On the World Stage, The White House's Best Actor

Reagan delivering his farewell address from the White House in 1989. He could make even the grandest speeches sound folksy and accessible. (Ron Edmonds -- AP)

He knew who he was, and he knew what he dreamed, and with skills that earned him the nickname The Great Communicator, he was able to make his dreams ours. Ronald Reagan tapped into the American consciousness as few other presidents or political leaders have ever done and did it with ingratiating charm and unpretentious sincerity.

We loved him like a father or a grandfather or an older brother or a next-door neighbor or a guy down the road who liked to ride his horse and chop wood and even enjoyed clearing brush off his land. The point is, we loved him, and he loved America. People could quarrel with his ideas, but at least he had ideas. People could bristle at what he represented, but at least he represented something. In this he may have been the last of the old-style politicians.

And though he didn't serve in the armed forces during World War II, Reagan seemed very much the perfect flag-bearer for that "Greatest Generation" identified and idolized by news anchor Tom Brokaw. Reagan was a character created by Will Rogers or a figure from a painting by Norman Rockwell. He might have been considered corny if he wasn't always ready with a quip or a self-deprecating wisecrack to avert pomposity.

It was a very American quality. Ronald Reagan was a very American American. He was the American's American, really. He was a president we could take pride in when he traveled to other countries, even if there was the occasional gaffe. Reagan deflected much ridicule by leading the laughter himself.

For weeks there have been rumors that Reagan was in the last moments of his life, suffering from Alzheimer's, his condition worsening. He fell into a coma. But then, when he did die, yesterday in Los Angeles, there was the aura of anticlimax. It seemed a rite of passage rather than an ending. Reagan had been very real to millions who never physically touched or saw him in more than two dimensions; he was "real" because he used television so well and became a vital presence in American homes, hearts and minds.

Throughout his long career as a communicator, he mastered all media. On radio, he appealed to the imagination in calling play-by-play on games he couldn't even see. In the movies, he was the stereotypical nice-guy hero, not someone you'd cast as Hamlet but not entirely a lightweight either; witness his unnerving performance in the still-shocking drama "Kings Row" or his warm-hearted portrayal of Notre Dame football star George Gipp in "Knute Rockne All American."

It was in "Kings Row," of course, that Reagan shouted the line of dialogue that later became the title of an autobiography: "Where's the rest of me?" And in "Knute Rockne," he indelibly uttered the plea that someday the team go out there on the field and "win one for the Gipper."

He won two for the Gipper, himself, of course -- the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections, fantastic landslides even though, when he ran as an incumbent, the country wasn't in the greatest of economic health. It didn't matter that much, apparently. We trusted the man. And we knew he would try to reward that trust.

Television was the third mass medium Reagan had attempted to scale like the side of a mountain, and he showed natural, or perhaps supernatural, aptitude; he didn't have to pretend to be anybody but himself now, or the mythical version of himself that he honed and perfected from the '30s through the '70s. At first he had to be lured into politics, but Reagan soon found there were things he wanted to say, and whatever you thought of those things, you had to admit he said them brilliantly, in an intimate and conversational style that was a far cry from the ornate oratory of previous eras.

Bombast and braggadocio were not the Reagan style.

As president, Reagan essentially updated the fireside chat -- which his onetime idol Franklin D. Roosevelt had invented for radio -- and turned it into television. He was also adept, however, at delivering grand speeches for grand occasions, and even though he was speaking to vast crowds, he could still come across as accessible and folksy.

Reagan had good speechwriters, for sure, but the delivery always glorified the material rather than the other way around. Of all the speeches he made, the most momentous was probably the address he gave in Europe on the 40th anniversary of D-Day. It was emotional, powerful, eloquent. I can't quote any of the exact lines, but I do remember this: It was so deeply moving that it made my mother cry.

Huddled before the TV set that day, we felt a oneness with the rest of the country that normally happens only during catastrophes and tribulations. I felt a personal pride in the president that day, a feeling I don't think any president has inspired to that degree at any time since.

I did get to meet President Reagan a few times, one or two of them the traditional Washington handshake march, with the president being trotted by eager faces and outstretched hands. But another occasion was much more intimate. Nancy Reagan hosted a screening of the movie "Yankee Doodle Dandy," starring James Cagney, in the White House. The movie was made by Warner Bros., Reagan's old home studio when he worked in pictures.

