He was an aging incumbent president who had just been drubbed in the midterms by the opposing party. The country was combating inflation and facing interest-rate hikes. His popularity, dipping into the 30s the year before his campaign for a second term, made a lot of his political handlers nervous about his reelection. And in his first debate with his opponent, a populist former vice president, he appeared old and unprepared.
Yet, in 1984, Ronald Wilson Reagan not only won reelection but prevailed in the second-biggest landslide in American history, winning 525 electoral votes, 58 percent of the popular vote, and every state of the union except for the home state — Minnesota — of his opponent, Walter Mondale.
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