What helped Ronald Reagan win the presidential election of 1980

Question

anonymous · Answer

His promise to kickstart the economy by lowering taxes and reducing government regulation while strengthening the states. But the lowering of taxes thing went a long way towards making him extremely appealing to the voters.

But his persona and platform were also promises to not repeat the mistakes of the past. The 1970s were a brutal decade for the United States -- morale was low after Vietnam, the Watergate Scandal and the energy crisis, the economy was in the pits, unemployment was high, and the the Iranian Hostage Crisis and a failed rescue attempt humiliated the US in the eyes of the world. To a lot of people, he was everything that Jimmy Carter (his opponent) wasn't (Carter was blamed for failing to act to stem the bleeding the nation was suffering from) and as a result, won in a huge landslide.