Reagan's Vice-President: Jimmy Carter

Defense and foreign policy was also an important issue during the election. Reagan had portrayed Jimmy Carter as being weak in these areas in order to win election in 1980 (Diggins 161). He used a similar strategy to try to paint Carter’s Vice-President as embodying a similar view. Under Reagan’s presidency defense spending had shot up dramatically Reagan’s first budget featured $36 billion more in defense spending than Carter’s, defense spending as a percentage of the budget had grown from 22.6 percent in 1981 to 26.8 percent in 1984 (Pomper 54). Reagan advocated for a strong military spending to stave off a Soviet threat, by demonstrating the US would spend whatever it took to maintain supremacy in both its Nuclear arsenal and military prestige (Pomper 55). Reagan emphasized that Mondale was against defense and thus weakened America. This was clear in the second debate when Reagan explained that Mondale was, “against the …show more content…
Mondale’s core argument against the Reagan economic surge was the federal deficit soared because of Reagan’s attempt to slow inflation. This message seemed to resonate with many voters 19 percent of voters considered the deficit to be most important to them (Pomper 96). This would appear to favor Mondale, unfortunately voter’s prioritizing the deficit practically split 52 percent for Mondale and 48 percent for Reagan (Pomper 96). Mondale was able to bring the deficit to the forefront as a major issue but failed to capitalize on it by making his candidacy more attractive to those voters. More importantly Mondale’s solution to solving the deficit issue faired incredibly unpopular with voters 26 percent of whom said raising taxes was the position they most disagreed with Mondale over (Pomper 96). Mondale advocated against the hopeful message of Reagan’s economy by pointing out the flaws of it, and then proposed an unpopular