Reagan Is Getting a Place of Honor, on the Big Screen

He will be on stage tonight, the Republican National Convention delegates swooning over his aw-shucks grin, his casual Western sensibility and the innate sunniness that drew loyalists to him like dust to his well-worn ranch boots.

No, not George W. Bush, but another figure, his image flickering on film: Ronald Reagan.

Bush has aped his optimistic style. Al Gore has swiped some of his better-known lines. Twenty years after he won his party’s nomination en route to two terms as president, 12 years after he handed his party over to Bush’s father and six years after Alzheimer’s disease brought an end to his public appearances, Ronald Reagan still looms over the political landscape.

While Bush’s father felt compelled to distance himself from Reagan when running to succeed him--who else was the elder Bush “kinder and gentler” than?--the son welcomes, even encourages, such comparisons.

“Ronald Reagan was a genuinely optimistic person,” Gov. Bush said in a recent interview. “I believe I’m a genuinely optimistic person.”

For all the formidable assistance Bush has gleaned from his presidential father, the Texas governor has gained arguably as much from his stylistic similarities to Reagan, still the most popular modern GOP president. He will be saluted in Philadelphia tonight as part of a tribute to former presidents.

Like Reagan, Bush is a statehouse leader who revels in his outside-the-Beltway mind-set. Both share solid conservative credentials yet openly drew moderates into their fold.

Both, with rare exceptions, have treated opponents as more misguided than threatening. Both have by their nature been optimists exuding a brash and utterly unshakable sense that their cup was always more than half full.

“For a period of time, the Republican Party was viewed as dark and gloomy,” Bush said, referring to the post-Reagan dominance of politicians like 1996 nominee Bob Dole.

Bush, Reagan: Hardly Clones

“I don’t think you can fake optimism,” he added. “ . . . One quality of a leader is somebody who says, ‘The future is going to be better. Follow me!’ I can’t imagine somebody saying, ‘Follow me. The future is going to be worse.’ ”

They are hardly clones, of course. One was a Hollywood actor radicalized into politics, the other a son who brushed off his family’s political heritage until well into adulthood. One came to the presidential race after decades of grass-roots effort, the other leaped into it after only five years in elective office. One dealt with a world hamstrung by a Cold War, the other enjoys a landscape in which many thorny issues have been dispatched by the currents of history.

But the style does echo.

“We want to be associated with the good times, the optimism,” said John Murphy, an associate professor of speech communication at the University of Georgia who has studied presidents. “And Reagan is about as optimistic as any American politician has ever been. It’s a stealing of buoyancy.”

Hence Gore has lately taken a page from Reagan’s playbook, regularly using two of the Gipper’s signature lines.

One, the perennial political query, “Are you better off than you were. . . . ?” was used by Reagan to knock Democratic President Carter in 1980, when interest rates and inflation were soaring. The second Gore swipe, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” was Reagan’s slogan for his 1984 reelection campaign.

Gore spokesman Douglas Hattaway said there was little discussion about using phrases so closely identified with an icon from the opposing party.

“These themes resonate strongly for a candidate in Al Gore’s position, who helped put this economic strategy in place and who wants to keep it going,” Hattaway said, characterizing the Reagan lines as “popular expressions.”

While critical of former President Bush and his vice president, Dan Quayle, Gore does not criticize Reagan. “Reagan, sick or not, has been beloved,” explained a Democratic strategist.

Time Has Polished the Reagan Image

The memories of Reagan have been burnished by the passage of time and the onset of Reagan’s illness. The intricacies of the Iran-Contra mess and the swelling budget deficits, among other problems, have receded. Left behind is the imagery: Reagan standing in Berlin, challenging the Soviet Union to “tear down this wall”; his consoling speech the night of the Challenger disaster; the sense of American primacy that suffused his presidency.

Earlier this year, when a Gallup Poll of Americans ranked Reagan as the fourth-greatest president--behind George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and, narrowly, Franklin D. Roosevelt--his highest support came from those younger than 30, who were mere children when he left office.

“The Reagan myth, for a lot of Americans, is a constructed myth that Republicans created because they badly needed a hero and he’s their last hero,” said Thomas Hollihan, a USC communications professor. “The things that were most appealing about Reagan were separate from policy achievements. He had a wonderful sense of humor. He looked darn presidential. . . .

“Reagan in some sense harkened back to some of the myths of the American frontier.”

That is the sense that Bush has cultivated as well, with the televised tours of his hardscrabble Texas ranch and his blunt, wit-tinged demeanor.

“It’s all pretty natural for him. There’s not any artifice or contrivance, and that’s what Al Gore’s having trouble with--appearing genuine,” said Ken Khachigian, the former chief speech writer for Reagan.

“If nothing else, George W. Bush appears genuine. . . . That’s Ronald Reagan all over the place.”

But the sharpest comparison with Reagan is yet to come. Reagan excelled at the big moments--convention speeches, crafted-for-television campaign events. Bush will only this week deliver his first nationally televised address.

While improved on the stump, he can still look shaky on television, the medium that Reagan commanded. Bush has yet to endure a full-throttle national campaign.