Ronald Reagan began his political life as a liberal Democrat and later became a Republican, campaigning for Barry Goldwater in 1964.
Correct Answer
True
True. Reagan was a New Deal Democrat as a young actor and union leader, moved right over the years, switched parties by 1962, and gave a widely noticed televised speech for Goldwater in 1964 that launched his own political career.
Category: Reagan Revolution
Question 2
Reagan paired his tax cuts with deep reductions in defense spending.
Correct Answer
False
False. Reagan sharply increased military spending while cutting taxes, a combination that drove up federal deficits and the national debt.
Category: Reagan Revolution
Question 3
In 1983, Reagan and congressional Democrats agreed to a Social Security rescue package that included higher payroll taxes.
Correct Answer
True
True. Facing a shortfall in the Social Security trust fund, Reagan compromised with Democrats on a 1983 package that raised payroll taxes, showing that he left the largest middle-class programs largely intact even as he cut antipoverty spending.
Category: Reagan Revolution
Question 4
When Reagan won the presidency in 1980, Democrats took control of the U.S. Senate.
Correct Answer
False
False. Republicans won a majority in the Senate in 1980 for the first time since the 1950s, which helped Reagan pass his early tax and budget program.
Category: Reagan Revolution
Question 5
In a 1983 speech, Reagan called the Soviet Union an "evil empire."
Correct Answer
True
True. The phrase captured Reagan's hard line toward Moscow in his first term, which included a large military buildup and support for anticommunist forces around the world.
Category: Reagan Foreign Policy
Question 6
In October 1983, a truck bomb destroyed the barracks of U.S. Marines serving as peacekeepers in Tehran.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Marine barracks that was bombed was at the airport in Beirut, Lebanon, where U.S. troops were part of a multinational peacekeeping force; more than two hundred Americans died, and Reagan withdrew the troops in early 1984.
Category: Reagan Foreign Policy
Question 7
Mikhail Gorbachev withdrew Soviet troops from Afghanistan after years of costly fighting there.
Correct Answer
True
True. The war in Afghanistan, which began in 1979, drained Soviet resources, and Gorbachev pulled the troops out as part of his effort to reform the Soviet system and ease tensions with the West.
Category: End of the Cold War
Question 8
Soviet troops crushed the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe, just as they had crushed the Hungarian uprising in 1956.
Correct Answer
False
False. In 1989 the Soviet Union did not send troops to stop the revolutions in countries such as Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia, and communist governments there fell, mostly peacefully. That restraint stood in sharp contrast to Budapest in 1956 and Prague in 1968.
Category: End of the Cold War
Question 9
The Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, months after hardliners failed in an attempt to remove Gorbachev.
Correct Answer
True
True. The failed August 1991 coup by communist hardliners weakened central authority, the Soviet republics broke away, and by the end of December 1991 the Soviet Union no longer existed, ending the Cold War.
Category: End of the Cold War
Question 10
The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty signed in 1991 committed the United States and the Soviet Union to cutting their nuclear arsenals.
Correct Answer
True
True. START, signed by George H. W. Bush and Gorbachev in July 1991, required large reductions in long-range nuclear weapons, building on the earlier INF Treaty.
Category: End of the Cold War
Question 11
Jesse Jackson won the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination with the backing of his Rainbow Coalition.
Correct Answer
False
False. Jackson ran strong campaigns in 1984 and 1988 and built a Rainbow Coalition of diverse voters, but in 1988 he finished second to Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, who won the nomination and lost to Bush.
Category: Politics of the 1980s
Question 12
In 1984, Geraldine Ferraro became the Republican Party's nominee for vice president.
Correct Answer
False
False. Ferraro was the Democratic nominee for vice president on Walter Mondale's ticket, the first woman nominated for that office by a major party; the pair lost to Reagan and Bush.
Category: Politics of the 1980s
Question 13
The Equal Rights Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1982 after a decade-long ratification campaign.
Correct Answer
False
False. The ERA passed Congress in 1972 but fell short of the three-fourths of states needed for ratification when its deadline expired in 1982, in part because of an organized conservative campaign against it. Three more states ratified after the deadline, from 2017 to 2020, but the amendment has not been certified as part of the Constitution and its status remains in legal dispute.
Category: Politics of the 1980s
Question 14
Clinton's 1993 budget passed without a single Republican vote and raised taxes on the highest-income Americans.
Correct Answer
True
True. The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 raised taxes on top earners and expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income working families, and it passed with Democratic votes alone.
Category: Clinton Domestic Policy
Question 15
Clinton's Health Security Act, developed by a task force led by Hillary Clinton, became law in 1994.
Correct Answer
False
False. The plan for universal coverage drew fierce opposition, critics labeled it Hillarycare, and it died in Congress in 1994 without coming to a final vote.
Category: Clinton Domestic Policy
Question 16
The Defense of Marriage Act, signed by Clinton in 1996, defined marriage for federal purposes as a union between a man and a woman.
Correct Answer
True
True. DOMA denied federal recognition and benefits to same-sex couples and allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages from other states; Clinton later said the law was unconstitutional and urged the Supreme Court to strike it down. The Supreme Court struck down its federal definition of marriage in 2013, and Congress repealed the law in 2022.
Category: Clinton Domestic Policy
Question 17
The Oslo Accords signed at the White House in 1993 were an agreement between the leaders of Israel and Egypt.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Oslo Accords were an agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization; at the White House ceremony, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat shook hands as their deputies signed a framework for limited Palestinian self-rule in parts of Gaza and the West Bank. Israel and Egypt had made peace earlier, after the Camp David Accords under Carter.
Category: Clinton Foreign Policy
Question 18
The 1994 federal crime law included a ban on assault weapons and the Violence Against Women Act.
Correct Answer
True
True. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act also funded more police and prisons and expanded the federal death penalty, and it became a lasting subject of debate over its effects on incarceration.
Category: Clinton Domestic Policy
Question 19
In the 1994 midterm elections, Democrats expanded their majorities in both houses of Congress.
Correct Answer
False
False. Republicans won control of both the House and the Senate in 1994 after campaigning on the Contract with America.
Category: Clinton Era Turmoil
Question 20
After the House impeached Bill Clinton, the Senate acquitted him in 1999.
Correct Answer
True
True. Neither article of impeachment came close to the two-thirds vote needed to remove him, and Clinton finished his second term with high approval ratings.
Category: Clinton Era Turmoil