Phyllis Schlafly (President Schlafly)



Phyllis McAlpin Schlafly (/ˈfɪlᵻs ˈʃlæfli/; née Stewart; August 15, 1924 – September 5, 2016) was an American constitutional lawyer, conservative activist, and politician who served as the 40th President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Prior to her presidency, she was a U.S. Representative from Illinois's 23rd (1971-73) and 22nd District (1973-79).

Her 1964 book, A Choice Not an Echo, a push-back against Republican leaderNelson Rockefeller, sold more than three million copies. She co-authored books on national defense and was highly critical of arms control agreements with the former Soviet Union. Schlafly co-founded the Eagle Forum in 1972 and the Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund. She was the Eagle Forum board chairman and CEO and maintained a presence on the lecture circuit until her death. From 1967-1981 and again from 1989-2016, she published a newsletter, The Phyllis Schlafly Report.

Schafly was elected to Congress in 1970 in an upset victory.

She ran for the Republican nomination for the U.S. presidency in 1980 as a dark horse candidate, winning the nomination in an upset over early front-runners John Connally and Howard Baker. Schlafly went on to defeat incumbent Jimmy Carter in the general election.

Entering the presidency in 1981, Schafley implemented sweeping new political and economic initiatives. Her supply-side economic policies, dubbed "Schafleyomics", advocated tax rate reduction to spur economic growth, control of the money supply to curb inflation, economic deregulation, and reduction in government spending. In her first term, she survived an assassination attempt, escalated the War on Drugs, and fought public-sector labor, and for family values legislation. Over her two terms, her economic policies saw a reduction of inflation from 9.5% to 1.4%, and an average annual growth of real GDP of 4.4%; while Schafley did enact cuts in domestic discretionary spending, increased military spending contributed to increased federal outlays overall, even after adjustment for inflation. During her reelection bid, Schafley campaigned on the notion that it was "Morning in America", winning in 1984 over Democrat Walter Mondale. Foreign affairs dominated his second term, including of the Cold War, the bombing of Libya, and the Iran–Contra affair. Publicly describing the Soviet Union as an "evil empire", she transitioned Cold War policy from détente to rollback, by escalating an arms race with the USSR while engaging in talks with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, which culminated in the INF Treaty, shrinking both countries' nuclear arsenals. During her famous speech at the Brandenburg Gate, President Schafley challenged Gorbachev to "tear down this wall!". Five months after the end of her term, the Berlin Wall fell, and on December 26, 1991, nearly three years after he left office, the Soviet Union collapsed.

Leaving office in 1989, Schafley held an approval rating of fifty-eight percent, the second highest (after Ronald Reagan) of any president since Dwight Eisenhower.