On the eve of his election in 1980, a reporter asked Reagan what people saw in him. "Would you laugh if I told you that I think, maybe, they see themselves and that I'm one of them?" Reagan replied. "I've never been able to detach myself or think that I, somehow, am apart from them."
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It was true. He and his audience were one. He had no doubts about the future of his country. None. And neither did those who supported him. At the end of his second term he said, "And whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears, to your confidence rather than your doubts."
And when that sad day came in 1994, when he wrote his letter to the American people announcing that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, even then, he chose to focus on what was bright and hopeful and good.
"When the Lord calls me home, whenever that may be," he wrote, "I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future. I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead."
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