gate . He transitioned Cold War policy from détente to rollback by escalating an arms race with the USSR while engaging in talks with Gorbachev . The talks culminated in the INF Treaty , which shrank both countries ' nuclear arsenals . Reagan began his presidency during the decline of the Soviet Union , and the Berlin Wall fell just ten months after the end of his term . Germany reunified the following year , and on December 26 , 1991 ( nearly three years after he left office ) , the Soviet Union collapsed
assassination attempt
Attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan