dent, covering his administration, achievements,
and failures.
Witcover, Jules.Party of the People: A Histor y of the Dem-
ocrats. New York: Random House, 2003. Starting
with Thomas Jefferson and ending with Bill
Clinton, this book looks at the ups and downs of
the oldest American political party.
Douglas Clouatre
See also Business and the economy in the United
States; Congress, U.S.; Elections in the United States,
1980; Elections in the United States, 1984; Elections
in the United States, 1988; O’Neill, Tip; Reagan
Democrats; Reagan Revolution; Unemployment in
the United States; Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).
Elections in the United States,
1980
The Event American politicians run for office
Date November 4, 1980
The 1980 elections brought about what came to be called the
“Reagan Revolution.” Republican Ronald Reagan de-
feated incumbent Jimmy Carter to become president of the
United States, and his party gained control of the Senate for
the first time since 1958. The Democrats retained control of
the House of Representatives, but the size of their majority
was decreased.
Early in 1980, the Democratic presidential adminis-
tration of Jimmy Carter appeared to be beleaguered
on all fronts, domestic, economic, and foreign.
Carter had been elected in 1976 on a pledge to con-
trol inflation and revive the U.S. economy. In the
eyes of a large portion of the American public, he
not only had failed to deliver on that promise, but
also had allowed the situation to worsen over time.
In 1979, Americans were taken hostage at their em-
bassy in Iran, and the Soviet Union invaded Afghani-
stan. Carter’s ineffectual reactions to both events
weakened his administration’s credibility, and as the
hostage crisis and the Soviet-Afghani conflict both
stretched into 1980, Americans began to feel that he
was impotent in the face of world crises and did not
properly understand the gravity of the global threats
facing the United States. Carter’s problems involved
not just a resurgent Republican Party, which seemed
ready to leave behind the Watergate scandal and
embark on a new direction, but also a determined
challenge for his own party’s nomination from Mas-
sachusetts senator Ted Kennedy. Kennedy had
launched an aggressive media onslaught, branding
the incumbent president as unelectable. He repre-
sented himself, by contrast, as able to recapture the
lost legacy of his fallen brothers and to bring an-
other era of Kennedy Camelot to the nation.The Reagan Surge Former California governor
and film star Ronald Reagan had captured national
attention as an attractive, articulate representative
of the Republican Party’s conservative wing. He had
stood for his party’s nomination on two prior occa-
sions, in 1968 and 1976, only to fall short each time.
In 1980, however, he seemed poised as the favorite to
capture the prize that had eluded him—only his age
appeared as a potential obstacle: Reagan was sixty-
nine years old, which meant that, if elected, he
would be the oldest president to assume the office.
To get that far, he first had to defeat the other candi-
dates competing for the Republican nomination,
including former director of central intelligence
George H. W. Bush; two Illinois representatives,
Philip Crane and John B. Anderson; former treasury
secretary John B. Connally, Jr.; Senator Robert Dole
of Kansas; and Tennessee senator Howard Baker.
John Sears, Reagan’s first campaign manager, did
not see the need to exert great effort against what
seemed to be a weak field. He generally limited his
candidate’s appearances in Iowa, whose caucuses
were the nation’s first event of the primary election
season and the first test of strength for any indi-
viduals seeking their party’s nomination. Thus, in
Iowa, Bush—who had never been elected to public
office—stunned the nation by scoring an upset
victory over Reagan. Abruptly abandoning Sears’s
strategy of aloofness, which did not suit his gregari-
ous temperament in any case, Reagan embarked on
an extensive series of stumping tours throughout
New Hampshire, which was the next battleground in
the primary process. Reagan won the New Hamp-
shire primary on February 26, 1980. Shortly thereaf-
ter, Sears was replaced by the more aggressive Wil-
liam J. Casey.
From that point on, Bush rapidly lost steam, espe-
cially after Reagan bested his rival in a televised de-
bate, forging well ahead of the pack. Only Bush and
Anderson could pose even a mild threat to Reagan’s
chances for the nomination. At the Republican Na-
tional Convention in Detroit (July 15-18), Reagan322 Elections in the United States, 1980 The Eighties in America