Reagan's leadership attributes were lived, not learned

By Chuck Raasch | GNS

WASHINGTON - On the day that Ronald Reagan's body lies in state under the Capital dome, another generation of politicians is paying its respect to his innate optimism, use of imagery and homage for the rituals of American politics.

Whether they have learned from him is another thing.

Reagan will be buried at dusk in California on Friday, a fitting epilogue to a man whose rhetoric often was imbued with the imagery of day's beginning and day's end. But even after the twilight of his cruel fade into Alzheimer's disease, Reagan is now being most remembered for a morning-in-America presidency. The saliency of that optimism is an open question in an age of terrorism, doubts about America's motives abroad and other global challenges.

Reagan's policies will be debated as long as ideologies diverge. His legacy is not so pristine to those who believe that a man who had grown up poor did not do enough for the poor.

But the merger of his leadership attributes with the onrushing demands of cable TV and 24-hour news cycles was one of American history's serendipitous moments. Even for Americans who disagreed with him, Reagan rebuilt the presidency as a fixed beacon in a storm of national doubt, thereby re-establishing faith in a job that some truly believed had become too big for one person.

Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster who got into politics because of Reagan, describes him as a ``re-founding father,'' a man who believed deeply that the American way was paved with optimism, and that no problem came without a solution.

``He met you with a smile, not a snarl,'' she said. ``And we have a lot of snarlers in politics today.''

Like Conway, a fresh generation of political activists and politicians sprung up in the Reagan era, some devoted to his vision of restricted government, others motivated to oppose him. He was as important to the second half of the 20th century as Franklin Roosevelt was to its first half. To foes, Reagan was the velvet cloak on harsh policies. But even critics give him credit for re-establishing faith in leadership at a time of the Iran hostage crisis, energy shortages and the malaise days of Jimmy Carter. ``Reagan was a grandfatherly figure who gave a lot of dignity back to America, a lot of pride back to America,'' said Russ Verney, who helped run independent Ross Perot's 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns. ``But within his administration, some of his minions had more day-to-day control than he did.''

Verney got involved in the independent movement after he was one of thousands of air traffic controllers fired by Reagan - one of the Gipper's opening acts.

It's still a bad memory for Verney, but he also believes today's politicians could learn a lot from Reagan.

``A citizen would always have the feeling that Ronald Reagan was talking to the person in the neighborhood, as opposed to the person in the boardroom,'' Verney said.

To Conway, the style was no mystery.

``Reagan was a complex man with simple ideas, and too often politicians are the opposite,'' said Conway, who jumped into politics at 17 after hearing Reagan speak at the 1984 Republican convention. Four years later, she was working for him, studying the gender gap.

Those looking for Reaganesque traits in either George W. Bush or John Kerry, the Republican and Democrat candidates for president, respectively, may be disappointed.

Conway thinks Reagan's top leadership asset was lived, not learned, and came from the fact that he had grown up poor and the son of an alcoholic. Both Kerry and Bush grew up in well-to-do families.

``He had clarity and conviction,'' Conway said of Reagan. ``He formed kind of a connective tissue with people. Some of that cannot be learned or practiced, it has to be lived. Here was a man who had come from nothing, a man who had experienced profound grief, a sense of loss, a feeling of incompleteness, modest means, mediocre education.''

Reagan's ``connective tissue,'' she said, came from people innately knowing that, like them, ``at some point in his life, he had experienced the exact same situation, experienced the same sense of loss or grief or rudderlessness that most Americans had experienced.''

In that way, many analysts say, Bill Clinton - son of a single mother who grew up modestly - was more like Reagan than either Bush or Kerry.

James Pfiffner, a George Mason University presidential scholar, said Reagan also understood the power of reassurance.

"People like to believe that someone is in charge of this chaotic world. And in the United States, that person is the president,'' Pfiffner said.

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