DB: What is the most plausible time for Ronald Reagan to have become President?

Ronald Reagan - actor turned politician, Republican, leader of the conservative movement. Could have conceivably become President, but never did. When do you think is the most plausible time for that to happen? (Personally I think in 1976, after a primary challenge to President Ford... any later than that and he'd be kinda too old...)
 
Ronald Reagan - actor turned politician, Republican, leader of the conservative movement. Could have conceivably become President, but never did. When do you think is the most plausible time for that to happen? (Personally I think in 1976, after a primary challenge to President Ford... any later than that and he'd be kinda too old...)

OOC: Reagan is a strange case. John Howard once said, after losing his first election as Opposition leader, "The times will [eventually] suit me." And he was right, the times did suit him between his mid-fifties and mid sixties. Reagan didn't have a truly opportune moment to run for POTUS until he was almost seventy.

I don't see him as a great political success if he'd won in either '68 or '76. Nineteen eighty was his great chance to remake US politics, IMHO.
 
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