Video: 'President Reagan's Acceptance Speech at the Republican National Convention, August 23, 1984'

(Thursday, August 23, 1984, 9:11 p.m. CDT) — U.S. President Ronald Reagan of California, accepting the Republican nomination for a second term, appealed tonight for the party’s help in finishing the “unfinished agenda” of a conservative reformation of the government.

Reagan told the delegates to the 1984 Republican National Convention at Dallas Convention Center in downtown Dallas, Texas, that the contest between himself and former Vice President Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota, the Democratic presidential nominee, presented the nation’s voters “with the clearest political choice of half a century.”

Reagan’s running mate, Vice President George H.W. Bush of Texas, described the 1984 election as a historic dividing line in American politics.

Video: '1984 George H. W. Bush Republican Convention Vice President Acceptance Speech'

By winning a second term, Bush said in his acceptance speech, he and Reagan would establish the Republicans as “the party of the future.”

Reagan was unanimously nominated for a second term, receiving all 2,044 votes.

To save time, the vice presidential vote was held simultaneously, with Vice President Bush receiving 2,042 votes and Jack Kemp and Anne Armstrong receiving one vote each.

The Reagan-Bush ticket would be challenged by the Democratic ticket of Mondale and Rep. Geraldine Ferraro of New York, nominated last month in San Francisco, in the 1984 general election.