Looking only at his early life circumstances and experiences, it does not appear that President Ronald Reagan was destined for greatness. Raised by a father who was down on his luck more times than not, Reagan's childhood was marked by instability as the family moved from town to town whenever his father lost a job. Aspiring to do more, Reagan worked every summer to save enough money for college, and after his graduation from Eureka College, he began work as a radio announcer at station WOC in Davenport, Iowa. In 1937, after a successful screen test on a trip to California, Reagan landed a job as a contract actor for Warner Brothers.

He eventually became the first actor in Hollywood history to sign a million-dollar contract. He spent World War II in a U.S. Army film unit run by his studio boss, Jack Warner, and testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Red Scare, all before even beginning his political career and switching parties from Democrat to Republican in 1962. According to Eliot, Reagan's most formative years occurred during his time in Hollywood when he perfected the art of storytelling and the craft of negotiation, while developing a deep-seated enmity toward communism.

Reagan was the oldest person ever elected to the American presidency, beginning his term just a few weeks shy of seventy years old. He was also the only president who had ever served as a union president. Finally, he was the only president to ever survive a wound from an assassination attempt, a near-death experience from which he developed a spiritual sense of mission about the remainder of his presidency.

Psychologist Albert Bandura argues that if we are ever to truly understand how people develop the way they do, researchers should take the importance of chance encounters seriously. He notes that “[f]ortuitous influences may be unforeseen, but having occurred, they enter as evident factors in causal chains in the same way as prearranged ones do.” Ronald Reagan did not plan to become president. Instead, throughout his life, he capitalized on a series of events that eventually propelled him to become the leader of the Free World. In addition, as president of the United States, his background came with him, informing his outlook, ideology, and policy positions.