Regan and the American Exceptionalism

The Presidential Campaign in 1980

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject English - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,7, University of Paderborn (Institut für Angelistik und Amerikanistik), course: Elections and Inaugurations, language: English, abstract: In the course 'Elections and Inaugurations' we talked about the current presidency and about past presidencies. During that I came across Ronald Reagan´s landslide election of 489 votes to 49. Reagan was born in 1911 and during college he majored in economics. After college he became an actor. He started his political career in 1962 when he joint the Republican Party and got elected governor of California in 1966. Ronald Reagan stayed in office for 8 years until 1974, when he announced that he would not run again for governor, for he wanted to become the presidential candidate in 1976 for the Republicans. Unfortunately he lost the primaries to Gerald Ford, who went on to lose the election against Jimmy Carter. Four Years later in 1980 Reagan became the candidate for the Republicans and later on became the 40th president of the United States. At this point of time ( 1970s) the American situation was not so well. America faced economic problems, inflation, unemployment, the on going `Cold War´and a hostage situation in Iran, where the American embassy were being held hostage during the presidential campaigns between Carter and Reagan. In this term paper I will look at the Reagan campaign and I will try to show that his campaign is deeply connected with the concept of ´American exceptionalism´. My thesis is that Reagan based his campaign on this concept and connected his promises and solutions to this concept. In order to prove my thesis, I will firstly explain the concept of ´American exceptionalism´in the first chapter and then I will summarize Reagan´s campaign in chapter two. After that I will try to show, and with that prove my thesis, how Reagan connected his campaign with the concept of ´American exceptionalism´ with regards to content and linguistically. In the conclusion my findings will be summarized and my thesis will be confirmed or rejected.