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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Reagan Illness, Death Brought Family Close Together; Reagan Democrats Caused a Political Shift in Michigan

Aired June 07, 2004 - 22:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone.
It was, as they say, quite a weekend and already it's been quite a week, by the end of it, a casket burying a man who will have twice spanned the continent. It will be seen by tens of thousands of people, millions more on television.

There will be pomp and protocol as the week goes by and majesty. It is the machinery of national gratitude and national loss but, at the end of the day, not really national mourning.

Nations don't mourn, cable news notwithstanding but wives do and sons and daughters do, even the wives and the sons and the daughters of the most public figures. We saw that today. The majesty in the week to come will be for us not for them. For them this week is something else again.

The whip begins tonight at the Reagan Library with CNN's Frank Buckley, Frank the headline from there.

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, people here continue to pay their respects to the late president. He was a president who had a talent for connecting with the average American, tonight the story of one such average American who became a pen pal with the president. (AUDIO GAP)

BROWN: Frank, we'll get to the story I promise.

On to Warren, Michigan next though, Macomb County, the home of what became known as Reagan Democrats. CNN's Kelly Wallace worked that today, Kelly a headline.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, Ronald Reagan dramatically altered the political landscape as we know it when he overwhelmingly won the support of blue collar Democrats here in the suburbs of Detroit. As you said, they became known as Reagan Democrats and we talked to a few of them tonight -- Aaron.

BROWN: Kelly, thank you.

Finally, Savannah, Georgia, the G8 Summit and Iraq, CNN's Dana Bash traveling with the president, so Dana a headline from you.

DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the president is hoping to use the G8 Summit to continue his campaign to renew ties with estranged allies and an apparent deal on a new U.N. resolution on Iraq is just the way the White House wanted to get things started here -- Aaron.

BROWN: Dana, thank you, back to you and the rest shortly.

Also on the program on this Monday night, Ronald Reagan and the evil empire, did his combination of charm and challenge bring down communism?

The private moments of a public man the photographs of Diana Walker tonight.

And the rooster, of course, arrives with morning papers, all that and more in the hour ahead tonight.

We begin in Southern California. This is what it looks like at the Reagan Library, mid-evening local time at the end of the first two days of public viewing. Some 2,000 people an hour have filed in to pay their respects.

The viewing will continue all night long, California's governor, his wife, and other notables among them. Tomorrow or Wednesday, Senator John Kerry expected to pay a visit as well.

An hour before the public was permitted in this morning a ceremony was held for the Reagan family. As the week goes by, there will be many images, some no doubt powerful but it is hard to imagine any single image will turn out to be more powerful than the one in California this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): The ceremony itself was simple and could hardly have been more moving. Touching her cheek to the coffin, Nancy Reagan began to cry, her children by her side. "Tomorrow" said the minister who presided "will be much easier."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Easier perhaps but not easy. For most of us, such private moments remain private. Public figures, especially the spouses of former heads of state, do not often have that option no matter how painful the moments.

Carl Sferrazza Anthony is Nancy Reagan's former speechwriter and author of eight books, including a two-volume history, "First Ladies and the Saga of Presidents' Wives and Their Power 1789-1990." That's a considerable span of time. He joins us tonight from Los Angeles. It's nice to see you.

I think there's a lot of focus on Mrs. Reagan today and I wonder how she has changed in the period of the president's illness.

CARL SFERRAZZA ANTHONY, PRESIDENTIAL FAMILY HISTORIAN: Well, you know, Aaron, I think just as if -- just as there was sort of kind of an arc, if you will, of her growth during the eight years of the presidency and certainly the life-changing events that she was a witness to at that time. I think in these last ten years, Mrs. Reagan has had to very much rely on an inner strength, perhaps an inner strength that she was not always aware of that she herself had.

I think we have intermittently heard her speak in these last ten years now and then about the very essence of what was going on using the word really just love and that it really in the end came down to a matter of an act of love when people wondered how it was that she was able to sustain this sort of supporting role. And I think, you know, she's talking about things that for a woman of her generation she usually never talked about.

BROWN: They had obviously this extraordinary marriage and love affair. Someone suggested today that at times it was the exclusion of all others, their children in some respects and I think Mrs. Reagan herself has said that one of the sad but real benefits of the president's illness was that her family reconnected.

ANTHONY: Yes. I mean all four of the children are on the record, either in interviews or in books that they've written as pretty much saying that, that at time that they all felt that way. I don't think it was a purposeful thing. I just think that Mrs. Reagan very much felt that that was her primary role, particularly to a husband in public life.

You know one of the things that Ronald Reagan said that I have not heard people talk about was something I think that was very true when confronting conflict in the world and he would say all we need really is an attack from outer space and you'll see how fast suddenly, you know, the Israelis and the Palestinians and everybody else will suddenly forget and drop their differences and pull together.

And, in a sense, that is what happened I think to a degree with their family. I know Patti Davis had written a book post White House years in which she discussed her relationship with her parents and difficulties.

BROWN: Yes.

ANTHONY: And it was just, you know, two or three years after that that I think this amazing change came of pulling them all together.

BROWN: It was, thank you, it was painful on the one side to watch and it's quite -- it's been quite lovely, it's not about politics, it's about family, to watch the reconnection in this period of their lives. Good to talk to you. I hope you'll join us again. Thank you.

ANTHONY: Thank you, Aaron.

BROWN: I think as most of you know, Ronald Reagan was, in fact, married twice, the first time to the actress Jane Wyman. Today, Michael Reagan, their adopted son, made his first public comments about his father's death.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VOICE OF MICHAEL REAGAN, RONALD REAGAN'S SON: I am the luckiest man on the face of the planet because Ronald Reagan chose me to be in his family. He chose me to be named Reagan and, boy I'll tell you, I just hope for the rest of my life that I'm able to honor that name for which my father gave me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Michael Reagan had followed in his father's footsteps on the radio. He's a talk show host now. Father, unlike son, came to conservatism later in life and Reagan, the father, never missed a chance to win new souls to his cause. He found many of them in blue collar ethnic neighborhoods in the Rust Belt.

So from Warren, Michigan tonight, here's CNN's Kelly Wallace.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALLACE (voice-over): Tributes throughout Macomb County, Michigan, a sign of just how much this one-time Democratic stronghold outside Detroit embraced Republican Ronald Reagan.

DAWN RIOS, REAGAN DEMOCRAT: Even though he was in the movies and all that he just seemed more of a down to earth man.

WALLACE: Working class voters, like 43-year-old Dawn Rios, a single mom and truck driver became known as Reagan Democrats. They grew up in Democratic households but voted GOP for the Gipper.

It's got to be difficult, a Democratic family from Kentucky.

RIOS: Well, I think I broke all the rules. From the time I was 17, I broke every rule possible.

WALLACE: Stanley Grot, now the Macomb County Republican Party Chairman, left communist Poland for the United States in 1968 and considered himself a Democrat that was until Reagan came along.

STANLEY GROT, MACOMB COUNTY REPUBLICAN PARTY CHAIRMAN: He was my hero because he was such a staunch opponent, anti-communist opponent. He believed that every person is born free and should remain free.

WALLACE: These Democrats caused a seismic shift in the political landscape, says the man who actually coined the phrase "Reagan Democrats" in his book "Middle Class Dreams," Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg.

STANLEY GREENBERG, AUTHOR, "MIDDLE CLASS DREAMS": They came right out of blue collar America, progressive, union blue collar America, had been for John Kennedy, you know, a good Catholic president but gave, you know, 74 percent of their votes to Ronald Reagan and for Democrats that was an immense problem.

WALLACE: Reagan leaves behind two very different Reagan Democrats, those like Grot who are forever linked to the GOP... GROT: Ronald Reagan set the certain standard and, you know, once you are accustomed to a higher standard you don't lower yourself to a lower standard.

WALLACE: ...and voters like Rios who backed George W. Bush in 2000 but is contemplating supporting Democrat John Kerry this year.

RIOS: A lot of people over the years they've stuck with one party whether they agree with them or not and I don't.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WALLACE: And it is because of Ronald Reagan that Macomb County is a must stop for every presidential candidate since -- Aaron.

