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Former California governor and movie actor Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980 by asking Americans a simple question throughout his campaign: "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" After the high inflation, energy shortages, rising interest rates, and plant closings of the late 1970s, many Americans believed that they were not, in fact, any better off. Voting for Reagan, who demonstrated an optimism about the country's future with the promise to make it "Morning in America" again, many people hoped to put the economic and social turmoil of the 1970s behind them....
