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Ronald Reagan: 1911-2004 | Special tribute

Obituary

Former President Ronald Reagan dies at 93

By CHUCK RAASCH | GNS Political Writer

WASHINGTON - Ronald Reagan, the optimistic, patriotic Hollywood actor who as the nation's 40th president revived the conservative movement in America, died Saturday.

Reagan, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1994, died at his Los Angeles home. He was 93

Although decried by some intellectuals as an ``amiable dunce,'' Reagan was also dubbed ``The Great Communicator'' for his ability to rhetorically frame powerful images and symbols. He connected strongly with average people who were discouraged by Watergate, the energy crisis of the 1970s and America's diminished role around the globe.

His eight-year presidency spanned historic changes: On the day he was inaugurated in 1981, Iran released 52 Americans who had been held hostage for 444 days and the Cold War was raging. When he left office, the Soviet Union - the ``evil empire'' in a famous Reagan utterance - was in its final days.

Reagan was a son of the Midwest, born into modest means in Illinois in 1911. He supported himself as a radio announcer during the Great Depression and became a Hollywood actor in the late 1930s. Once a liberal Democrat and president of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan refined his conservative credentials as a spokesman for General Electric in the 1960s and as governor of California in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Reagan won the White House over President Jimmy Carter in 1980, then won re-election in 1984 by a 512-electoral vote margin over former Vice President Walter Mondale, the second-largest margin in the history of the presidency. When America's oldest president left office in 1989 at age 77, he said he was proudest of fostering a ``resurgence of national pride.''

Some believe that he was the Republican Party's Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the New Deal president for whom Reagan cast his first vote back in 1932.

``Not only did he view FDR as his own personal political role model, but Reagan became to the conservative movement and the Republican Party what FDR was to the Democratic Party,'' said prominent Republican strategist Marshall Wittmann, a self-described ``Reagan Democrat'' who switched to the GOP during the Reagan years.

Reagan ``was the Moses, who brought conservatives to the Promised Land,'' added Wittmann, now with the Hudson Institute. ``The problem with conservatism up until Reagan was it was viewed as a narrow, cramped movement that only appealed to extremists or the very wealthy. Reagan was able to broaden that movement and make it mainstream.''

He also devalued the idea of a strong central government - to the chagrin of his detractors and delight of his supporters.

Reagan ``told us that most of our civic problems were problems brought on or exacerbated by government, not problems that could be solved by government,'' columnist William F. Buckley, a confidant, wrote in 1999.

Optimism and flair

Reagan's greatest legacy was the conservative patriotic mood that began in a period that bears his name - the Reagan era. ``The whole country caught his courage,'' wrote his speechwriter, Peggy Noonan.

Reagan's optimism often neutralized his ideological foes. After he was shot by John W. Hinckley two months into his presidency, Reagan - hurt more than his aides originally disclosed - joked with the doctors about to operate on him. ``I hope you're all Republicans,'' he said.

Later, he told his wife, Nancy: ``Honey, I forgot to duck.'' It was one of the famous quotes of his presidency. Critics and allies alike saw it as symbolic - a simple line delivered with an actor's flair for the dramatic.

When, in the 1984 election his age had become an issue, the 73-year-old Reagan turned to Mondale, his opponent, and said: ``I'm not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience.'' Even Mondale chuckled.

In 1987, Reagan stood before the Berlin Wall and, in reference to Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Union at the time, shouted: ``Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.'' Two years later, the wall was gone.

Sometimes, the one-liners backfired, like the time Reagan tested a microphone before a speech by saying that the United States would begin bombing the Soviet Union in five minutes. Critics said it showed a lack of understanding and restraint in a tense Cold War climate.

Those who knew Reagan best said that despite his great flair for the drama on the big stage, Reagan's greatest flaw was a personal distance that he held for most everyone except his wife, Nancy. Reagan was for years estranged from his daughter, Patti.

There was a flip side to Reagan's presidency that belied his sunny optimism. The president who hated big government presided over the largest government deficits in history. The Iran-Contra scandal, in which the proceeds of secret arms sales to Iran were diverted to rebels in Nicaragua in direct defiance of Congress, dogged Reagan's second term. And his critics pointed out that in the 1980s, the gap between rich and poor grew, as tax cuts passed early in his presidency primarily benefited the wealthy.