BROWN: And will be again. Kelly, thank you very much, Kelly Wallace in Michigan tonight.

Laura Ingraham joins us now, not a Reagan Democrat we're reasonably sure. She is a talk show host, an author, a columnist, a former Reagan staffer and she is a welcome guest here just about anytime. It's nice to see you.

LAURA INGRAHAM, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Nice to be here Aaron.

BROWN: You were, forgive me, a kid at Dartmouth post '60s. Did Ronald Reagan convert you or were you just looking for a champion?

INGRAHAM: No. I think for a lot of us who came of age in the 1980s, were in college in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was elected a lot of us were in high school and many of us were maybe instinctively kind of Republican.

But when Reagan came on the scene, it wasn't just his optimism that we're hearing so much about, Aaron, in the last few days. Everyone's talking about how sunny his demeanor was and his optimism.

But it was his ideas and the confidence of those ideas and the resolute approach that he took to the American people that I think galvanized the young people in this country, which is a story that I think hasn't been told enough in the coverage of Ronald Reagan's life and that really was transforming for American politics.

A lot of us I don't think really were connected. I didn't grow up as a country club Republican. We didn't belong to a country club. My mom was a waitress for 40 years. And so, Ronald Reagan I think touched the spirit of so many young people because he touched the common person in this country and I think that populism is what has stayed with me today.

BROWN: One quick question and then one slightly more complicated. Just tell the story quickly of your exit interview at the White House.

INGRAHAM: Yes, all of us in domestic policy in 1987, 1988, in the last few years of the administration we got a five-minute exit interview with Reagan where we got to go to the office and spend a little bit of time with him very briefly.

He showed us all around the office and he loved to show off the bronzes, all the Old West bronzes, the statues of horses and cowboys, and we were joking about that and I literally felt like I was going to faint because I was -- this was a man that I was just such a personal hero to me.

And I had seen all these celebrities in Washington over the previous two years but this was -- when I really got to spend time with him I really felt like I was going to faint and I looked at him.

I said, "Mr. President, I think I'm going to collapse," and he said, you know, in that characteristic Reagan way, "don't worry, I'll catch you," and just then the White House photographer took the photo.

And the photo I still have is when he's holding my arm up and, of course, I started laughing and all of us broke up laughing and that was just typically Reagan's way like don't worry and I think the message to the country was don't worry, the American spirit will be to catch us all and that was a good memory.

BROWN: Let me -- a more complicated question. Do you think that he was more successful and perhaps American conservatism has been more successful politically as opposed to socially that social conservatism has not caught up with tax cuts, strong military defense and the like?

INGRAHAM: Well, actually I think I disagree with that a little bit, Aaron, because on issues like the most contentious of issues like the issue of abortion in this country, contrary to what I think a lot of people think, younger people are actually becoming more pro-life. Gallup poll after Gallup poll has shown that over the last ten years.

The country is still divided absolutely but Ronald Reagan made the issue of life and the abortion question something that we could actually debate about in this country. And he didn't do a lot substantively to push the pro-life issue but that became one of the cornerstones of the Republican Party under his presidency.

And I think we're going to see that continue to germinate as the years go on, especially among the younger generations and I really think Ronald Reagan deserves a lot of credit for that.

BROWN: Laura, it's nice to see you.

INGRAHAM: Nice to see you, thanks.

BROWN: Thank you, Laura Ingraham with us tonight.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, Jeff Greenfield looks at how today's leaders are working off Ronald Reagan's script.

And, Bruce Morton on the beginning of the end of the Cold War.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BROWN: There's a story now famous about a report Leslie Stahl did for "60 Minutes." It was a very tough critique of the Reagan administration policies, yet after it aired, Michael Deaver called Ms. Stahl to thank her.

A bit puzzled, she asked him why. "Don't worry" he said "nobody listens to the words. The visuals" he said "they were great." His visuals for the most part, the Girl Scouts, the bunting, the balloons, backdrops that spoke volumes and still do.

Here's CNN's Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): When President Bush speaks his message is spelled out literally behind him just in case you don't get the meaning of what he says.

When John Kerry appears in public, a battalion of veterans appears with him just in case you didn't know he's a decorated Vietnam combat vet.

President Clinton constantly appeared in front of a wall of blue, a phalanx of cops just in case you thought he was another one of those soft on crime Democrats.

And, in one way or another, each of these highly public figures is reflecting the influence of what this man did.

JOE LOCKHART, CLINTON PRESS SECRETARY: What Reagan did was, and his team, is change the way the public sees politicians and the way ideas are sold to the public.

GREENFIELD: Joe Lockhart served as press secretary to President Bill Clinton.

LOCKHART: What Reagan brought with his team was a sense that a story had to be packaged and marketed and sold with visual images and Reagan was the best salesman that we've seen, you know, in a generation.

GREENFIELD: That salesmanship drew the attention of the Clinton White House, says former press secretary Mike McCurry.

MIKE MCCURRY, CLINTON PRESS SECRETARY: My memory is that we did look back at some things like when the Reagan White House would launch a major initiative how did they do it? How did they use the White House itself as a platform for various visual events?

GREENFIELD: But there's a danger in adopting such communication skills. The very power of an image can come back to haunt a White House. Bush's top political aide Carl Rove now says he wishes that "Mission Accomplished" sign had never been used.

And for all the focus on Reagan's amiable style and ever present smile, Democratic adversaries, like Mike McCurry, credit him with substance as well.

MCCURRY: Ronald Reagan's ability to reduce complicated ideas to their essence, to sometimes their simplistic essence, was much admired because he really engaged the American people and he talked to them in a way that got them interested in ideas and interested in the proposals he made as president.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD: Now, if it's true that the Reagan model will be studied for years to come by White House operatives, they may want to pause in their analyses of camera angles and colors and backdrops and ask one question. With all of our communication skills do we really know what ideas the president wants to communicate? That's a question the Reagan White House rarely had to ask -- Aaron.

BROWN: Let me turn this just a little bit.

GREENFIELD: Sure.

BROWN: Is there a danger or is it a benefit for the Bush White House in the passing of President Reagan? Is it more something that will be politically helpful? This is sort of an awkward question or at least I'm asking it awkwardly but I think you know what I'm trying to get at here.

GREENFIELD: Yes. You know what, I've come to decide that it's important for those of us in cable news to say that not every event has a clear political impact. I've heard this analysis that it's going to help Bush by reminding people of moral clarity and conservative principles. It's going to hurt Bush by -- I'm talking about the death now by contrasting him and he seems more diminished.

But what I do believe is that there is some feeling among some Republicans that as far as the Bush White House communications effort is concerned that to some extent they may be fighting the last war that they may have not focused as much as they should on the point that both the Democrats and Reagan's one-time aides have made that this was about communicating very clear ideas, ideas that he fought very hard for, for years -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jeff, thank you, Jeff Greenfield. Thank you.

A good way to start a barroom fight among historians is to say that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. Well, that's not totally true. A good way is to hide the sherry but it's a start.

Historians differ widely on the degree to which the United States won and the Soviet block lost. None, we venture a guess, would disagree on the motivation of the cold warrior-in-chief.

Here's CNN's Bruce Morton.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRUCE MORTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ronald Reagan hated communism. Evil, was the word he used about it.

REAGAN: They are the focus of evil in the modern world.

MORTON: His feelings about communism led him to send U.S. troops to topple the government of the little island of Grenada, to support a repressive right-wing government in El Salvador.

He also supported the Contra rebels fighting the communist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua but Reagan's anti-communism played most largely in the Cold War against Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union.

REAGAN: Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

MORTON: When, in fact, the odd couple became friends. They held five summits and, in 1987, signed an agreement to reduce intermediate range nuclear forces, the first such agreement ever. Reagan learned a Russian phrase.

REAGAN: We have listened to the wisdom in an old Russian maxim and I'm sure you're familiar with it. Mr. General Secretary, though my pronunciation may give you difficulty, the maxim, doverai, no proverai, trust but verify.

