REMEMBERING REAGAN

On the sixtieth anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 2004 Ronald Reagan, 40th and longest-lived President in United States history, died at 93 at his home in California, his three living children and wife Nancy at his bedside.

In a moving and impressive national tribute, tens of millions of Americans, Republicans, Democrats and Independents, spent much of the entire week at their television sets and radios, and hundreds of thousands traveled long distances to the presidential library in Simi, California and to Washington to stand in line for hours to pay their respects at his casket as it lay in the Rotunda of the US Capitol. For miles on both coasts women, men and children lined streets and highways; in the nation's capital the crowd was too large to estimate reliably. His friend William A. Rusher noted: ".so ready to be a friend, so sure of his beliefs, so fundamentally at peace with himself..The American people sensed this, and wisely chose to follow him. The outpouring of grief at his death tells us all we need to know about what America thought of him."

Americans are grateful that twenty-five heads of state or government, including New Zealand's Governor General Dame Sylvia Cartwright and Lady Margaret Thatcher, made the journey to Washington to participate Washington's first state funeral in more than three decades. There, former Prime Minister of Canada Brian Mulroney said: "His were not the pallid etchings of a timorous politician."

In part, this extraordinary demonstration stems from the respect all Americans pay to the very institution of the presidency, without regard to party affiliation or political differences. In the case of Ronald Reagan, it was also greatly magnified by the admiration for his decade of struggle with the debilitating and inevitably fatal affliction of Alzheimer's disease, a challenge he faced with inordinate courage and with the assistance of his ever-present and always loving spouse, Nancy. In November 1994, the diagnosis confirmed, he wrote an "open letter" to his fellow citizens, saying in part, "I now begin the journey into the sunset of my life. I know that for America, there will always be a bright dawn ahead." By virtue of the long and happy association my wife and I were privileged to have with this genial, generous and optimistic man, I can testify that his words were intended as a prediction for every democracy, not just America, and a hope for all those in the world deprived of fundamental human rights and civil liberties.

Reagan was the son of ordinary people and a typically American Midwestern town. His mother, Nelle, exerted enormous influence on his early life, imbuing in him the simple virtues and a deep-seated faith in God and His Commandments. His father, John, was a shoe salesman with a severe drinking problem, which left lasting memories on Ronald and his older brother, Neil, also known as "Moon."

The only president of the United States to enter office with a college degree (1932) in economics, Ronald Reagan made his first career as a radio sportscaster of baseball games in the Midwest, and eventually gambled on a trip to Hollywood, where he attracted the attention of movie moguls and was signed to a contract. His rise to stardom as a handsome leading man was rapid, and he played starring roles in a wide variety of action, wartime and western films. His later political critics often belittled him as a "B-grade" actor, more often than not masking their own regret at being unable to achieve even that status. While in Hollywood, he was a fervent "New Deal Democrat," supported Franklin D. Roosevelt and eventually became President of the Screen Actors' Guild. It was as president of SAG in the years after World War II that he first encountered the widespread activity of communists within the film industry, and became the personal target of threats of violence when he formed and led opposition to them.

As television became a popular and rapidly expanding medium in the early 1950s, Mr. Reagan became a spokesman for General Electric Company, traveling throughout the nation, visiting GE plants and delivering hundreds of public speeches. On hearing him speak, the actor Robert Cummings asked if had ever considered running for president, to which Reagan responded, "President of what?" He became a Republican in 1962.

In 1964, Republican Senator Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona was the nominee against President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had succeeded to office upon the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Jr. At the end of the long campaign, Ronald Reagan made an impassioned national television speech on behalf of Goldwater. Although Goldwater lost badly to Johnson, the Reagan speech resulted in the single largest total of individual political contributions in history, and launched him to the next stage of his career.

A group of California businessmen persuaded Reagan to run for Governor in 1966 as a Republican against the popular incumbent, Pat Brown. Reagan swamped Brown in a landslide, winning 58% to Brown's 42%, and began a new political era in a complex political state. Even then, California's population was more than 18 million, 4.5 times the size of New Zealand's today, and during Reagan's tenure it grew to more than 21 million. In 1970 he was reelected in another landslide.

