EDITORIAL
Ronald Reagan: Great communicator

"We stand today at a place of battle, one that 40 years ago saw and felt the worst of war," Ronald Reagan said at Normandy, in a speech hailed as one of his best. "Men bled and died here for a few feet of — or inches of — sand, as bullets and shellfire cut through their ranks."

Reagan gave that speech 20 years ago today. Yesterday, as all the world now knows, Reagan, a Hollywood actor who served two terms as California governor before becoming the 40th U.S. president, died at the age of 93.

When the allied troops stormed those gory beaches, said Reagan, in words that seem to foreshadow the current American mission in Iraq, "they came not as conquerors, but as liberators ... they came not to take, but to return what had been wrongfully seized ... they came not to prey on a brave and defeated people, but to nurture the seeds of democracy among those who yearned to be free again."

Reagan, never known as a deep or analytic thinker, had an unshakable sense of morality and purpose and a well-deserved reputation as "the Great Communicator."

Historians continue to debate his legacy: Was it his mega-billion-dollar defense spending that finally exhausted the Soviet Union? Did tax cuts to the wealthy really "trickle down" to the rest of us? Was he personally culpable for the Iran-contra scandal?

His legacy shines brightly in the present administration's tax cuts and its "axis of evil," Iran, Iraq and North Korea, an obvious extension of Reagan's "evil empire," the Soviet Union.

Ronald Regan's last and greatest gift was entirely personal. The openness with which Reagan and his wife, Nancy, dealt with his ultimately fatal 10-year battle with Alzheimer's disease is a splendid inspiration to the millions of families similarly afflicted.