MORTON: Gorbachev complained once you keep saying that. In 1988, Reagan went to Moscow, a visit which once would have seemed as unlikely as Dorothy is to Oz. He announced a new era in U.S.-Soviet relations but it was even more than that. Ten months after Reagan left office, the Berlin Wall came down. Gorbachev resigned in December of 1991 and the evil empire was history.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: The lasting impact is that he won the Cold War and we are now in an era which is a very dangerous world but we don't wake up every morning with the threat of a nuclear exchange which could annihilate the globe. He did bring down the Soviet empire and he did it through strength of character and vision and history will judge him, I think, very highly for that.

ROBERT DALLEK, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Yes, Reagan played a role, made a contribution, but I don't think it's fair to say he won the Cold War. He contributed to the victory in the Cold War but you got to give Harry Truman credit and Dwight Eisenhower and Kennedy, Johnson.

MORTON: Ronald Reagan, a president who changed his world.

Bruce Morton, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We'll leave the bar fights to the historians but there's a good discussion here anyway. Richard Allen was Ronald Reagan's national security adviser from 1980 to '82, before that a chief foreign policy adviser for Mr. Reagan during the campaign and he also worked for Richard Nixon and he joins us tonight from Eagle, Colorado and it's nice to see you, sir. How were Reagan and Nixon different? RICHARD ALLEN, FORMER REAGAN NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Reagan and Nixon were different in many ways, first of all in personality but they were also similar and particularly similar in that Ronald Reagan had as much information as he needed well prior to being president to address any issue of public policy, foreign or domestic, and in that sense actually was superior to Richard Nixon in the information that he had. That's not the public image.

I also was surprised to hear Bruce Morton's observations and wish that he would be on this show so we could have a little discussion about perceptions of Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan's ideas were well formed, well formed in the 1960s and throughout the 1970s.

And one shouldn't forget that it was Ronald Reagan's assault on Gerald Ford over the issue of the United States national security policy and foreign policy in the form of detente which he considered to be a bankrupt policy that nearly won him the nomination and nearly unseated Gerald Ford, so Reagan...

BROWN: In '76.

ALLEN: ...was a man -- 1976.

BROWN: Yes.

ALLEN: When he ran against Gerald Ford.

BROWN: Yes.

ALLEN: Reagan was a man of ideas and that legacy is now coming to the fore. The tributes that you've just heard from Clinton's advisers were I think well received and quite accurate.

BROWN: Let me -- a couple of questions, if I may. The president had a simple, I don't mean simplistic, but a simple vision of what the world should be and how people should live in relationship to their governments, is that fair enough?

ALLEN: No. It's easy to understand but, if I may respond to your question by a story.

BROWN: Sure.

ALLEN: In 1977, just a few days after Jimmy Carter was elected or rather inaugurated as president of the United States, I was sitting with Ronald Reagan in Pacific Palisades there to ask him to do something for me.

We had a discussion that turned out not to be 15 or 20 minutes but lasted about five or six hours. At the end, he said to me, and it was a deep and detailed discussion of foreign and national security policy, said something that changed my life and convinced me that he ought to be president.

He said, "Some people think my views on the Cold War are simplistic. They're not. They're simple and there's a difference. That means they're easy to understand. My view of the Cold War is that we win and they lose. What do you think about that?"

I thought it was pretty hot stuff, so to speak, and at that moment decided that whatever I was going to do for the next few years to make a living I was going to be sure that I was assisting Ronald Reagan in realizing his vision of winning the Cold War, not managing, not using detente or not using any tricks, winning the Cold War.

BROWN: Mr. Allen it's nice to see you. Thank you, sir, for you time tonight, Richard Allen, the former national security adviser to Ronald Reagan.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT -- I think he actually agreed with me in the end there actually. President Bush prepares for tomorrow's summit. Iraq is at the top of the agenda. We'll get to that.

And later, Lorraine Wagner's half century of letters, I know her, letters from a down home guy named Ronald Reagan.

Around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Ronald Reagan's death comes at a critical time in foreign policy for the current president. With the deadline for the handover in Iraq just 23 days away now, the United Nations Security Council is still trying to finalize the resolution that will outline the details of the transaction.

Today, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., John Negroponte, said he expects a vote tomorrow, the day the G8 Summit begins at Sea Island, Georgia.

Here is CNN's Dana Bash.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The president returned from a three-day European trip prepared to pick up where he left off in his campaign to renew unity with estranged allies. Mr. Bush is hosting more than 20 world leaders around the G8 Summit at this seaside Georgia resort. And officials work feverishly to finalize an apparent agreement on a U.N. resolution on Iraq. They hope it will be a potent symbol going into the summit: disagreement over the war is evolving into agreement about Iraq's future.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Everybody now understands that the key is an Iraq that is prosperous and moving forward. It really closes a page, closes a book on the past.

BASH: The breakthrough came after a weekend exchange of letters with Iraq's interim prime minister detailing Baghdad's operational authority over foreign troops. For all the talk of the future at Sea Island, a key figure from the past, Ronald Reagan, looms over this summit, as he does everywhere this week.

Reagan, Bush aides note, was instrumental in getting then G7 meetings a high profile and are drawing parallels between Mr. Bush's diplomatic style and what they call Reagan's clear spoken rhetoric against communism that inspired change, but also ruffled European leaders.

RICE: President Bush is inspired by that kind of plainspokenness, about that willingness to tell the truth, about the willingness to be unabashedly clear about the universality of the values of liberty and freedom.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BASH: The president plans to stay in Georgia through the end of the summit on Thursday , but he'll be back in Washington in order to deliver a eulogy for Ronald Reagan on Friday morning -- Aaron.

BROWN: Dana, thank you -- Dana Bash tonight.

With Ronald Reagan's state funeral and all that that entails, the Capitol is preparing for the sort of event it has not seen in a very long time and for the first time in the post-9/11 era. In the new normal, all thins begin with security.

From Capitol Hill tonight, CNN's Joe Johns.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE JOHNS, CNN CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tight security just got tighter around Washington.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Due to the lying-in-state ceremony for President Ronald Reagan, the Capitol will close for tours at 4:30 p.m. Monday, June 7.

JOHNS: More security is coming, as local and federal law enforcement prepare for the first full-blown series of events here honoring the passing of a president since Lyndon Johnson died 30 years ago.

TERRANCE GAINER, U.S. CAPITOL POLICE CHIEF: We're ready for this. We have practiced this. We've rehearsed it. And it goes on a precision timetable.

JOHNS: The week will feature a horse-drawn caisson and arrival ceremony at the Capitol, a 24-hour vigil and a funeral at the National Cathedral. Expected to attend, government leaders who would show up at a State of the Union address, plus former presidents, heads of state, the family of the late president and up to 100,000 people filing past the Reagan casket perched on this 140-year-old catafalque in the Capitol Rotunda, no cameras, no backpacks. Post-9/11, law enforcement sees the whole setting as a potential target.

GAINER: That's a pretty formidable group of people. And you couple that with just the very image that this dome signifies across this land and across this world, it can be attractive. We're concerned about that, but not panicky.

JOHNS: Besides bomb-sniffing dogs and extra police patrols, it means canceled leave for large numbers of officers.

CHARLES RAMSEY, D.C. POLICE CHIEF: We have as a top priority maintaining coverage out in our streets. So that's reason why I have to cancel days off to make sure we have adequate personnel.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS: Law enforcement personnel from out of town could be called in to help if necessary. All the security comes with a price tag. We're told the cost is still being calculated -- Aaron.

BROWN: Joe, thank you -- Joe Johns tonight.

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, from an actor to a governor to a president, half a century of letters and friendship. I like this story a lot.

And "TIME" magazine's Diana Walker's photographs of Ron and Nancy Reagan as well.

A break first. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Simi Valley, California, at the Reagan library. This has been going on much of the day, people quietly passing the former president's casket. By midweek, it will make its way to Washington, and then back home Friday for burial at sunset in Simi Valley.

As we heard earlier in the program, about 2,000 people an hour have been streaming through the library to pay their respects. No one asked them to come, yet they have. President Reagan, as we have heard so many times in the last few days, was known as the "Great communicator," capital G, capital C, for the way he connected with people and the way they responded. He could connect on a smaller scale as well. We don't usually think of our presidents as having pen pals, especially in the age of e-mail and instant messaging, but Ronald Reagan did.

