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Ah God, for a man with heart, head, hand,
Like some of the simple great ones gone
For ever and ever by,
One still strong mind in a blatant land,
Whatever they call him, what care I,
Aristocrat, democrat, autocrat -- one
Who can rule and dare not lie.

-- Tennyson

In school in the '70's, you could feel, if you were perceptive, the ingrown, dispirited atmosphere that pervaded the whole country. It was like we'd all had the wind knocked out of us by Watergate, Viet-Nam, the gas crisis, and a million other things. Looking at my possible life after graduating High School, I could see only low wages, high prices, high interest, high unemployment -- especially in the careers I wanted to enter.

Mt. Saint Helens blew up, Three Mile Island melted down, Skylab fell on Australia. All we could do about international crises was boycott the Olympics and impose sanctions. The "Window of Opportunity" was opening, we were told, and the Soviets would soon be more powerful than we. Nixon, Ford, Carter -- such small, limpid, uninspiring men.

When I graduated from College in 1983, everything had changed. I hadn't supported Ronald Reagan, by the way; I wanted John Connally for President. Reagan was "just a movie actor" in my view. But now there he was -- Presidential, sticking out his chest, squaring his shoulders, issuing his call to arms:

"I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing!"

True, in '83 we were still in what was called "The Reagan Recession" and I had a hard time at first finding a job with my trusty Liberal Arts Degree. All around me, Reagan was being portrayed as an idiot, out of his depth, "Gambling With History." But for the first time, that didn't matter. The spirit in the country was different. I had no doubt that better times were coming. And they did.

How did he do it? He reached back into the dim recesses of that cultural memory we all shared but no longer trusted and grabbed hold of the crackling high tension wire that is America's soul. And once the current was flowing, he never allowed that connection to be broken.

And, oh yes. He applied a little old fashioned yankee realism and common sense to financial and foreign policy, sparking an economic surge that (with one brief pause) ran until the late '90's and a geopolitical surge that left us the one, lone superpower.

Ronald Reagan, gainsayers and cynics to the contrary, will be remembered as the man who breathed new life into America -- who restored our soul. And by restoring our soul, he changed the world.

God bless you Mr. President, and may flights of angels sing you to your rest.