Bush ran for president in 1980, but was defeated in the Republican presidential primaries by Ronald Reagan. He was then elected vice president in 1980 and 1984 as Reagan's running mate. Bush met Barbara Pierce at a Christmas dance in Greenwich in December 1941, and, after a period of courtship, they became engaged in December 1943. While Bush was on leave from the navy, they married in Rye, New York, on January 6, 1945. The Bushes enjoyed a strong marriage, and Barbara would later be a popular First Lady, seen by many as 'a kind of national grandmother'. The Bush campaign attacked Dukakis as an unpatriotic liberal extremist and seized on Dukakis's pardon of Willie Horton, a convicted felon from Massachusetts who had raped a woman while on a prison furlough.