Several things about Reagan are unusual in a public man. He was not a typical politician at all, but a private man in public life.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Demeanor-wise, Reagan was a conservative, but a pragmatic conservative, and he found silver linings in things. He liked to be a mediator. He didn't like to have enemies around him.
Reagan didn't socialize with the press. He spent his evenings with Nancy, watching TV with dinner trays. But he knew that to transcend, you can't condescend.
As his vice president for eight years, I learned more from Ronald Reagan than from anyone I encountered in all my years of public life.
Reaganism as a political movement has enormous resources behind it and it seeks - through stagecraft and through a tremendous level of effort toward propaganda - to present an image of Reagan that is so much larger-than-life that it sort of blinds us all, and keeps us all in a warm, happy, nostalgic state, thinking of a man who can do no wrong.
Whatever you thought of his politics, Ronald Reagan was a great man, a courageous man. He took an assassin's bullet and joked to the doctors as they desperately worked to save his life.
I don't think Reagan is primarily funny, and I don't think he's primarily marvelous; he's complicated.
Although Ronald Reagan was somebody I disagreed with on most ideological things, he was a friend of mine, and he was a very, very likable man. Ronald Reagan, for instance, was maybe more able to get the very rich to do the right thing sometimes.
While many of us never knew Ronald Reagan personally, we felt close to him because we shared his lighthearted sense of humor, admired his uncommon virtue, and were moved by his remarkable wisdom.
He and Reagan were not at all alike, because Reagan is an optimist and Dick Nixon wasn't. Yet in some ways they were alike. Neither really liked to talk on the telephone, for instance. And, in a lot of respects, both of them were very much loners.
Ronald Reagan, whatever his pros and cons were, was a public servant in the end.