Pitted against a legislature dominated by Democrats, Reagan took positions that brought him into nearly constant confrontation with his adversaries, and won most important battles. He was known as a tough opponent, always willing to "go to the people" over the heads of strong political and media opposition. When informed of the size of the state's budget surplus that his policies had created and asked what he wanted to do with it, he immediately proposed giving it back to the people, arguing that it was their money, not the state's. He reformed education, installed a variegated but cooperative Board of Regents for the state's fabled college and university systems, and dramatically changed the state's purchasing and administrative systems. As Governor, Reagan was widely criticized by the press and by his opponents, but always exuded cordiality and courtesy, even when deadlocked in a struggle.

In 1968, he made a brief bid for the Republican presidential nomination against Richard M Nixon and Nelson A. Rockefeller, governor of New York, but withdrew at the Convention in Miami.

In early 1975, following eight highly successful years as governor, Reagan "retired" and launched a daily five-minute radio program devoted to public policy issues. With a brief hiatus, these radio broadcasts continued until 1980, each researched and written on yellow legal tablets by Reagan himself. He became increasingly troubled by the policy directions of Republican President Gerald R. Ford, especially in the area of foreign and national security policy, and decided to launch a bid against Ford for the 1976 nomination. With few resources and less money than the incumbent, Reagan came within a few votes of unseating Ford, who went on to lose in November to Jimmy Carter.

For four years Reagan prepared himself for another contest. Even those few of his closest advisors, of which I was one, could not be sure during the intervening years that he would actually take the plunge once more; he would have to contend at age 69, and if successful would become the oldest man every elected to the presidency. His critics, which included the East Coast Republican "Establishment" and the print and electronic media, often dismissed Reagan as "too old, too conservative, too uninformed and too lazy" ever to receive serious consideration. He traveled the United States, went to Europe and Asia, continued his daily radio program and read prodigiously. Then, by early 1979, critical of Carter's domestic and foreign policy, Reagan decided to mount another challenge, and made his formal announcement in late November.

Bad political advice led him to skip the Iowa caucuses in early 1980, which he lost to George Bush. Determined to take control, Reagan "barnstormed" through New Hampshire, campaigning in his favored one-on-one style in the hamlets and small townships of that small but highly significant northeastern state. Five other well-known and highly experienced candidates, including George H. W. Bush, contested against him, but Reagan gained an easy victory in New Hampshire and would never lose another primary. One by one, the other candidates dropped out, amazed by the vigor of a 69-year-old man prepared to debate and discuss every major issue of public policy and outline a specific plan for a four-year presidential term.

Accepting his party's nomination in Detroit in July, 1980, Reagan once more demonstrated his skills at conciliation with former adversaries, saying: "I am very proud of our party tonight. This convention has shown to all America a party united, with positive programs for solving the nation's problems; a party ready to build a new consensus with all those across the land who share a community of values embodied in these words: family, work, neighborhood, peace and freedom." The five words formed the intellectual and political plan for the campaign of 1980, leading to the November election.

As had so many others, President Jimmy Carter seriously underestimated Reagan, and lost in a Reagan avalanche. In spite of steely and widespread opposition from the traditional print and electronic media, especially on the east and west coasts, Reagan carried not only 44 of the 50 states, but his "coattails" brought a long-sought Republican majority in the United States Senate and significant gains in the House of Representatives. Upon his Inauguration on January 20, 1981, American hostages in Iran were released, and only years later did the world learn that Reagan's first instructions in the period of the presidential "transition" to this writer led to secret negotiations that saved the famous Korean dissident, Kim Dae Jung (who later became President of Korea) from a death sentence. In 1984, at the age of 73, RFeagan was re-elected in yet another landslide, winning 49 states and almost 59% of the popular vote.

Reagan's bold initiatives in domestic and foreign policy have been recounted elsewhere, but of profound importance for the world at large was his decision to offer negotiations to the Soviet Union, see his overture rejected by Brezhnev, and then decide to increase American military strength to a point at which the other side could no longer resist, especially after it came to understand the implications of the Strategic Defense Initiative. The historic negotiations, eventually completed with the contributions of Mikhail Gorbachev, brought about the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union and the demise of its empire, including freedom for the states of Eastern Europe.

Ronald Reagan was a leader of extraordinary ability, great courage, strategic vision, of wit and self-deprecating humor who quite literally believed in the maxim inscribed on a little brass plaque he carefully placed on the outer corner of his desk in the Oval Office on the first day of his presidency: "There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit." Ronald Reagan never minded at all.