Not only was Grenada in the win column, but the economy was exploding, as one-time double-digit unemployment, interest rates, and inflation were down to single digits, including an inflation rate near 2 percent, not to mention thriving growth rates not seen in decades. Buoyed by the good news, Ronald Reagan could now be heard everywhere making statements about the turnaround in the national psyche.3
While his 1980 campaign had focused on the need to restore morale, the 1984 campaign highlighted the renewal of morale. A bumper sticker circulated by the campaign in 1984 was already a bit behind the times when it stated simply: “PRESIDENT REAGAN: Bringing America Back.” It was already back; it was “Morning Again in America,” as the warm and fuzzy Reagan TV commercials celebrated. These ads borrowed the then-new anthem of country music artist Lee Greenwood, which rang out, “I’m proud to be an American.”
It was a strong message and one that was established early on in the year when Reagan’s January 1984 State of the Union address set the tone for the months ahead. “There is renewed energy and optimism throughout the land,” he proclaimed. “America is back, standing tall, looking to the eighties with courage, confidence, and hope.” After that declaration in the fourth sentence of the speech text, nearly every other paragraph in his address contained a word like “revival,” “spirit,” “confidence,” “credibility,” “purpose,” or phrases like “crusade for renewal,” “restore pride,” or “new strength.”4 It was a turnabout for which an emotional Reagan would later literally thank God: “We can be grateful to God that we have seen such a rebirth of it [patriotism] here in this country.”5 He often said that the change in morale was among his “proudest” achievements.6
Indeed, this achievement was such a success that it has gone undisputed by even the political left, including academic political scientists and historians.7 In other words, credit for the accomplishment came from those not expected to credit Reagan.8 Outside of academia, there were as many if not more journalists who credited Reagan with recovery.9 Time’s dean of presidential correspondents, Hugh Sidey, said flatly: “No one can deny that Ronald Reagan restored morale to a country that needed it”—a view seconded by veteran CBS reporter Mike Wallace, among numerous others.10 Edmund Morris goes so far to claim that Reagan changed the national mood “overnight.” The change was so quick, said Morris, “that it can only be ascribed to him.”11
Foreigners were also impressed: Canadian Doug Gamble was so taken that he moved to the United States at this time, desiring a country that wore its patriotism on its sleeve. Fondly recalling the Reagan era, he spoke descriptively of “the good old lump-in-your-throat, tears-in-your-eyes, hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck patriotism that was so thick in the air you could almost reach out and grab a fistful of it.”12
It is easy to forget that by 1984 Ronald Reagan had achieved this renewal while critics tore at him and his policies. He was called stupid, uncaring, a warmonger—and had been especially vilified in the previous, intense Cold War year.
THE KREMLIN VS. REAGAN
Most impressive, similar assessments came even from the enemy’s camp—from as far leftward as the USSR.13 This was later captured by Literaturnaya Gazeta, which informed Soviet citizens: “The years of his presidency have seen an unprecedented surge in America’s self-belief, and quite a marked recovery in the economy…. Reagan restored America’s belief that it is capable of achieving a lot.” It closed glowingly: “Reagan is giving America what it has been yearning for. Optimism. Self-belief. Heroes.”14
As Reagan pursued a second term, this morale boost had the key dual, opposite effect of sapping Soviet confidence. Vladimir Kontorovich and Michael Ellman noted that the Soviet leadership had always been keenly aware of the need to “score successes” in the competition between the Soviet and American systems. However, by the mid-1980s, the Soviets noticed that market economies like that of the United States were full of confidence in the superiority of their system. This confidence was driven home via Reagan’s constant declarations of that superiority. This, reported Kontorovich and Ellman, had a psychological effect, as it devastatingly reflected reality, particularly among elite government officials who traveled to the United States and other Western countries, where they discovered the stark contrast in the two systems.15 Clearly, the restoration of the United States was playing a key role in the Cold War, cementing the role of Reagan’s domestic policy in his broader foreign policy mentality. Here his focus on morale had paid off in that it led to broad popular support at home and came at the expense of Soviet morale.
Yet, while there may have been a grudging appreciation of what Reagan had accomplished, the Kremlin still wanted him defeated, and badly so. There was severe apprehension of that first Reagan administration and its prospects for a second term. Yevgenny Novikov recalled: “The Central Committee realized that they were facing a committed government in Washington. They saw activity on all fronts….It frightened them to death.”16 At the start of 1984, the Soviet media was filled with examples of this siege mentality: TASS “economic writer” Vladimir Pirogov said it was “no secret” that Reagan was aiming to “exhaust” the USSR.17
According to a number of sources, such fears prompted a KGB “active measures campaign” that was underway by January 1984 and designed to disrupt Reagan’s reelection prospects. None of these sources elaborate on the details, though such an operation would not be a surprise.18 “The clear and widespread belief was anyone was preferable to Reagan,” said Yevgenny Novikov.19 If Reagan won a second term, the Soviets faced four more years in the crosshairs of the Crusader. Not surprisingly, they did not sit silent. They would go down swinging.
As Reagan kicked off his reelection campaign in January, sirens were sounded in Pravda. In his January 10 column, a perceptive Communist named Vitaliy Korionov linked Reagan’s intent to undermine to his religious motivations:
[I]t was the present White House incumbent, invoking God, who declared the “crusade” against socialism…. [T]he present U.S. administration has announced in official documents that its aim is to “destroy socialism as a sociopolitical system.” U.S. political, economic, and ideological life is increasingly subordinated to that unreal task….
As we can see, the psychological warfare conducted by the United States and its allies against real socialism is organized, coordinated, and directed….
Washington is deeply involved in an exceptionally dangerous “crusade” against socialism as a social system. The most highly placed U.S. officials, headed by the president, are the spearhead of this spiritual aggression…. The U.S. President personally participates in the subversive actions. He does this in different ways.20
Korionov was joined by Vladimir Lomeyko, who two weeks later wrote in Literaturnaya Gazeta that in declaring his “crusade,” the “incumbent White House master”—in this reelection year the Soviet press suddenly began referring to Reagan as the “incumbent”—was explicitly seeking to “overthrow” the Soviet empire.21