Here's CNN's Frank Buckley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LORRAINE WAGNER, PEN PAL OF RONALD REAGAN: This is the first picture that I received from Ronald Reagan, actor.

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Lorraine Wagner was 13 years old, Ronald Reagan a movie star. It was 1943 when the teenaged girl from Philadelphia wrote to thank Reagan for the autographed publicity shot. She couldn't have imagined it would spark a five-decade-long correspondence with the man who would become governor of California, president of the United States and friend.

WAGNER: It was important to him and it was important to me. The two things went together. It wasn't a sudden thing, that, because he became president, he decided that friendship was important. It always was.

BUCKLEY: Reagan sent more than 250 letters in all from 1943 to 1995.

WAGNER: You'll excuse this card, please, as I'm writing this on the set.

BUCKLEY: Of this film.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THIS IS THE ARMY")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: What would you like to do in the Army?

RONALD REAGAN, ACTOR: Dance.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BUCKLEY: Reagan the actor eventually becoming Reagan the politician, writing to Lorraine Wagner from the Oval Office. Wagner would eventually become an IRS worker, marry and have two children. Reagan's first marriage to actress Jane Wyman, he would acknowledge, was troubled.

WAGNER: "I know she loves me, even though she thinks she doesn't. Keep your fingers crossed for me."

BUCKLEY: The marriage would end in divorce, Mr. Reagan later marrying Nancy Davis. The Reagans and the Wagners were never social equals, but when the Wagners went west for vacation, Reagan was glad to greet them outside his Pacific Palisades home. There were letters and presents exchanged both ways.

The Wagners visited the Oval Office three times, twice presenting the president with homemade politically themed garbage cans.

WAGNER: "Once you were gone, I had a chance to really look at it. And that's when I realized I hadn't really expressed my appreciation. I've looked at it a half dozen times since you left, and it is almost as if I find something new each time."

BUCKLEY: Reagan reveals in the letters his human touch and his inner feelings, his thoughts on world events covering the last half of the 20th century, like his views on communism and China. It is 1972. Reagan is governor of California, Richard Nixon president. Nixon visits China.

WAGNER: "Personally, I think the Red Chinese are a bunch of murdering bums. I think the president probably believes the same."

BUCKLEY: It is a turbulent time in the U.S. Student protests are raging.

WAGNER: He did mention in one of his letters that he felt that he was being successful as governor because he was burned in effigy a little sooner than some other governors. BUCKLEY: Throughout their 50 years of epistles, Reagan could count on Wagner to defend him in letters to editors and to provide him with a window into middle America. Lorraine Wagner could count on correspondence that continued to come even after Reagan left office. January, 1992:

WAGNER: "I just addressed a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev and another to Boris Yeltsin." I'm really optimistic about what's going on in the Soviet Union.

BUCKLEY: Reagan expressed gratitude for their years of exchanges in his final letters to Lorraine, a teenaged fan who remained a fan, but became a friend.

WAGNER: I reread a lot of the letters. I think about them. And I care about them. And I'm grateful for the friendship and the memories that they give me. It's a treasure.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BUCHANAN: (AUDIO GAP) from President Reagan came just before he announced in a letter to the world that he'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. In that final personal letter to Lorraine, he acknowledged her and thanked her for their friendship.

Meanwhile, here at the library tonight, Americans continue to file past the casket of President Reagan. They're coming, as you said, Aaron, at a rate of somewhere around 1,800 to 2,000 people per hour. I've been through there. It is quiet inside as people walk past. There is an honor guard at attention. This will continue until tomorrow at approximately 6:00 p.m. local time. The following day, the president's casket moves to Washington -- Aaron.

BROWN: Frank, thanks.

Just stay on this shot for a second. Just look at those young faces, obviously, all too young to have known, to have lived in the time of President Reagan. But some day, some day, many of them -- not all, certainly, but many of them will remember this little moment in their life, when they were out in Simi Valley, California, and they walked through a presidential library, past the casket of the 40th president of the United States. So good for them.

BUCKLEY: And you can imagine -- yes, you can imagine, Aaron, that they will then tell their children some day when they come back to this library that they were here when this special moment took place.

BROWN: And that little one just wonders what's going on.

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: Frank, thank you very much -- Frank Buckley out in California tonight.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, inside the Reagan White House, a portrait in photographs. And later, our long love affair with morning papers continues. It is unending.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Earlier in the program, Jeff Greenfield touched on the power of the presidential image to sell an idea or a program or the candidate himself. This is precisely the opposite, the power of the image, in this case still photographs, to tell the truth, or as close to the truth as you can get inside the bubble that surrounds a president.

On the cover of "TIME" magazine this week, you can find one example, Ronald Reagan at the ranch. Photographer Diana Walker spent two decades on the White House beat. Her work is collected in "Public and Private: 20 Years of Photographing the Presidency."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DIANA WALKER, PHOTOGRAPHER: People do say that the presidency is probably the loneliest job you could have. And I have to say, I never had that impression with President Reagan. He seemed very happy in his job and in his skin.

You saw who he was in public. And he was that way, in my view, in private. He stood tall. He knew how to walk into a room. He knew how to look presidential. He really did. And he also was quite stylish in the way he dressed and how he looked. And he was wonderful at putting world leaders at ease when he was in private conversation with them.

The Reagan presidency, his two terms, this country was struck by several very large tragedies. And President and Mrs. Reagan were called upon to console many people, whether it was the families of the Marines who were killed in the bombing in Lebanon or the Challenger families. The president himself was quite emotional in a very quiet and dignified way in those moments. And I think he and Mrs. Reagan were extremely helpful to families who were going through a horrible time.

The Reagan administration was very good about setting up photo opportunities. One picture that I remember vividly was the president and Mrs. Reagan standing under the guns on the battleship USS Iowa. And you see all the sailors lined up and you see the president and Mrs. Reagan with their hands over their hearts. It is just such a beautiful picture. It almost looks like they're going to break out and dance, like you would in a Busby Berkeley musical.

The Statue of Liberty was 100 years old. There, the two of them were looking off into the distance at this beautiful symbol of our country and then the symbol of the presidency next door to them. This was the Reagan presidency.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: It's interesting. The program started with a look at Mrs. Reagan today and a discussion of that. And how many of those pictures were there with Mrs. Reagan and the president together?

Morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: OK, time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world.

One story that we don't have, but you will tomorrow, Tampa Bay won the Stanley Cup in the seventh game 2-1 tonight. Tampa Bay, of course, one of the great hockey cities in America. It produced Jean Beliveau, Jacques Plante, Gump Worsley, from Tampa Bay, all the greats, from Florida. Congratulations to them.

"The International Herald Tribune" leads otherwise. "Nine Militias in Iraq Said to Agree to Disband, But Doubts Emerge As Two Large Groups Are Not Included." The picture on the front page -- I'm finding the pictures really interesting today -- is the casket of Mr. Reagan being brought to the library in Simi Valley. There were two or three terrific shots today to choose from. And that's the one they chose. Anything else I like? Yes, but no time to do it.

"The Christian Science Monitor" also leads with Iraq. "Major Iraqi Militias To Stand Down. In Plans Announced Yesterday" -- that would be today -- "Some 100,000 Men Will Join Iraqi Police Or Security Forces. Sadr's Militia Will Not." That's kind of an afterthought. Here's a great story they're promoting for tomorrow. "How Far Would They Go For a Kidney?" It's the story of two men and the search for one kidney, the transplant market or the organ donor market that's out there.

What's not on "The Philadelphia Inquirer" front page, we note, no Smarty Jones story. The horse lost. They forgot him. It's a great paper. We love it.

Let's do this one. This is the money shot to me today. "Nancy Says Goodbye." This is "The Chicago-Sun Times." It was just tough to get the right angle for it, but it's a wonderful and human moment. The weather tomorrow in Chicago is "sweatshop," 90 degrees. Is that what is heading our way?

We'll wrap up the night in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: That's our report for tonight.

We've got a few seconds left. If we can pick up a shot in California again -- there we go, both inside and outside in Simi Valley. I just like the idea that parents are bringing their kids to this. It's not about politics. It's about history. And I think it's a very cool thing for them to do.