Before the film, coffee and cake were served. A White House social secretary tapped me on the shoulder. She asked if I would mind going over and sitting with the president, who was alone at a small table. Would I mind? No, I wouldn't, nor would the friend who came with me. Joined by a few others, we listened for half and hour as Reagan told stories from the old days. Occasionally he would be prompted on specific details by his old friend A.C. Lyles, longtime producer of westerns.

Reagan told a self-deprecating tale of a publicity gimmick dreamed up by the studio; stars would go door to door and shake hands with the ticket-buying public. At one door, the woman of the house insisted she knew who he was but could not, after several minutes of trying, come up with his name. "I'll give you a hint," Reagan remembered telling her. "My initials are R.R." The woman thought for a minute, then broke out in a broad, knowing smile. "Of course!" she exclaimed. "Roy Rogers!"

Before the screening, Reagan spoke to the small crowd. He held up a pair of dancing shoes worn in the film and given to him by Cagney. Then Reagan recalled that there'd been talk at Warners that year of submitting Reagan's performance in "Kings Row" as the studio's bid for the Best Actor Oscar. Reagan said that while he would have liked that, he knew the nominee had to be Cagney, and deferred. He never won an Oscar, no, but winning the presidency in two landslides is nothing to be sneezed at.

Reagan's were television campaigns, of course, and though people still remember the "morning in America" and "bear in the woods" ads, Reagan's own spontaneous moments are more cherishable: "I paid for this microphone!" and, to someone in sharp disagreement with him, "Oh, shut up."

His 1981 inaugural festivities were the most TV-intensive ever, since American hostages were being released by Iran even as the president was about to take the oath of office and send Jimmy Carter back to Plains, Ga. What is normally a strictly ceremonial event became red-hot riveting television. There was speculation in later years about how the timing managed to be so convenient and dramatic; however it happened, it was an incredible send-off for a new administration, one that would use television more fluently than any other up to that time.

Many images from those years return now as Reagan and his times are recalled: the president with a hand cupped to his ear so he could hear Sam Donaldson's shouted question while a noisy helicopter awaited Reagan nearby . . . the gallery of Reagan impersonators (Johnny Carson most prominent among them) who always tried to mimic the prefatory, "Well," with which Reagan answered questions . . . and the stunning moment when Reagan stood in West Berlin and loudly implored -- commanded, really -- "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!"

And torn down -- eventually -- it was.

Lampooning the presidency is a noble American tradition, but the Reagans, Ronald and Nancy, often beat potential lampooners to the punch by whimsically dissing themselves. Theirs was also called one of the great love stories of the 20th century. Nancy Reagan was much maligned for allegedly extravagant ways during those years, but in recent years, her role has been seen more for the positive, resourceful and supportive performance that it was. Mrs. Reagan is currently active in the drive to allow stem cell research in finding cures for Alzheimer's and other diseases, but President Bush has refused to reconsider his opposition. Bush thinks he hears Jesus giving him orders. The gap between him and Ronald Reagan -- in terms of stature, speaking ability, and overall presidentiality -- is gargantuan.

However one felt about Reagan's politics, his style and, indeed, his sense of showmanship had to be admired. His two terms were probably the most entertaining presidencies we'd ever had -- until the tabloid squalor of the Clinton years, which were entertaining in a dark and demeaning way. Ronald Reagan was our feel-good president. You didn't moan and groan when he interrupted the prime time schedule to make a brief speech or have a chat with his fellow Americans. He had ruddy cheeks like Santa Claus and a deluxe, mellifluous voice. If he'd been a commercial pitchman, he could have sold us anything. Instead, he sold us a dream, he sold us on ourselves, he awakened a vision that had been there for a couple centuries but seemed recently to have gone dormant, or somehow become unhip and uncool.

Of all the images he liked to summon, one of his favorites was "that shining city on a hill." It wasn't always completely clear what he meant -- Washington? A mythic vision of America? A free-enterprise Utopia or something far more spiritual? Whatever it is, wherever it is, it always sounded like a goal devoutly to be desired and endlessly to be pursued. Ronald Reagan spent a life looking for it, and now -- we'd like to think -- he has found it.