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Oct 21, 2015 · I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience," he quipped. Reagan's memorable response even made his younger Democratic opponent, Walter...
- Anna Halkidis
Oct 21, 1984 · WASHINGTON -- President Reagan jokingly turned the age issue to his advantage during his debate with Walter Mondale Sunday night, promising he would not exploit Mondale's 'youth and...
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Jan 26, 2024 · Ronald Reagan’s laugh line about Walter Mondale’s “ youth and inexperience ” helped breathe new life into his 1984 reelection campaign. Gerald Ford’s baffling claim that there was...
“Youth and inexperience”: In his debate with Walter Mondale, who sought to prevent Reagan from a second presidential term, the president was asked if his own advancing age could be problematic for his tenure. Reagan turned the question on its head, pledging not to make “age an issue of this campaign.”
- Overview
- The campaign
United States presidential election of 1984, American presidential election held on November 6, 1984, in which Republican Ronald Reagan was elected to a second term, defeating Democrat Walter Mondale, a former U.S. vice president. Reagan won 49 states en route to amassing 525 electoral votes to Mondale’s 13—one of the biggest landslides in U.S. ele...
During the primaries, Reagan faced no opposition and was easily renominated by the Republican Party. On the Democratic side, however, the 1984 campaign was notable. Jesse Jackson, an eloquent African American preacher who had been a young activist in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1983. At the time, no one believed he would win either nomination or election, but his public stature guaranteed him equal opportunity to compete seriously for the nomination.
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The Democratic primaries were contested—in addition to Jackson—by one former governor (Reubin Askew of Florida), two former senators (George McGovern of South Dakota and Mondale), and four incumbent senators (Alan Cranston of California, John Glenn of Ohio, Gary Hart of Colorado, and Ernest Hollings of South Carolina). The pre-primary odds makers had favoured Mondale, with Glenn considered the strongest challenger, but Glenn ran a lacklustre campaign and foundered early. So did most of the others, but Hart came in second in the Iowa caucuses and won the New Hampshire primary. Quick to spot what seemed to be a trend, the media all but wrote off Mondale. No longer the front-runner, Mondale abandoned his defensive stance. Borrowing a slogan from a television commercial for the hamburger chain Wendy’s ("Where’s the beef?"), he found a way to deflate Hart’s pretensions as the candidate of "new ideas" and finally slogged his way to the nomination.
Mondale made history by choosing as his running mate Geraldine Ferraro—the first woman selected by a major political party for its presidential ticket. At the time, Ferraro was a three-term congresswoman from New York, and it was hoped that her nomination would galvanize the campaign. It did initially, but the Democratic ticket was derailed almost immediately by a monthlong controversy over the finances of Ferraro and her husband, a New York real estate operator. The Mondale-Ferraro ticket attempted, without success, to find an issue that would resonate with voters. Fairness between rich and poor, alleged misbehaviour by Reagan aides, and Reagan’s close ties with aggressive fundamentalist groups all failed to dent the approval ratings of the man supporters called "the great communicator" and enemies called "the Teflon president" because no charges ever stuck to him. Perhaps worst for the Mondale campaign, however, was Mondale’s pledge at the Democratic convention in San Francisco, where he stated:
By the end of my first term, I will reduce the Reagan budget deficit by two-thirds. Let’s tell the truth. It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience.” [6] Even Mondale, 56, laughed at the line, neutralizing the age issue. Reagan went on to win 49 of the 50 states, racking up the biggest electoral vote win in American history.