He decried ``welfare queens'' for living off the government, but saw scandal erupt in his own presidency when top political appointees in his housing department were prosecuted for exploiting government programs for their own gain.

``He's an important president, a president who made a difference,'' historian Douglas Brinkley said several years after Reagan left office. ``But I don't think he was a great president. ... For instance, his positions on the environment - that cars don't pollute - were childish. But in the 20th century, he was leagues above Nixon, Ford, Carter, (the first George) Bush and Clinton.''

'The Great Communicator'

Some think Reagan's greatest political legacy is the reactions he still causes. A later president, Democrat Bill Clinton, declared ``the era of big government is over,'' and tried to adopt many of the media image-shaping strategies that had framed Reagan's presidency.

Political scholar Gary Wills observed that Reagan ``made conservatism such an honored term that Democrats had to flee its antonym, the liberal label.'' Generations of Republican politicians since have attempted to become the new Ronald Reagan.

In 1996, GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole told Republican leaders in Philadelphia: ``If that's what you want, I'll be another Ronald Reagan.''

Reagan's experience as an actor led to his "Great Communicator" label. Although his detractors claimed that his acting background often led him to confuse fact with fiction, Reagan was able to expertly choreograph his presidency at the direction of public relations specialists such as long-time aide Michael Deaver. Reagan sometimes got out of tough political fixes with well-timed lines, such as the fatherly, ``Well, there you go again'' rejoinder often directed at debate opponents.

``An actor's whole stock in trade is the audience, the people,'' Reagan said on his 80th birthday celebration in 1991. ``Your whole life is devoted to pleasing and serving the people who are going to buy tickets to see you. Well, there's a certain similarity in government. Your stock in trade is the people you serve.''

Author Tom Clancy once said believed that one of Reagan's greatest attributes as a politician was that he had a guardian angel that sat on his enemy's shoulders and whispered, ``He's just an actor, don't take him seriously.''

Reagan's second marriage, to Nancy Davis in 1952, coincided with the beginning of his permanent transition to politics. The marriage also helped define the public persona of the 40th president. She called him ``Ronnie,'' even in public, and he doted on her like a teen-ager first in love.

``Put simply, my life really began when I met her and has been rich and full ever since,'' Reagan said in that 80th birthday speech.

The formative years

Ronald Wilson Reagan was born Feb. 6, 1911, in Tampico, Ill. His nickname, ``Dutch,'' stuck throughout his life although it was rivaled later by ``The Gipper,'' which he acquired after playing legendary Notre Dame halfback George Gipp in the 1940 movie, ``Knute Rockne, All American.''

In later life, Reagan would describe a happy childhood - serving many summers as a lifeguard, playing sports - even though his father, John Edward ``Jack'' Reagan, suffered from alcoholism. But for all of his mythological claims to Middle America and its ideals of family and community, Reagan rarely disclosed much about his personal life. Only years after he was president did Reagan biographer Edmund Morris discover that Reagan was a prolific poet from his early days.

By 1932, after graduating from Eureka College, Reagan was broadcasting at radio station WOC in Davenport, Iowa. From 1933 to 1937 he worked at WHO in Des Moines, where he would re-create Chicago Cubs baseball games by using information off the Teletype. By the late 1930s, he was under contract to Warner Brothers for $200 a week.

Reagan's first marriage, to actress Jane Wyman, lasted from 1940 to 1948. They had two children: Daughter Maureen, born in 1941 (she died in 2001), and adopted son Michael, born in 1945. Reagan also had two children with his second wife: Daughter Patricia, known as Patti, born in 1952, and son Ronald, born in 1958.

During World War II, Reagan made more than 400 training films for the U.S. Army. He had modest success in Hollywood: well known, but never known as a top star. Over a career that spanned three decades, Reagan played a villain only once, in his last movie, ``The Killers,'' released in 1964.

A decade earlier, Reagan had begun his career as spokesman for General Electric.

His politics were becoming increasingly conservative. Although still a Democrat, he campaigned for Republican presidential candidates Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 and Richard Nixon in 1960. Reagan switched party affiliations in 1962.

In 1964, Reagan delivered a campaign speech for Barry Goldwater that some believe was the birth of the modern conservative movement. Reagan called the speech ``A Time for Choosing'' and although Goldwater lost badly to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, Reagan had a platform to win the California governorship two years later.

He was re-elected in 1970, and his national profile rose as the Watergate scandal was unfolding.

Reagan challenged Nixon's appointed successor, Gerald R. Ford, for the presidency in 1976 and nearly wrested the GOP nomination away, losing by 60 delegate votes at a hotly contested Republican convention.

The presidency

By 1980, Reagan easily defeated a politically damaged Carter, with Reagan's coattails ushering in Republican control of the Senate for the first time in more than two decades.

Reagan's early presidency was marked by the assassination attempt and by governing successes and challenges. On the rainy afternoon of March 30, 1981, as Reagan left the Washington Hilton Hotel, Hinckley, a drifter from a wealthy family, fired six rounds from a .22-caliber Rohm RG-14 revolver. The shots wounded Reagan, seriously wounded a policeman and Secret Service agent, and permanently disabled presidential press secretary James Brady, who was struck in the head. Twelve days later, Reagan was back in the White House.

Within weeks, Congress passed deep tax cuts proposed by Reagan. In August 1981, in a defining moment for his presidency, Reagan fired 11,000 striking air traffic controllers, dealing a severe blow to the labor movement.

During his presidency, Reagan appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor of Arizona. He also named Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia to the court, and elevated William Rehnquist to chief justice.

Although Reagan labeled the Soviet Union the ``evil empire,'' in 1987 he signed an arms control agreement with its president, Mikhail Gorbachev, that reduced medium- and short-range missiles. After Reagan left office in 1989, the Soviet Union splintered apart, and the Berlin Wall - a symbol of the Cold War - came down. While his critics claim that Reagan presided over the inevitable, his defenders said Reagan's diplomatic pressure and a massive buildup in defense spending during his presidency pushed the former Communist rival into what Reagan called ``the ash heap of history.''Speaking of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a close friend, and other allies, Reagan said upon leaving office that the United States and its allies ``stopped a lot of things that needed stopping.''

The legacy of the unabashedly conservative Reagan has its dichotomies. Although he decried big government, one of the world's most expensive government buildings in downtown Washington is named for him, as is the airport that carries many of the government elite back and forth to the ``real'' America that Reagan often mythologized.

While his defenders point out that Reagan never had a Republican Congress to help him, his critics say he got the tax-and-spend equation only half right. His tax cuts were not accompanied by cuts in government programs, and so the deficits soared, leaving a heavy debt. After he left office, some conservatives sniffed that only one real program - the much-maligned Comprehensive Education and Training Act - was axed while he was president.

Still, his optimism, rhetorical flair, grandfatherly persona and ability to talk about complex issues in clear tones made him an icon, and his rhetorical flourish still frames the conservative movement.

Later years

In retirement, Reagan's life inexorably slid into the mental decline of Alzheimer's, a disease that eventually claims a victim's memory and other mental faculties.

By the early 1990s, friends were noticing that Reagan was showing early signs of it. In 1994, he disclosed his diagnosis in a handwritten note to his fellow Americans that said: ``I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life.''

As the disease progressed, Reagan continued to exercise, play golf and go to his Los Angeles office. But friends, distressed by how it had robbed him of his identity, stopped seeing him. According to several accounts, he eventually was unable to remember that he had been president, carrying with him only the vague notion that he had been an important person one time in his life.

Daughter Patti Davis, by then reunited with her father after many years, told the Ladies Home Journal in 1999 how the disease had taken its toll.

``I'll never forget the first time I saw my father ... studying the comics pages of the newspaper the way he once studied the op-ed section,'' Davis wrote. ``I felt a pang of pain and sadness.''

Still, Davis wrote, the disease had pulled her to her father in ways she had not dreamed possible during their earlier estrangement. Davis described moments when, even while afflicted with the disease, her father would deliver a simple line that made her stop and think of their relationship anew.

This was the essence of Reagan - an optimist who used plain language for more powerful meaning. As political scholar Wills once put it, Reagan ``thought a room half-filled with manure meant there was a pony in there somewhere.''

Contributing: John Omicinski | GNS