1980 Reagan VS. Carter VS. Anderson

"Peace (Republican)"

Transcript

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

(sirens)

MALE NARRATOR: Very slowly, a step at a time, the hope for world peace erodes. Slowly, we once slid into Korea, slowly, into Vietnam. And now, the Persian Gulf beckons.

Jimmy Carter's weak, indecisive leadership has vacillated before events in Angola, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan. Jimmy Carter still doesn't know that it takes strong leadership to keep the peace. Weak leadership will lose it.

[TEXT: July 17, 1980]

REAGAN: Of all the objectives we seek, first and foremost is the establishment of lasting world peace. We know only too well that war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong. It is when they are weak that tyrants are tempted. Four times in my lifetime, America has gone to war...

(fade out)

MALE NARRATOR: The message Ronald Reagan has carried to America is one of strength.

[TEXT: October 19, 1980]

REAGAN: Peace is made by the fact of strength - economic, military, and strategic. Peace is lost when such strength disappears, or - just as bad - is seen by an adversary as disappearing.

MALE NARRATOR: The message Ronald Reagan has carried to America is one of restraint.

REAGAN (voice-over): I have repeatedly said in this campaign that I will sit down with the Soviet Union for as long as it takes to negotiate a balanced and equitable arms limitation agreement, designed to improve the prospects for peace.

(applause and music)

MALE NARRATOR: The message Ronald Reagan has carried to America is one of confidence.

REAGAN (voice-over): Whatever else history may say about my candidacy, I hope it will be recorded that I appealed to our best hopes, not our worst fears; to our confidence, rather than our doubts; to the facts, not to fantasies. And these three - hope, confidence, and facts - are at the heart of my vision of peace.

MALE NARRATOR: Strength, restraint, inspired leadership. The time is now: Reagan for President.

Credits

"Peace (Republican)," Reagan, 1980

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/peace-republican (accessed June 14, 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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