Ronald Reagan: the summing up
In summing up the life of Ronald Reagan, one realizes it can be viewed from various perspectives.
One is the personal. I had the privilege of knowing Ronald Reagan well — not intimately, but well — from shortly after his election as governor of California in 1966 until Oct. 28, 1993, when I paid what was to be my last visit to him, not long before he withdrew into the shadows of Alzheimer’s. I have wonderful recollections of him at his home in Pacific Palisades, in the governor’s residence in Sacramento, in the White House, and in his final home in Bel-Air, where he died.
And then there were the letters, and the phone calls. I’ll never forget the day in 1981 when the switchboard operator at National Review rang me and said, “Mr. Rusher, the president is calling.” In all innocence I asked, “The president of what?” — only to have her ace me with, “The President of the United States!” While he was in the White House, the phone calls were all one-way; I could never quite bring myself to initiate a call to a being so exalted.
I soon learned Ronald Reagan’s friendship was a precious pleasure. A pleasure because he had a tremendous gift for enveloping his friends in a warm and genial atmosphere redolent of both fondness and respect. There was nothing in the least showy or aggressive in his manner, and I never once detected the slightest trace of the remoteness that some reported sensing in his personality. What you saw was what you got: a lovely person, modest but confident, and true to his beliefs.
The perspective of history, of course, is far different, and far more important. He made mistakes, as we all do, but his central achievements as president are massive in their simplicity. He assumed the leadership of a nation deeply divided and badly rattled by the Vietnam War, and gave it back its confidence and its pride. He correctly analyzed, when almost no one else was doing so, the essential weakness of that “evil empire,” the Soviet Union, and set it on the road to its destruction. And always, in his dealings with other countries and in his prescriptions for our own, he spoke up for that freedom that he believed was God’s precious gift to mankind.
In retrospect, it is tempting to say the most remarkable thing about Ronald Reagan was his ordinariness. His manner was almost always relaxed and good-humored. He could, and did, get annoyed from time to time, but even then he usually managed to take part of the blame. (In a 1984 letter to me, he wrote of the hostile media, “In my nightly prayers I have to ask forgiveness for what I’ve been thinking of those villains all day.”) He loved a good joke, and was superb at telling them. Above all, he loved his wife. The marriage of Ron and Nancy Reagan is one of the great love stories of our time, and her devotion to him in this last, desolating decade of his living death is testimony to the power and beauty of the human spirit.
The outpouring of grief at his death tells us all we need to know about what America thought of Ronald Reagan.
This is a free country, and anyone who wishes to do so can disagree with his policies, and even denigrate his achievements. It will be many years before historians — a disputatious lot — even agree among themselves (as I believe they ultimately will) that he was the greatest president of our time, and one of the greatest of all time. But for me, and for now, it is enough to offer this last salute to the finest man I have ever known.
William Rusher is a Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy.