REAGAN'S 'UNFAIR ADVANTAGE' WAS HIMSELF FORMER PRESIDENT'S PUBLIC PERSONA REFLECTED INNER STRENGTH, CONFIDENCE.

Byline: Jonathan Dobrer Local View

I saw Ronald Reagan often as a kid (I was the kid. He was grown up.) ``We'' went to the same market. The three things that stood out to me as a child were his amazingly thick, Coke-bottle, glasses, the fact that he was always friendly and that he rescued my mom.

Mom was a life-long Democrat, a Democratic National Committee member and a charter member of the Central Democratic Committee. She would never, ever vote for Reagan.

Reagan knew this. But he and Mom always chatted amiably together. Now, it is also true that Ron knew my aunt Ida. She wrote for the ``trades'' and the movie magazines that were so popular at the time. Ida had done many articles on Ron, both when he was married to Jane and then later about his great romance with Nancy.

Maybe he was friendly as part of his job, and wanted to stay on Ida's good side. But I don't think so. He was not much of an actor. He was, however, pretty good at playing himself.

People often complained that he had an unfair advantage over ``normal'' politicians because he was an actor. They thought that the studios taught him how to use the camera, how to make the camera like him. This is, I believe, the post hoc ergo proctor hoc fallacy - the backward logic that wet streets cause rain and roosters bring on the sunrise.

He had an unfair advantage not by dint of training but because he had what the camera liked. He, like Jimmy Stewart or John Wayne, just came through the lens and radiated a strong, confident and friendly persona.

One day, my mom ran out of gas on the then pretty new San Diego Freeway near her house. Ron and Nancy happened by and, recognizing mom, stopped. They picked her up and took her to the gas station at Sunset and Barrington. She bought 5 gallons of gas, and then Ron and Nancy took her back to the freeway. They went north to the first exit, cut under and went back south to get her and the gas to her car. Ron poured it in. He made sure the car started, and then off they went in their different physical and political directions. A very telling story.

One of the great ironies of Ronald Reagan is that he saw the world in black and white - not racially, but in terms of good and evil. While my fellow liberals and I argued that the world was too complex for such a vision, we now tend to commit the very same sin of which we accused the late president.

Was he a good man or bad? Was he an amiable dunce or a cunning politician? I do not propose an answer to these harsh dichotomies, but instead I want to practice what I preach and try to see him more fully than can be summarized on a bumper sticker.

While I did not love the smell of tear gas in the morning on Sproul Plaza in Berkeley in the 1960s, I did not hate then-Gov. Reagan. Whatever deeply felt differences I had on issues of policy or politics, I could never say a word against the man.