Editor's note: A look back at President Reagan, from the February 5, 2001 issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

Ronald Reagan, 1911 - 2004

RONALD REAGAN had an unusual way of dealing with reporters and columnists: He transcended them. He didn't complain about what they wrote or said on TV. At least I never heard that he had. He didn't flatter them, as some politicians do, by pretending to admire their work, in hope they'd produce puff pieces about him. So far as I know, he didn't have friends in the Washington press corps and didn't want any. I think the press--with a few exceptions such as Bob Novak, Lou Cannon, and George Will--was a blur to him.

This was a gift, not a shortcoming. It drove journalists crazy, particularly the few conservative ones, because they crave recognition as individuals, distinct from the pack. But the chief effect of Reagan's obliviousness was to empower him. Since he didn't worry about the press, his presidency and his campaigns were not shaped by media coverage. He felt no need to pander to the press. His aides were often thrown into a tizzy by critical stories, especially in the Washington Post. But Reagan wasn't. He was free to pursue policies and say things the press was sure to loathe. He was free to be Reagan.

I mention Reagan's treatment of the press to help explain my own relationship with him. Actually, relationship overstates it. Except for a few fleeting interludes, I was part of the blur. Of course I thought I was different. Almost from the first time I covered Reagan in the 1976 Republican presidential primaries, I generally agreed with him. Few reporters did. Not that my stories in the Washington Star reflected any agreement. They contained little more than cold-blooded reporting, as they should have. In any case, if Reagan noticed a difference between me and the pack, he didn't let on.

Reagan in 1976 was the most exciting candidate I've ever seen. I covered him when he was denouncing the "giveaway" of the Panama Canal and racking up primary victories. Crowds would go berserk when he declared the United States had bought, built, and should keep the canal. I disagreed with him on this point. But looking back and knowing now how the Panamanians have trashed U.S. facilities in the Canal Zone, I suspect he was right.

Reagan didn't give a single bad speech in 1976, not one that I covered anyway. This was no accident. Jim Lake, his press secretary, told me years later he was chewed out by Reagan only once, and that was for interrupting while Reagan was going over the stump speech he was about to deliver for the umpteenth time. Reagan cared about his words. At the 1976 GOP convention, President Gerald Ford delivered the best speech of his career. But Reagan's against-the-grain concession speech about eliminating nuclear weapons was better. Over the years, I've been surprised at how few politicians have copied Reagan's style. He told compelling stories and twitted himself with self-deprecating humor, and people loved it. Maybe other politicians just have no self-deprecating thoughts.

As a reporter for the Baltimore Sun in 1980, I mostly covered Democrats. But I saw Reagan tell one of his most famous and mesmerizing stories (even if it doesn't bear fact-checking). It was at Liberty University in Virginia, and Reagan recounted the experience of a wounded tail-gunner pinned in a bomber as it hurtled to earth. The pilot stayed behind to comfort the young man and to die with him. Reagan ended the story something like this, speaking of the pilot: "Medal of Honor, awarded posthumously." The crowd went silent, and Reagan soon left the stage. It was a stunning moment, exceeded in the power of its patriotism only by Reagan's speech at Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1984. By the way, watching even a brief clip of the D-Day speech still makes grown men tear up.

I got closer to Reagan in 1984. I was invited with five other journalists for a late afternoon chat, off the record. I'm sure this wasn't Reagan's idea. And I don't know why I was invited. Maybe somebody on Reagan's staff had noticed I'd begun writing freelance pieces for the conservative American Spectator while still covering politics for the Sun. Reagan operated on the assumption that nothing is really off the record in Washington. So he said nothing newsworthy or even interesting. He wouldn't say what he thought of Walter Mondale, his Democratic opponent.