Social Baggage

Report Courtesy of Fox News

As the world looked back on the life of Ronald Reagan, both his supporters and detractors alike agreed that the popular, infectiously optimistic president changed the world.

During his eight years in office, Reagan reshaped and revived the Republican Party while devoting most of his foreign-policy energies to the dismantling of Soviet communism.

Reagan, 93, died Saturday following a 10-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He had left office at the end of his second term in 1989.

President Bush on Sunday paid tribute to Reagan during a D-Day commemoration at Colleville-sur-Mer, France, that drew leaders from more than a dozen countries.

“Twenty summers ago, another American president came here to Normandy to pay tribute to the men of D-Day. He was a courageous man, himself, and a gallant leader in the cause of freedom. And today we honor the memory of Ronald Reagan,” Bush said, prompting applause.

Former first lady Nancy Reagan and the couple’s children, Ron Reagan and Patti Davis, were at the couple’s Los Angeles home Saturday when the nation’s 40th president died at 1 p.m. of pneumonia, a complication of Alzheimer’s. His son Michael Reagan from his first marriage arrived a short time later, said Joanne Drake, the Reagan family’s chief of staff.

Soon after Reagan’s death, a black hearse carried a flag-draped coffin from his home in Bel Air to a mortuary in nearby Santa Monica that was handling funeral arrangements.

Reagan’s body was expected to be taken to his presidential library and museum in Simi Valley, then flown to Washington to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda. His funeral was expected to be at the National Cathedral, after which his body was to be returned to California for a sunset burial at the library.

Across the nation, people took pause upon learning of Reagan’s passing. The U.S. flag over the White House was lowered to half-staff within an hour and there were moments of silence at ballparks and at the nationally televised Belmont Stakes horse race.

From his home in Rancho Mirage, former President Ford said, “Ronald Reagan was an excellent leader of our nation during challenging times at home and abroad. We extend our deepest condolences and prayers to Nancy and his family.”

Reagan had announced to the world in November 1994 that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, an incurable disease that destroys brain cells and leads to severe memory loss.

“When the Lord calls me home, whenever that may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future,” Reagan wrote at the time. “I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.”

He was rarely seen in public afterward, and although fiercely protective of his privacy, Reagan’s wife had let people know over the years that his mental condition had deteriorated terribly.

“Ronnie’s long journey has finally taken him to a distant place where I can no longer reach him,” she said last month.

Reagan had lived longer than any U.S. president, spending his last decade in the shrouded seclusion wrought by his disease, tended by his wife, whom he affectionately called Mommy, and the few closest to him.

Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton survive him as ex-presidents.

The Reagan Revolution

At 69, Reagan was the oldest man ever elected president when he was chosen on Nov. 4, 1980, by an unexpectedly large margin over incumbent Democrat Carter.

Ascending to the presidency on a pledge to restore “the great, confident roar of American progress and growth and optimism,” Reagan — a former actor and two-term California governor — remade the Republican Party in his own image of fiscal and social conservatism. Reagan brought a grandfatherly warmth to Republican issues and values that attracted supporters across a broad political spectrum.

He successfully implemented most of his campaign promises: reducing government bureaucracy and regulation, cutting taxes in favor of “trickle-down, or supply-side economics — which became known as Reaganomics (search) — and building a strong defense while fighting the spread of communism. These moves won him wide appeal and an even wider margin of victory in 1984, when he won the electoral votes of 49 states.

The role of president would prove to be more dramatic than any screen role Reagan had assumed in his pre-politics career in Hollywood. Just 69 days into his first term, Reagan was shot in Washington by John Hinckley, Jr. (search), but his quick and full recovery from the assassination attempt elevated him to new levels of national popularity.

His health was a recurring theme of his presidency as Reagan underwent major surgeries in 1981, 1985 and 1987.

Reagan was hawkish in foreign policy, staunchly committed to thwarting the spread of communism. His administration gave strong financial and military support to the Contra Rebels who were fighting Nicaragua’s communist government and supported the government of El Salvador’s fight against communist guerillas and rebels resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He dispatched U.S. troops to the island of Grenada when it was perceived as succumbing to Cuba in 1983.

