1980 Reagan VS. Carter VS. Anderson

"Nancy Reagan"

In campaign ads, spouses usually play a benign role. They are there to humanize the candidate and to add some warmth. The 1980 ad “Nancy Reagan” is a striking exception. As the ad begins, she fervently refutes the charges that President Carter has made against “my husband,” stating that he is not a warmonger. She then goes on the attack, asking that Carter “explain to me” why inflation is so high, and why he has a “vacillating, weak” foreign policy. Although this is an attack ad, it is presented as an act of spousal defense. Reagan had a reputation as a staunch conservative, and the campaign felt the need to project a soft, safe image of the candidate so that voters would feel comfortable with him. The attacks on Carter are left to surrogates, including Nancy Reagan, Gerald Ford, William Safire, and—in another memorable ad using footage from the bitter Democratic primary battle—Ted Kennedy.

Transcript

Museum of the Moving Image
The Living Room Candidate
"Nancy Reagan," Reagan, 1980

NANCY REAGAN: I deeply, deeply resent and am offended by the attacks that President Carter's made on my husband. The personal attacks that he's made on my husband. His attempt to paint my husband as a man he is not. He is not a warmonger, he is not a man who is going to throw the elderly out on the street and cut out their social security. That's a terrible thing to, to do and to say, about anybody. That's campaigning on fear.

There are many issues that are at stake in this campaign. I would like Mr. Carter to explain to me why the inflation is as high as it is, why unemployment is as high as it is. I would like to have him explain the vacillating, weak foreign policy so that our friends overseas don't know what we're going to do, whether we're going to stand up for them, or whether we're not going to stand up for them. And the issue of this campaign is his three and a half year record.

MALE NARRATOR: The time is now for strong leadership.

Credits

"Nancy Reagan," Reagan Bush Committee, 1980

Maker: Campaign '80

Video courtesy of Ronald and Nancy Reagan/Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

From Museum of the Moving Image, The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2012.
www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1980/nancy-reagan (accessed August 13, 2025).

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1980 Reagan Carter Anderson Results

On November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students stormed the American embassy in Tehran. Protesting the entry of the deposed Shah into the United States, they held 53 Americans hostage. For the next twelve months, the hostage situation was an ongoing American nightmare magnified by constant media attention. Confidence in President Carter eroded as a result of the Iran crisis, an oil shortage and resultant increase in gas prices, and 18 percent inflation. Carter’s chances were further damaged by a tough primary battle against Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy.

While Carter had been the fresh face of 1976, this year the role of Washington outsider was played by the Republican nominee, Ronald Reagan. A former Hollywood actor who became governor of California in 1966, Reagan made a brief run for the presidency in 1968, and nearly beat Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination in 1976. Reagan’s landslide victory was due not only to Carter’s problems, but also to a demographic shift toward an aging population that was growing more conservative. Carter became the first Democratic incumbent to lose the presidency since Grover Cleveland in 1888. In a further indignity, the Iranians waited until the moment of Reagan’s inauguration to release the hostages.

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