We'll see you tomorrow. Good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired June 7, 2004 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone.
It was, as they say, quite a weekend and already it's been quite a week, by the end of it, a casket burying a man who will have twice spanned the continent. It will be seen by tens of thousands of people, millions more on television.

There will be pomp and protocol as the week goes by and majesty. It is the machinery of national gratitude and national loss but, at the end of the day, not really national mourning.

Nations don't mourn, cable news notwithstanding but wives do and sons and daughters do, even the wives and the sons and the daughters of the most public figures. We saw that today. The majesty in the week to come will be for us not for them. For them this week is something else again.

The whip begins tonight at the Reagan Library with CNN's Frank Buckley, Frank the headline from there.

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, people here continue to pay their respects to the late president. He was a president who had a talent for connecting with the average American, tonight the story of one such average American who became a pen pal with the president. (AUDIO GAP)

BROWN: Frank, we'll get to the story I promise.

On to Warren, Michigan next though, Macomb County, the home of what became known as Reagan Democrats. CNN's Kelly Wallace worked that today, Kelly a headline.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, Ronald Reagan dramatically altered the political landscape as we know it when he overwhelmingly won the support of blue collar Democrats here in the suburbs of Detroit. As you said, they became known as Reagan Democrats and we talked to a few of them tonight -- Aaron.

BROWN: Kelly, thank you.

Finally, Savannah, Georgia, the G8 Summit and Iraq, CNN's Dana Bash traveling with the president, so Dana a headline from you.

DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the president is hoping to use the G8 Summit to continue his campaign to renew ties with estranged allies and an apparent deal on a new U.N. resolution on Iraq is just the way the White House wanted to get things started here -- Aaron.

BROWN: Dana, thank you, back to you and the rest shortly.

Also on the program on this Monday night, Ronald Reagan and the evil empire, did his combination of charm and challenge bring down communism?

The private moments of a public man the photographs of Diana Walker tonight.

And the rooster, of course, arrives with morning papers, all that and more in the hour ahead tonight.

We begin in Southern California. This is what it looks like at the Reagan Library, mid-evening local time at the end of the first two days of public viewing. Some 2,000 people an hour have filed in to pay their respects.

The viewing will continue all night long, California's governor, his wife, and other notables among them. Tomorrow or Wednesday, Senator John Kerry expected to pay a visit as well.

An hour before the public was permitted in this morning a ceremony was held for the Reagan family. As the week goes by, there will be many images, some no doubt powerful but it is hard to imagine any single image will turn out to be more powerful than the one in California this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): The ceremony itself was simple and could hardly have been more moving. Touching her cheek to the coffin, Nancy Reagan began to cry, her children by her side. "Tomorrow" said the minister who presided "will be much easier."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Easier perhaps but not easy. For most of us, such private moments remain private. Public figures, especially the spouses of former heads of state, do not often have that option no matter how painful the moments.

Carl Sferrazza Anthony is Nancy Reagan's former speechwriter and author of eight books, including a two-volume history, "First Ladies and the Saga of Presidents' Wives and Their Power 1789-1990." That's a considerable span of time. He joins us tonight from Los Angeles. It's nice to see you.

I think there's a lot of focus on Mrs. Reagan today and I wonder how she has changed in the period of the president's illness.

CARL SFERRAZZA ANTHONY, PRESIDENTIAL FAMILY HISTORIAN: Well, you know, Aaron, I think just as if -- just as there was sort of kind of an arc, if you will, of her growth during the eight years of the presidency and certainly the life-changing events that she was a witness to at that time. I think in these last ten years, Mrs. Reagan has had to very much rely on an inner strength, perhaps an inner strength that she was not always aware of that she herself had.

I think we have intermittently heard her speak in these last ten years now and then about the very essence of what was going on using the word really just love and that it really in the end came down to a matter of an act of love when people wondered how it was that she was able to sustain this sort of supporting role. And I think, you know, she's talking about things that for a woman of her generation she usually never talked about.

BROWN: They had obviously this extraordinary marriage and love affair. Someone suggested today that at times it was the exclusion of all others, their children in some respects and I think Mrs. Reagan herself has said that one of the sad but real benefits of the president's illness was that her family reconnected.

ANTHONY: Yes. I mean all four of the children are on the record, either in interviews or in books that they've written as pretty much saying that, that at time that they all felt that way. I don't think it was a purposeful thing. I just think that Mrs. Reagan very much felt that that was her primary role, particularly to a husband in public life.

You know one of the things that Ronald Reagan said that I have not heard people talk about was something I think that was very true when confronting conflict in the world and he would say all we need really is an attack from outer space and you'll see how fast suddenly, you know, the Israelis and the Palestinians and everybody else will suddenly forget and drop their differences and pull together.

And, in a sense, that is what happened I think to a degree with their family. I know Patti Davis had written a book post White House years in which she discussed her relationship with her parents and difficulties.

BROWN: Yes.

ANTHONY: And it was just, you know, two or three years after that that I think this amazing change came of pulling them all together.

BROWN: It was, thank you, it was painful on the one side to watch and it's quite -- it's been quite lovely, it's not about politics, it's about family, to watch the reconnection in this period of their lives. Good to talk to you. I hope you'll join us again. Thank you.

ANTHONY: Thank you, Aaron.

BROWN: I think as most of you know, Ronald Reagan was, in fact, married twice, the first time to the actress Jane Wyman. Today, Michael Reagan, their adopted son, made his first public comments about his father's death.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VOICE OF MICHAEL REAGAN, RONALD REAGAN'S SON: I am the luckiest man on the face of the planet because Ronald Reagan chose me to be in his family. He chose me to be named Reagan and, boy I'll tell you, I just hope for the rest of my life that I'm able to honor that name for which my father gave me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Michael Reagan had followed in his father's footsteps on the radio. He's a talk show host now. Father, unlike son, came to conservatism later in life and Reagan, the father, never missed a chance to win new souls to his cause. He found many of them in blue collar ethnic neighborhoods in the Rust Belt.

So from Warren, Michigan tonight, here's CNN's Kelly Wallace.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALLACE (voice-over): Tributes throughout Macomb County, Michigan, a sign of just how much this one-time Democratic stronghold outside Detroit embraced Republican Ronald Reagan.

DAWN RIOS, REAGAN DEMOCRAT: Even though he was in the movies and all that he just seemed more of a down to earth man.

WALLACE: Working class voters, like 43-year-old Dawn Rios, a single mom and truck driver became known as Reagan Democrats. They grew up in Democratic households but voted GOP for the Gipper.

It's got to be difficult, a Democratic family from Kentucky.

RIOS: Well, I think I broke all the rules. From the time I was 17, I broke every rule possible.

WALLACE: Stanley Grot, now the Macomb County Republican Party Chairman, left communist Poland for the United States in 1968 and considered himself a Democrat that was until Reagan came along.

STANLEY GROT, MACOMB COUNTY REPUBLICAN PARTY CHAIRMAN: He was my hero because he was such a staunch opponent, anti-communist opponent. He believed that every person is born free and should remain free.

WALLACE: These Democrats caused a seismic shift in the political landscape, says the man who actually coined the phrase "Reagan Democrats" in his book "Middle Class Dreams," Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg.

STANLEY GREENBERG, AUTHOR, "MIDDLE CLASS DREAMS": They came right out of blue collar America, progressive, union blue collar America, had been for John Kennedy, you know, a good Catholic president but gave, you know, 74 percent of their votes to Ronald Reagan and for Democrats that was an immense problem.

WALLACE: Reagan leaves behind two very different Reagan Democrats, those like Grot who are forever linked to the GOP... GROT: Ronald Reagan set the certain standard and, you know, once you are accustomed to a higher standard you don't lower yourself to a lower standard.

WALLACE: ...and voters like Rios who backed George W. Bush in 2000 but is contemplating supporting Democrat John Kerry this year.

RIOS: A lot of people over the years they've stuck with one party whether they agree with them or not and I don't.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WALLACE: And it is because of Ronald Reagan that Macomb County is a must stop for every presidential candidate since -- Aaron.

BROWN: And will be again. Kelly, thank you very much, Kelly Wallace in Michigan tonight.

