Ronald Reagan: The American success story

The life of former President Ronald Reagan, who died last weekend, is a very American story - the small-town kid from Illinois who works as a lifeguard and sports broadcaster before moving to Hollywood to become a movie star. And a few years later, to everyone's surprise, he's elected governor of California and, finally, president of the United States. Yes, this is truly a land of opportunity.

Most Europeans still don't understand how we can elect regular folks to the presidency of the United States: a haberdasher from Missouri, a California movie star, a Texas cowboy/oilman (with an Eastern pedigree) and even a peanut farmer/nuclear engineer from a small town in Georgia. For the most part, Europeans think their elected leaders should come from the wealthiest, most privileged families in the land. When it comes to American-style democracy, they just don't "get it."

I was in Madrid when Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter decisively in the 1980 presidential election. Spanish editorial writers and political cartoonists, who had savaged Carter and his family, depicted Reagan as even less worthy of greatness than the Georgia peanut farmer. Little did they know that Reagan would go on to win the Cold War and to become regarded as one of the greatest American presidents of the 20th century.

Reagan's detractors consistently underestimated his ability to connect with the American people. He restored our national pride after Carter's depressing "malaise" presidency by championing a few basic themes - honor, country, duty, family and freedom - that resounded with the electorate and much of the world, despite bitter opposition from "sophisticated" Europeans and media elites, including political columnists and pundits.

In a New York Times op-ed column last Monday, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, an adversary-turned-friend, praised Reagan as "a true leader, a man of his word and an optimist ... (who) earned a place in history and in peoples' hearts." This from the former leader of the "evil empire." Here at home, veteran Washington Post columnist David Broder opined that Reagan "could persuade almost anyone - starting with himself - of anything," resulting in "changes that otherwise would have been impossible to imagine .... Even his most implausible challenge, 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,' came to pass because Reagan so fervently believed that freedom was the most powerful force on earth." It's a lesson we should never forget.

I had a couple of close encounters with Reagan over the years; the first was in the spring of 1967 when I was the capital correspondent for a Reno TV station. A few months after Reagan and Carson City's hometown hero, Paul Laxalt, had been elected as governors of California and Nevada, respectively, they met at Stateline to discuss creation of a bistate compact to save Lake Tahoe. The personal rapport between the two conservative Republicans was immediately apparent and they soon became close personal friends - so close, in fact, that after Laxalt was elected to the Senate, he chaired Reagan's presidential election campaigns. So I wasn't surprised when Laxalt lauded his late friend as "the ultimate citizen-politician ... who always placed doing what was right ahead of what was politically expedient."

My second personal encounter with Gov. Reagan occurred at Mexico City in 1972 when I was the press officer for the American Embassy. As the designated interpreter for a news conference with Mexican journalists, I was impressed by Reagan's knowledge of complex political issues like Colorado River salinity, always a bone of contention between the U.S. and Mexico. He was well-informed and unfailingly polite to me and the journalists, and afterwards he thanked everyone who had helped with the news conference including secretaries and audio technicians.

My first assignment for President Reagan came in October 1983, when I served as press spokesman in Grenada during the U.S.-led invasion in response to a bloody clash between rival Communist factions on that tiny southeast Caribbean island. Our public affairs team successfully calmed a potential media firestorm and the president did exactly what he promised by creating conditions under which Grenada's voters could elect their own leaders. As elections approached, U.S. troops withdrew from the island as local citizens, who feared renewed violence, protested.

My final, tangential encounter with the Reagan administration was to serve as public affairs adviser for its ambassador to Venezuela, ultra-conservative Cuban-American ideologue Otto Juan Reich. A prominent player in the Iran-Contra scandal, Reich was exiled to Venezuela during the period 1986-89 to rehabilitate his public image. I did what I could for him and we became friends despite our political differences; today, he's the Latin America policy chief at the National Security Council.

And that's how I remember Ronald Reagan - as a politician who said what he meant and meant what he said. I always had the impression that he was speaking from the heart about his core beliefs rather than simply reading words that had been written for him by others. That's where President Bush suffers in comparison to President Reagan, who was truly the Great Communicator. Reagan was an American original, and we'll miss his decisive leadership, sunny disposition and eternal optimism, qualities in short supply in Washington today.

Guy W. Farmer, a semi-retired journalist and former U.S. diplomat, resides in Carson City.