Reagan’s war on communism led to an escalation of Cold War rhetoric and defense spending that mushroomed the national debt and brought harsh criticism upon his administration. But the efforts eventually resulted in a series of high-level summit meetings with Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev, arms reduction pacts with the Soviets and eventually the break-up of the Soviet Union. That success was dramatically symbolized by the tearing down of the Berlin Wall.

On Sunday, Gorbachev hailed Reagan as a great president and said he was distraught by news of his death, the Interfax news agency reported.

“Reagan was a statesman who, despite all disagreements that existed between our countries at the time, displayed foresight and determination to meet our proposals halfway and change our relations for the better, stop the nuclear race, start scrapping nuclear weapons, and arrange normal relations between our countries,” Gorbachev said.

Star Power

Born Feb. 6, 1911, in Tampico, Ill., Reagan graduated from Eureka College in 1932 and worked as a radio sportscaster in the Midwest before being discovered by a Hollywood agent and being signed by Warner Bros. He made his acting debut in “Love Is in the Air” in 1937, made Air Force training films during World War II, and went on to make 52 movies. Reagan also served as a spokesman for the General Electric Company, hosted and acted on the General Electric Theater television series, and was also host of the television series, “Death Valley Days.”

Reagan and his first wife, actress Jane Wyman, had two children, Maureen and Michael, before divorcing in 1948. He married actress Nancy Davis in 1952 and had two more children, Patricia and Ronald Prescott, who goes by Ron. Maureen Reagan died of cancer in 2001.

Reagan moved from acting into politics as a five-time president of the Screen Actors Guild. Originally a Democrat, Reagan’s ideology shifted to the right as he sided with the government attack on the influence of communism in the entertainment world.

But it was a well-received televised speech on behalf of Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964 that catapulted Reagan’s political career from the sound stage to the world stage. Reagan was elected California governor in 1966 and again in 1970. He made two failed attempts at the White House in 1968 and 1976 before his 1980 victory.

Known for his personal charm and talent — and for making masterful speeches to win support for his policies — many of the foreign leaders with whom he met were said to have been more impressed with his star quality than his intellect.

“You could see it in the faces of the foreign leaders — Mitterand, Thatcher, even Gorbachev,” a U.S. official who accompanied Reagan on many trips abroad was quoted as saying by Lou Cannon in his biography, “President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime.”

“They didn’t pay much attention to what he was saying. Either they had heard it before, or they realized it was just talking points. But Reagan the man, the politician, fascinated them. It was almost as if they were saying, what does this man have that works so well for him? It was like they wanted to bottle it and take it home and use it themselves.”

The question of whether the commander in chief had a harder-edged side behind closed doors was the subject of some speculation and even humor. In a “Saturday Night Live” skit in the late 1980s, the late comic Phil Hartman portrayed a Reagan who was gentle and grandfatherly to Oval Office visitors but, behind closed doors, transformed into a sharp-minded scowling dictator who barked orders to his advisers.

While he wasn’t always cooperative with reporters, avoiding unwanted questions by feigning deafness as he approached a waiting helicopter, he maintained a genial relationship with the White House press corps, whose members nicknamed him the Gipper in reference to the character he portrayed in the film, “Knute Rockne, All American.”

Reagan’s approval rating remained high through his eight years in office, and Democrats struggled for years against the image of old-fashioned values, patriotism and hard work that Reagan fashioned for himself and his party.

As a tribute to Reagan’s legacy, Congress and President Bill Clinton officially changed the name of Washington National Airport to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in February 1998. And in 2003, former First Lady Nancy Reagan was on hand to christen the USS Ronald Reagan, the Navy’s newest nuclear powered aircraft carrier.

But perhaps the image of Reagan that will be remembered most was his ability to unite the nation under the strength of his convictions, such as when he spoke to all Americans, and
specifically schoolchildren, in the wake of the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger:

“It’s all part of taking a chance and expanding man’s horizons,” he said. “The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we’ll continue to follow them.”

Reagan is survived by his wife and three children.