Laura Ingraham joins us now, not a Reagan Democrat we're reasonably sure. She is a talk show host, an author, a columnist, a former Reagan staffer and she is a welcome guest here just about anytime. It's nice to see you.

LAURA INGRAHAM, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Nice to be here Aaron.

BROWN: You were, forgive me, a kid at Dartmouth post '60s. Did Ronald Reagan convert you or were you just looking for a champion?

INGRAHAM: No. I think for a lot of us who came of age in the 1980s, were in college in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was elected a lot of us were in high school and many of us were maybe instinctively kind of Republican.

But when Reagan came on the scene, it wasn't just his optimism that we're hearing so much about, Aaron, in the last few days. Everyone's talking about how sunny his demeanor was and his optimism.

But it was his ideas and the confidence of those ideas and the resolute approach that he took to the American people that I think galvanized the young people in this country, which is a story that I think hasn't been told enough in the coverage of Ronald Reagan's life and that really was transforming for American politics.

A lot of us I don't think really were connected. I didn't grow up as a country club Republican. We didn't belong to a country club. My mom was a waitress for 40 years. And so, Ronald Reagan I think touched the spirit of so many young people because he touched the common person in this country and I think that populism is what has stayed with me today.

BROWN: One quick question and then one slightly more complicated. Just tell the story quickly of your exit interview at the White House.

INGRAHAM: Yes, all of us in domestic policy in 1987, 1988, in the last few years of the administration we got a five-minute exit interview with Reagan where we got to go to the office and spend a little bit of time with him very briefly.

He showed us all around the office and he loved to show off the bronzes, all the Old West bronzes, the statues of horses and cowboys, and we were joking about that and I literally felt like I was going to faint because I was -- this was a man that I was just such a personal hero to me.

And I had seen all these celebrities in Washington over the previous two years but this was -- when I really got to spend time with him I really felt like I was going to faint and I looked at him.

I said, "Mr. President, I think I'm going to collapse," and he said, you know, in that characteristic Reagan way, "don't worry, I'll catch you," and just then the White House photographer took the photo.

And the photo I still have is when he's holding my arm up and, of course, I started laughing and all of us broke up laughing and that was just typically Reagan's way like don't worry and I think the message to the country was don't worry, the American spirit will be to catch us all and that was a good memory.

BROWN: Let me -- a more complicated question. Do you think that he was more successful and perhaps American conservatism has been more successful politically as opposed to socially that social conservatism has not caught up with tax cuts, strong military defense and the like?

INGRAHAM: Well, actually I think I disagree with that a little bit, Aaron, because on issues like the most contentious of issues like the issue of abortion in this country, contrary to what I think a lot of people think, younger people are actually becoming more pro-life. Gallup poll after Gallup poll has shown that over the last ten years.

The country is still divided absolutely but Ronald Reagan made the issue of life and the abortion question something that we could actually debate about in this country. And he didn't do a lot substantively to push the pro-life issue but that became one of the cornerstones of the Republican Party under his presidency.

And I think we're going to see that continue to germinate as the years go on, especially among the younger generations and I really think Ronald Reagan deserves a lot of credit for that.

BROWN: Laura, it's nice to see you.

INGRAHAM: Nice to see you, thanks.

BROWN: Thank you, Laura Ingraham with us tonight.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, Jeff Greenfield looks at how today's leaders are working off Ronald Reagan's script.

And, Bruce Morton on the beginning of the end of the Cold War.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BROWN: There's a story now famous about a report Leslie Stahl did for "60 Minutes." It was a very tough critique of the Reagan administration policies, yet after it aired, Michael Deaver called Ms. Stahl to thank her.

A bit puzzled, she asked him why. "Don't worry" he said "nobody listens to the words. The visuals" he said "they were great." His visuals for the most part, the Girl Scouts, the bunting, the balloons, backdrops that spoke volumes and still do.

Here's CNN's Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): When President Bush speaks his message is spelled out literally behind him just in case you don't get the meaning of what he says.

When John Kerry appears in public, a battalion of veterans appears with him just in case you didn't know he's a decorated Vietnam combat vet.

President Clinton constantly appeared in front of a wall of blue, a phalanx of cops just in case you thought he was another one of those soft on crime Democrats.

And, in one way or another, each of these highly public figures is reflecting the influence of what this man did.

JOE LOCKHART, CLINTON PRESS SECRETARY: What Reagan did was, and his team, is change the way the public sees politicians and the way ideas are sold to the public.

GREENFIELD: Joe Lockhart served as press secretary to President Bill Clinton.

LOCKHART: What Reagan brought with his team was a sense that a story had to be packaged and marketed and sold with visual images and Reagan was the best salesman that we've seen, you know, in a generation.

GREENFIELD: That salesmanship drew the attention of the Clinton White House, says former press secretary Mike McCurry.

MIKE MCCURRY, CLINTON PRESS SECRETARY: My memory is that we did look back at some things like when the Reagan White House would launch a major initiative how did they do it? How did they use the White House itself as a platform for various visual events?

GREENFIELD: But there's a danger in adopting such communication skills. The very power of an image can come back to haunt a White House. Bush's top political aide Carl Rove now says he wishes that "Mission Accomplished" sign had never been used.

And for all the focus on Reagan's amiable style and ever present smile, Democratic adversaries, like Mike McCurry, credit him with substance as well.

MCCURRY: Ronald Reagan's ability to reduce complicated ideas to their essence, to sometimes their simplistic essence, was much admired because he really engaged the American people and he talked to them in a way that got them interested in ideas and interested in the proposals he made as president.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD: Now, if it's true that the Reagan model will be studied for years to come by White House operatives, they may want to pause in their analyses of camera angles and colors and backdrops and ask one question. With all of our communication skills do we really know what ideas the president wants to communicate? That's a question the Reagan White House rarely had to ask -- Aaron.

BROWN: Let me turn this just a little bit.

GREENFIELD: Sure.

BROWN: Is there a danger or is it a benefit for the Bush White House in the passing of President Reagan? Is it more something that will be politically helpful? This is sort of an awkward question or at least I'm asking it awkwardly but I think you know what I'm trying to get at here.

GREENFIELD: Yes. You know what, I've come to decide that it's important for those of us in cable news to say that not every event has a clear political impact. I've heard this analysis that it's going to help Bush by reminding people of moral clarity and conservative principles. It's going to hurt Bush by -- I'm talking about the death now by contrasting him and he seems more diminished.

But what I do believe is that there is some feeling among some Republicans that as far as the Bush White House communications effort is concerned that to some extent they may be fighting the last war that they may have not focused as much as they should on the point that both the Democrats and Reagan's one-time aides have made that this was about communicating very clear ideas, ideas that he fought very hard for, for years -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jeff, thank you, Jeff Greenfield. Thank you.

A good way to start a barroom fight among historians is to say that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. Well, that's not totally true. A good way is to hide the sherry but it's a start.

Historians differ widely on the degree to which the United States won and the Soviet block lost. None, we venture a guess, would disagree on the motivation of the cold warrior-in-chief.

Here's CNN's Bruce Morton.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRUCE MORTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ronald Reagan hated communism. Evil, was the word he used about it.

REAGAN: They are the focus of evil in the modern world.

MORTON: His feelings about communism led him to send U.S. troops to topple the government of the little island of Grenada, to support a repressive right-wing government in El Salvador.

He also supported the Contra rebels fighting the communist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua but Reagan's anti-communism played most largely in the Cold War against Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union.

REAGAN: Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

MORTON: When, in fact, the odd couple became friends. They held five summits and, in 1987, signed an agreement to reduce intermediate range nuclear forces, the first such agreement ever. Reagan learned a Russian phrase.

REAGAN: We have listened to the wisdom in an old Russian maxim and I'm sure you're familiar with it. Mr. General Secretary, though my pronunciation may give you difficulty, the maxim, doverai, no proverai, trust but verify.

