"He was a man for whom the American dream became a luminous reality," wrote journalist and Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, "the wholesome citizen hero who inhabits our democratic imaginations, an 'Everyman' who was slow to anger, but willing to fight for right, and correct wrongdoing when aroused."

"Reagan was a bit of a mystic," his close aide Lyn Nofziger said, "very much a Christian and very much a man who believes in the Almighty and in a plan that the Almighty may have. And he thought that America was sent here between two oceans for a very specific purpose, which was literally to be a beacon of freedom to the rest of the world."

He had come to office in 1980 to rescue America from "a period of poisonous self-doubt," in the words of biographer Edmund Morris, to restore the nation's confidence, to demonstrate to Americans that they had a role, a special role of moral leadership in the world, something that they had forgotten in the dark decades of the 1970s and 1960s. When he left office in 1989, he left an America that was militarily stronger, wealthier, and more confident.

Yet he also left behind an America saddled with a national debt exceeding one trillion dollars, a country in which many social problems remained unsolved or had grown worse, a society that many felt had become less compassionate, and where the gap between rich and poor had widened.

"The sad thing about the Reagan era was, there were cuts in domestic programs but certainly no cuts in government spending enough to prevent this enormous growth in deficits ... to the point now where one of the chief costs of government is paying off the debt that was incurred," Christopher Matthews told The American Experience. "I can't tell you what history is going to say one hundred years from now about Ronald Reagan's presidency," concurred ABC correspondent Sam Donaldson, "but, if you talk about today, we're still paying for tripling the national debt. We're still paying ... for what went on during [the Reagan] years. "A hundred years from now, there's no doubt that ending the Cold War will be on Reagan's historical tombstone," countered Richard Norton Smith. "We'll forget the change of the mood of the country. We'll forget the economic indices of the Reagan era. But we will remember that he ended a forty-year nightmare, in which a mushroom cloud loomed over all of our heads." "If you seek his monument, look for what we don't see," George Will added eloquently. "We don't see the Berlin Wall. We don't see 'the iron curtain from Stetin to Trieste. '"

The only actor ever to become president, Ronald Reagan rose in politics through the power of his rhetoric, bursting onto the political scene in 1964 with a speech on behalf of conservative Republican Barry Goldwater. The "Great Communicator," Reagan used the presidency as a place of moral leadership, a "bully pulpit" to mobilize the American people with his unwavering optimism and to convert them to his own convictions -- his aversion to big government and his hatred of Communism. But this most ideological of presidents was also a pragmatist, a skillful politician who understood the value of compromise. Chief of Staff James Baker told The American Experience, "President Reagan wanted to succeed and he knew that to succeed in politics, particularly with a Democratic Congress, he would have to compromise. He said to me many times, 'I would much prefer to get 80 percent of what I want than to go off the cliff with the flag flying.'"

Ronald Reagan was indeed a man of paradoxes, a mystery that has yet to be unraveled despite the efforts of scores of aides, biographers, even his own family. As his son Ron told us, "I haven't figured him out, I don't know anybody who has figured him out."

He was an idealist who believed in America's inherent goodness, in freedom and its ultimate triumph. Yet sometimes he acted with the expediency of a Machiavelli. Under the "Reagan Doctrine," he confronted Communism throughout the world, aiding dictators and democrats, Islamic fundamentalists and African warlords, faithful to the timeless maxim that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

He cut the benefits of millions and watched Americans suffer through the hardest economic times since the Great Depression, yet he would respond compassionately to the hardship of individuals by writing them personal checks from the Oval Office.

He called the Soviet Union "the focus of evil," but negotiated arms reductions agreements with its leaders. He abhorred nuclear weapons, but built them by the thousands. He repeatedly stated that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought," but took the world to the brink by deploying Pershing missiles in Europe in the fall of 1983, scaring millions worldwide, including the founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, Dr. Helen Caldicott, who feared that "Reagan could push the [nuclear] button."

He seldom went to church, but was deeply religious -- he had faith in the power of prayer and believed that the hand of God determines human events. He believed in Armageddon -- the inevitable and final confrontation between good and evil -- yet an incurable optimist, he did everything in his power to try to prevent it. He preached family values, but was himself a detached father who failed to reach his children.

Reagan was not a learned man. His lack of command of factual details -- even on important issues -- and frequent gaffes -- misstatements or factual errors -- lead many to think that he was not intelligent. But as his aides report, he had a formidable memory and an uncanny ability to listen to a debate, reducing issues to their essence and formulating them in terms that were simple and crystal clear. "This guy was very smart," Reagan's advisor Martin Anderson told The American Experience. "And there's one piece of hard evidence if anyone disbelieves that. We have here in the archives of the Hoover Institution some handwritten drafts of major speeches that Ronald Reagan wrote all by himself. Ask any intellectual, the real test of how well a person thinks or how much you know, or how you can assimilate and put together information, is to sit down with a blank piece of paper and a black pen and write it yourself in your own hand. Try it. That is really a very powerful test of overall intelligence. And the record has survived."

"Reagan was certainly smart enough to be president," Lou Cannon concluded, and his temperament was ideally suited to the job. He didn't rattle, he could shut out the clamor ... shut out what was going on around him and focus on the business at hand.... That's a big thing if you are in that Oval Office. "

He was gentlemanly and considerate, but he was also tough and determined, and as many an adversary discovered, a formidable foe. Columnist George Will told The American Experience, "the stricken fields of American politics are littered with the bleached bones of those who underestimated Ronald Reagan."

Mostly he is remembered as a simple, aging president, whose humor and charm captivated much of America. Less known is the younger man: the fast-talking, quick, and aggressive conservative governor and candidate, whose mind, in the words of a biographer, "worked like clockwork."

Tip O'Neill's aide Christopher Matthews, who met Reagan in the early days of his presidency when he still had most of his old vigor, recalls him as "tough and confrontational, feisty and streetwise ... more like James Cagney than Jimmy Stewart." Martin Anderson best described him as a "nice soft silky pillow ... but if you took a hard punch, you would find in the middle a solid tempered-steel bar. That was the real Ronald Reagan. That was the essence of Ronald Reagan."

This essence, which Reagan biographer Edmund Morris has called Reagan's "atman" -- a Hindu term meaning a strong inner core -- was forged against the adversity of a poor, nomadic and isolated childhood, a childhood which began in the plains of rural western Illinois, where Reagan spent the first years of his life.