Ronald Reagan and the Domestic and Foreign Policy of the United States in the 1980s

This thesis presents the newly discovered importance of a person - with extraordinary personality - and his political ideology in the American politics of the 1980s. The objective of my research has been to examine and to prove how Ronald Reagan' s presidency contributed to the renewal of the domestic and foreign policy of the USA. A special emphasis is laid on how President Reagan attempted to give back the selfconfidence, patriotism and national unity of the American people after the nadir of the 1970s. I have used several historical and political documents, including biographies, speeches of Ronald Reagan, and an oral interview that I made with János Avar, -a journalist expert and writer of books on American politics and - the only Hungarian correspondent at the White House in the 1980s. Using these sources in my thesis I am presenting Ronald Reagan's domestic and foreign policy during his two-term presidency in order to prove that, by accomplishing his political goals, Americans had found renewed faith in their national institutions and the United States became the only superpower towards the end of the century.