MORTON: Gorbachev complained once you keep saying that. In 1988, Reagan went to Moscow, a visit which once would have seemed as unlikely as Dorothy is to Oz. He announced a new era in U.S.-Soviet relations but it was even more than that. Ten months after Reagan left office, the Berlin Wall came down. Gorbachev resigned in December of 1991 and the evil empire was history.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: The lasting impact is that he won the Cold War and we are now in an era which is a very dangerous world but we don't wake up every morning with the threat of a nuclear exchange which could annihilate the globe. He did bring down the Soviet empire and he did it through strength of character and vision and history will judge him, I think, very highly for that.

ROBERT DALLEK, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Yes, Reagan played a role, made a contribution, but I don't think it's fair to say he won the Cold War. He contributed to the victory in the Cold War but you got to give Harry Truman credit and Dwight Eisenhower and Kennedy, Johnson.

MORTON: Ronald Reagan, a president who changed his world.

Bruce Morton, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We'll leave the bar fights to the historians but there's a good discussion here anyway. Richard Allen was Ronald Reagan's national security adviser from 1980 to '82, before that a chief foreign policy adviser for Mr. Reagan during the campaign and he also worked for Richard Nixon and he joins us tonight from Eagle, Colorado and it's nice to see you, sir. How were Reagan and Nixon different? RICHARD ALLEN, FORMER REAGAN NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Reagan and Nixon were different in many ways, first of all in personality but they were also similar and particularly similar in that Ronald Reagan had as much information as he needed well prior to being president to address any issue of public policy, foreign or domestic, and in that sense actually was superior to Richard Nixon in the information that he had. That's not the public image.

I also was surprised to hear Bruce Morton's observations and wish that he would be on this show so we could have a little discussion about perceptions of Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan's ideas were well formed, well formed in the 1960s and throughout the 1970s.

And one shouldn't forget that it was Ronald Reagan's assault on Gerald Ford over the issue of the United States national security policy and foreign policy in the form of detente which he considered to be a bankrupt policy that nearly won him the nomination and nearly unseated Gerald Ford, so Reagan...

BROWN: In '76.

ALLEN: ...was a man -- 1976.

BROWN: Yes.

ALLEN: When he ran against Gerald Ford.

BROWN: Yes.

ALLEN: Reagan was a man of ideas and that legacy is now coming to the fore. The tributes that you've just heard from Clinton's advisers were I think well received and quite accurate.

BROWN: Let me -- a couple of questions, if I may. The president had a simple, I don't mean simplistic, but a simple vision of what the world should be and how people should live in relationship to their governments, is that fair enough?

ALLEN: No. It's easy to understand but, if I may respond to your question by a story.

BROWN: Sure.

ALLEN: In 1977, just a few days after Jimmy Carter was elected or rather inaugurated as president of the United States, I was sitting with Ronald Reagan in Pacific Palisades there to ask him to do something for me.

We had a discussion that turned out not to be 15 or 20 minutes but lasted about five or six hours. At the end, he said to me, and it was a deep and detailed discussion of foreign and national security policy, said something that changed my life and convinced me that he ought to be president.

He said, "Some people think my views on the Cold War are simplistic. They're not. They're simple and there's a difference. That means they're easy to understand. My view of the Cold War is that we win and they lose. What do you think about that?"

I thought it was pretty hot stuff, so to speak, and at that moment decided that whatever I was going to do for the next few years to make a living I was going to be sure that I was assisting Ronald Reagan in realizing his vision of winning the Cold War, not managing, not using detente or not using any tricks, winning the Cold War.

BROWN: Mr. Allen it's nice to see you. Thank you, sir, for you time tonight, Richard Allen, the former national security adviser to Ronald Reagan.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT -- I think he actually agreed with me in the end there actually. President Bush prepares for tomorrow's summit. Iraq is at the top of the agenda. We'll get to that.

And later, Lorraine Wagner's half century of letters, I know her, letters from a down home guy named Ronald Reagan.

Around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Ronald Reagan's death comes at a critical time in foreign policy for the current president. With the deadline for the handover in Iraq just 23 days away now, the United Nations Security Council is still trying to finalize the resolution that will outline the details of the transaction.

Today, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., John Negroponte, said he expects a vote tomorrow, the day the G8 Summit begins at Sea Island, Georgia.

Here is CNN's Dana Bash.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The president returned from a three-day European trip prepared to pick up where he left off in his campaign to renew unity with estranged allies. Mr. Bush is hosting more than 20 world leaders around the G8 Summit at this seaside Georgia resort. And officials work feverishly to finalize an apparent agreement on a U.N. resolution on Iraq. They hope it will be a potent symbol going into the summit: disagreement over the war is evolving into agreement about Iraq's future.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Everybody now understands that the key is an Iraq that is prosperous and moving forward. It really closes a page, closes a book on the past.

BASH: The breakthrough came after a weekend exchange of letters with Iraq's interim prime minister detailing Baghdad's operational authority over foreign troops. For all the talk of the future at Sea Island, a key figure from the past, Ronald Reagan, looms over this summit, as he does everywhere this week.

Reagan, Bush aides note, was instrumental in getting then G7 meetings a high profile and are drawing parallels between Mr. Bush's diplomatic style and what they call Reagan's clear spoken rhetoric against communism that inspired change, but also ruffled European leaders.

RICE: President Bush is inspired by that kind of plainspokenness, about that willingness to tell the truth, about the willingness to be unabashedly clear about the universality of the values of liberty and freedom.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BASH: The president plans to stay in Georgia through the end of the summit on Thursday , but he'll be back in Washington in order to deliver a eulogy for Ronald Reagan on Friday morning -- Aaron.

BROWN: Dana, thank you -- Dana Bash tonight.

With Ronald Reagan's state funeral and all that that entails, the Capitol is preparing for the sort of event it has not seen in a very long time and for the first time in the post-9/11 era. In the new normal, all thins begin with security.

From Capitol Hill tonight, CNN's Joe Johns.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE JOHNS, CNN CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tight security just got tighter around Washington.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Due to the lying-in-state ceremony for President Ronald Reagan, the Capitol will close for tours at 4:30 p.m. Monday, June 7.

JOHNS: More security is coming, as local and federal law enforcement prepare for the first full-blown series of events here honoring the passing of a president since Lyndon Johnson died 30 years ago.

TERRANCE GAINER, U.S. CAPITOL POLICE CHIEF: We're ready for this. We have practiced this. We've rehearsed it. And it goes on a precision timetable.

JOHNS: The week will feature a horse-drawn caisson and arrival ceremony at the Capitol, a 24-hour vigil and a funeral at the National Cathedral. Expected to attend, government leaders who would show up at a State of the Union address, plus former presidents, heads of state, the family of the late president and up to 100,000 people filing past the Reagan casket perched on this 140-year-old catafalque in the Capitol Rotunda, no cameras, no backpacks. Post-9/11, law enforcement sees the whole setting as a potential target.

GAINER: That's a pretty formidable group of people. And you couple that with just the very image that this dome signifies across this land and across this world, it can be attractive. We're concerned about that, but not panicky.

JOHNS: Besides bomb-sniffing dogs and extra police patrols, it means canceled leave for large numbers of officers.

CHARLES RAMSEY, D.C. POLICE CHIEF: We have as a top priority maintaining coverage out in our streets. So that's reason why I have to cancel days off to make sure we have adequate personnel.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS: Law enforcement personnel from out of town could be called in to help if necessary. All the security comes with a price tag. We're told the cost is still being calculated -- Aaron.

BROWN: Joe, thank you -- Joe Johns tonight.

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, from an actor to a governor to a president, half a century of letters and friendship. I like this story a lot.

And "TIME" magazine's Diana Walker's photographs of Ron and Nancy Reagan as well.

A break first. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Simi Valley, California, at the Reagan library. This has been going on much of the day, people quietly passing the former president's casket. By midweek, it will make its way to Washington, and then back home Friday for burial at sunset in Simi Valley.

As we heard earlier in the program, about 2,000 people an hour have been streaming through the library to pay their respects. No one asked them to come, yet they have. President Reagan, as we have heard so many times in the last few days, was known as the "Great communicator," capital G, capital C, for the way he connected with people and the way they responded. He could connect on a smaller scale as well. We don't usually think of our presidents as having pen pals, especially in the age of e-mail and instant messaging, but Ronald Reagan did.

