Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Walter Mondale for Losing 49 States in the 1984 Presidential Election

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5. Geraldine Ferraro. I understand the desire for Mondale to choose the 1st female Vice Presidential nominee. But the Congresswoman from Queens was the wrong woman for the job. The traditional running-mate role, that of the "attack dog" who says things the Presidential nominee shouldn't, worked against her, especially with her Noo Yawk accent. The fact that her husband, Brooklyn real-estate developer John Zaccaro, was ethically compromised (even if she, herself, was not) didn't help.

4. The Olympics. Granted, the hockey Gold Medal, including the upset of the vastly more talented Soviet team, at the 1980 Winter Olympics didn't help Carter (or Mondale, who was actually at the game with the Soviets and the Gold Medal game with Finland, as several players were from Minnesota). But the boycott of the Summer Olympics, in Moscow, sure hurt Carter – even though it did more to expose the Soviets as "an evil empire" than anything Reagan ever did.

When the Soviets and the East Germans boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, it left the American team almost free rein to win as many medals as it wanted. It became 16 days of unbridled, safe patriotism, a call of, "You're all welcome to visit our country, but our country is the greatest!" It was right up Reagan's alley, and right in his Southern California backyard. As the host nation's head of state, he even got to officially declare the Games open. He was great at ceremonial stuff like that, and he reveled in it.

3. The Curse of Jimmy Carter. Reagan was able to run against "The Carter-Mondale Administration," even though Carter was better at nearly everything than Reagan – including, as it turned out, creating jobs, avoiding tax increases and getting hostages out of Iran. Nearly everything... except explaining why he was good at those things. Carter was a good statesman, but he was a lousy politician. Reagan was a great politician, and knew how to look like a good statesman, even when he wasn't.

2. The Cold War. In spite of the sunny image he projected for both himself and America, Reagan was able to make Americans so frightened of the Soviet Union that they'd rather have a senile, lying Republican as President than an honest Democrat of sound mind.

1. "Morning In America." Quotation marks intentional. It was something that Americans, besieged by a quarter of a century of Cold War, civil rights struggles, race riots, assassinations, war, recession and terrorism desperately wanted to believe. And Reagan and his packagers were able to make them believe it. This was all part of the Actor's show. He never played any part as well as he played "President Reagan."

In short: Ronald Reagan wasn't a great President, but he played one on TV. The truth is, he was a disaster, one after which we are still cleaning up – and, with Donald Trump as his (un)natural successor, there is a new mess. People wanted to believe Trump could "make America great again." The Reagan years are almost certainly what he meant, because it was a time when he and his way of life were riding high, and unquestioned by liberals.