By any measure - political, economic, cultural or technological - the 1980s was an eventful 10 years. Politically, the decade was defined by the aggressive conservatism of U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who both enjoyed overwhelming popular support during their long tenures in power. A former movie actor and the Republican governor of California, Reagan won election in November 1980 over Jimmy Carter by promising to restore America's status as the preeminent economic and political power in the world. His reelection in 1984, and the victory of his vice president, George H.W. Bush, in the 1988 presidential race meant that Reagan's legacy would continue into the 1990s.
From the beginning of his presidency, Reagan began building up American military strength and putting pressure on the struggling Soviet Union, America's primary rival on the world stage since 1945. The rise of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, elected in 1985, and his diplomatic dealings with Reagan marked a new era in U.S.-Soviet relations, characterized by glasnost, or openness.
Meanwhile, Reagan's enormous personal popularity allowed him to emerge unscathed from the biggest foreign policy scandal of the decade, the Iran-Contra Affair. Members of the Reagan administration were found to have secretly sold arms to Iran and used the funds to provide illegal support to the Contras, a counterrevolutionary force fighting to overthrow the Cuban-backed Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Despite indications that Reagan and Bush knew about the Iran-Contra dealings, the blame was shifted completely to subordinates, mainly Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Council.
On the domestic front, Reagan based his economic policies on extensive tax cuts, largely for those in the higher income brackets. With its unfailing support of big business, "Reaganomics" resulted in a surge in the U.S. economy, as from 1982 to 1987 the GNP rose by 27 percent, manufacturing by 33 percent and median incomes by 12 percent (compared with a decline of 10.5 percent during the 1970s). The upswing went a long way towards restoring American confidence after the doubt-ridden 1970s, and an initially critical media was largely won over by Reagan, whom they dubbed "The Great Communicator."
Many saw Reaganomics in a harsher light, pointing to his cuts in social programs such as welfare, the still-rising unemployment rate and the growing gap between rich and poor Americans during the 1980s. The federal deficit continued to grow and military spending remained high, as neither Reagan nor Bush shied away from demonstrating American military power abroad, especially to fight the spread of communism. In 1983, Reagan sent troops to the small West Indian island of Granada, while in 1989 Bush ordered a U.S. invasion of Panama to overthrow the regime of General Manual Noriega; both men also authorized U.S. military aid to the brutal dictatorship of civil-war-racked El Salvador.
By the time Reagan left office - with the highest approval ratings of any president since Franklin Roosevelt - the expansion of the U.S. economy had already begun to slow, beginning on Black Monday (October 19, 1987) when the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 500 points - the largest single-day drop in history. By the end of 1989, economic crises and mass protests in the Soviet Union and Communist-led Eastern Europe had reached a breaking point. That November, East Germany agreed to unite with West Germany, and the infamous Berlin Wall dividing the German capital was dismantled amid raucous celebrations. Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland also abandoned their Communist systems that year. A less successful popular rebellion took place in China, culminating in June 1989 in Peking's Tiananmen Square, where government forces killed 2,600 demonstrators and wounded thousands more. Gorbachev, increasingly unpopular in his own country, met with Bush in Malta in December 1989, in a clear sign that the Cold War was finally coming to an end.
Against the backdrop of Reaganomics and conservatism, the dominant culture of 1980s America was one of materialism and conspicuous consumption. With the economy surging, the decade saw the rise of a new young urban professional or "yuppie" class and the glorification of the kind of "greed is good" mentality portrayed in the 1987 film Wall Street. A group of real-life Wall Streeters, including Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken, took this attitude too far in the mid-80s, and were prosecuted for insider trading.
In fashion, the 80s were the era of the power suit (for both men and women), shoulder pads, Flashdance-style aerobics wear (especially legwarmers) and brand-name everything (Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren became ubiquitous). Among the top fashion icons of the decade were the over-the-top characters on the prime-time soap operas Dallas and Dynasty, the suave pastel-clad detectives Crockett and Tubbs on Miami Vice, the rising pop star Madonna and Princess Diana of Wales, whose 1981 marriage to Prince Charles drew millions of TV viewers worldwide.
Over the course of the decade, top-rated television shows focused on happy families (The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Growing Pains) were joined by shows with slightly less idyllic views of family life (Roseanne, Married...with Children). Daytime and late-night TV saw the rise of the soon-to-be-iconic Oprah Winfrey and David Letterman, while Ted Turner launched the 24-hour Cable News Network (CNN). At the movies, George Lucas continued his groundbreaking Star Wars trilogy and teamed with Steven Spielberg to launch the Indiana Jones movies, turning Harrison Ford into the most bankable star in Hollywood. Action movies reigned at the box office, as audiences flocked to see Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator (1984), Tom Cruise in Top Gun (1985), Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon (1987) and Bruce Willis in Die Hard (1988).
The music industry was forever changed in the 1980s, when MTV (Music Television) went on the air with its first music video, for the Buggles song "Video Killed the Radio Star" in 1981. In other major music news, Michael Jackson shot to international superstardom with the release of his second solo album, Thriller (1982), which became the top-selling album in history.
One of the most significant developments of the 1980s was the arrival of the personal computer. IBM introduced its first PC in August 1981, and rival Apple followed three years later with the first Mac. Beginning in 1985, the software company Microsoft released the first versions of its powerful Windows operating system, which would eventually come to dominate the personal computing market. The decade also saw the introduction of the first mobile phones, an event that would forever change how people conducted their work and social lives. The compact disc, the Sony Walkman, the videocassette recorder (VCR) and the home video game system (Nintendo's Super Mario Brothers became the company's first huge hit) all appeared during the 1980s.
There was also a darker side to the 1980s, despite the optimism promoted by Reagan and his supporters. Two natural disasters in the U.S. book-ended the decade: the eruption of Mount St. Helen's in Washington State in May 1980 and a 6.9-magnitude earthquake in San Francisco in October 1989. The first reports of a mysterious new disease that viciously attacked the immune system appeared in 1981, and by 1986, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) had been declared a global pandemic. Crack cocaine use became epidemic in the mid-1980s, accompanied by a rise in drug trafficking and other drug-related crimes. General crime rates also rose, as economic conditions for the poorest segments of the population worsened during the Reagan-Bush years.
The thriving U.S. space program was thrown off by the disastrous explosion of the shuttle Challenger during lift-off in January 1986, which killed 269 passengers and crew, including the schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. That same year, the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine exploded, killing 56 people (not counting the thousands of exposed children later diagnosed with thyroid cancer) and sending deadly radioactive material into the environment.
In the tumultuous Middle East, civil war raged in Lebanon, and more than 200 U.S. Marines were killed there in 1982 when a bomb exploded in their barracks. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein led his country to war with Iran in 1987, putting it on course for a larger confrontation with the U.S. beginning in 1990. The 1980s saw several horrifying terrorist attacks, from IRA bombs in Britain to suicide bombs in Beirut (October 1983) and West Berlin (April 1986), to the explosion of Pam Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988. Most disturbingly, Islamic fundamentalism, which had begun its revival in the 1950s, became a potent and dangerous force during the 1980s, attracting more and more supporters across the widespread Muslim world.