Here's CNN's Frank Buckley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LORRAINE WAGNER, PEN PAL OF RONALD REAGAN: This is the first picture that I received from Ronald Reagan, actor.

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Lorraine Wagner was 13 years old, Ronald Reagan a movie star. It was 1943 when the teenaged girl from Philadelphia wrote to thank Reagan for the autographed publicity shot. She couldn't have imagined it would spark a five-decade-long correspondence with the man who would become governor of California, president of the United States and friend.

WAGNER: It was important to him and it was important to me. The two things went together. It wasn't a sudden thing, that, because he became president, he decided that friendship was important. It always was.

BUCKLEY: Reagan sent more than 250 letters in all from 1943 to 1995.

WAGNER: You'll excuse this card, please, as I'm writing this on the set.

BUCKLEY: Of this film.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THIS IS THE ARMY")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: What would you like to do in the Army?

RONALD REAGAN, ACTOR: Dance.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BUCKLEY: Reagan the actor eventually becoming Reagan the politician, writing to Lorraine Wagner from the Oval Office. Wagner would eventually become an IRS worker, marry and have two children. Reagan's first marriage to actress Jane Wyman, he would acknowledge, was troubled.

WAGNER: "I know she loves me, even though she thinks she doesn't. Keep your fingers crossed for me."

BUCKLEY: The marriage would end in divorce, Mr. Reagan later marrying Nancy Davis. The Reagans and the Wagners were never social equals, but when the Wagners went west for vacation, Reagan was glad to greet them outside his Pacific Palisades home. There were letters and presents exchanged both ways.

The Wagners visited the Oval Office three times, twice presenting the president with homemade politically themed garbage cans.

WAGNER: "Once you were gone, I had a chance to really look at it. And that's when I realized I hadn't really expressed my appreciation. I've looked at it a half dozen times since you left, and it is almost as if I find something new each time."

BUCKLEY: Reagan reveals in the letters his human touch and his inner feelings, his thoughts on world events covering the last half of the 20th century, like his views on communism and China. It is 1972. Reagan is governor of California, Richard Nixon president. Nixon visits China.

WAGNER: "Personally, I think the Red Chinese are a bunch of murdering bums. I think the president probably believes the same."

BUCKLEY: It is a turbulent time in the U.S. Student protests are raging.

WAGNER: He did mention in one of his letters that he felt that he was being successful as governor because he was burned in effigy a little sooner than some other governors. BUCKLEY: Throughout their 50 years of epistles, Reagan could count on Wagner to defend him in letters to editors and to provide him with a window into middle America. Lorraine Wagner could count on correspondence that continued to come even after Reagan left office. January, 1992:

WAGNER: "I just addressed a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev and another to Boris Yeltsin." I'm really optimistic about what's going on in the Soviet Union.

BUCKLEY: Reagan expressed gratitude for their years of exchanges in his final letters to Lorraine, a teenaged fan who remained a fan, but became a friend.

WAGNER: I reread a lot of the letters. I think about them. And I care about them. And I'm grateful for the friendship and the memories that they give me. It's a treasure.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BUCHANAN: (AUDIO GAP) from President Reagan came just before he announced in a letter to the world that he'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. In that final personal letter to Lorraine, he acknowledged her and thanked her for their friendship.

Meanwhile, here at the library tonight, Americans continue to file past the casket of President Reagan. They're coming, as you said, Aaron, at a rate of somewhere around 1,800 to 2,000 people per hour. I've been through there. It is quiet inside as people walk past. There is an honor guard at attention. This will continue until tomorrow at approximately 6:00 p.m. local time. The following day, the president's casket moves to Washington -- Aaron.

BROWN: Frank, thanks.

Just stay on this shot for a second. Just look at those young faces, obviously, all too young to have known, to have lived in the time of President Reagan. But some day, some day, many of them -- not all, certainly, but many of them will remember this little moment in their life, when they were out in Simi Valley, California, and they walked through a presidential library, past the casket of the 40th president of the United States. So good for them.

BUCKLEY: And you can imagine -- yes, you can imagine, Aaron, that they will then tell their children some day when they come back to this library that they were here when this special moment took place.

BROWN: And that little one just wonders what's going on.

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: Frank, thank you very much -- Frank Buckley out in California tonight.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, inside the Reagan White House, a portrait in photographs. And later, our long love affair with morning papers continues. It is unending.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Earlier in the program, Jeff Greenfield touched on the power of the presidential image to sell an idea or a program or the candidate himself. This is precisely the opposite, the power of the image, in this case still photographs, to tell the truth, or as close to the truth as you can get inside the bubble that surrounds a president.

On the cover of "TIME" magazine this week, you can find one example, Ronald Reagan at the ranch. Photographer Diana Walker spent two decades on the White House beat. Her work is collected in "Public and Private: 20 Years of Photographing the Presidency."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DIANA WALKER, PHOTOGRAPHER: People do say that the presidency is probably the loneliest job you could have. And I have to say, I never had that impression with President Reagan. He seemed very happy in his job and in his skin.

You saw who he was in public. And he was that way, in my view, in private. He stood tall. He knew how to walk into a room. He knew how to look presidential. He really did. And he also was quite stylish in the way he dressed and how he looked. And he was wonderful at putting world leaders at ease when he was in private conversation with them.

The Reagan presidency, his two terms, this country was struck by several very large tragedies. And President and Mrs. Reagan were called upon to console many people, whether it was the families of the Marines who were killed in the bombing in Lebanon or the Challenger families. The president himself was quite emotional in a very quiet and dignified way in those moments. And I think he and Mrs. Reagan were extremely helpful to families who were going through a horrible time.

The Reagan administration was very good about setting up photo opportunities. One picture that I remember vividly was the president and Mrs. Reagan standing under the guns on the battleship USS Iowa. And you see all the sailors lined up and you see the president and Mrs. Reagan with their hands over their hearts. It is just such a beautiful picture. It almost looks like they're going to break out and dance, like you would in a Busby Berkeley musical.

The Statue of Liberty was 100 years old. There, the two of them were looking off into the distance at this beautiful symbol of our country and then the symbol of the presidency next door to them. This was the Reagan presidency.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: It's interesting. The program started with a look at Mrs. Reagan today and a discussion of that. And how many of those pictures were there with Mrs. Reagan and the president together?

Morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: OK, time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world.

One story that we don't have, but you will tomorrow, Tampa Bay won the Stanley Cup in the seventh game 2-1 tonight. Tampa Bay, of course, one of the great hockey cities in America. It produced Jean Beliveau, Jacques Plante, Gump Worsley, from Tampa Bay, all the greats, from Florida. Congratulations to them.

"The International Herald Tribune" leads otherwise. "Nine Militias in Iraq Said to Agree to Disband, But Doubts Emerge As Two Large Groups Are Not Included." The picture on the front page -- I'm finding the pictures really interesting today -- is the casket of Mr. Reagan being brought to the library in Simi Valley. There were two or three terrific shots today to choose from. And that's the one they chose. Anything else I like? Yes, but no time to do it.

"The Christian Science Monitor" also leads with Iraq. "Major Iraqi Militias To Stand Down. In Plans Announced Yesterday" -- that would be today -- "Some 100,000 Men Will Join Iraqi Police Or Security Forces. Sadr's Militia Will Not." That's kind of an afterthought. Here's a great story they're promoting for tomorrow. "How Far Would They Go For a Kidney?" It's the story of two men and the search for one kidney, the transplant market or the organ donor market that's out there.

What's not on "The Philadelphia Inquirer" front page, we note, no Smarty Jones story. The horse lost. They forgot him. It's a great paper. We love it.

Let's do this one. This is the money shot to me today. "Nancy Says Goodbye." This is "The Chicago-Sun Times." It was just tough to get the right angle for it, but it's a wonderful and human moment. The weather tomorrow in Chicago is "sweatshop," 90 degrees. Is that what is heading our way?

We'll wrap up the night in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: That's our report for tonight.

We've got a few seconds left. If we can pick up a shot in California again -- there we go, both inside and outside in Simi Valley. I just like the idea that parents are bringing their kids to this. It's not about politics. It's about history. And I think it's a very cool thing for them to do.

We'll see you tomorrow. Good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com