GEORGIE ANNE GEYER Reagan's opinion of the world heartfelt

WASHINGTON -- As I think of Ronald Reagan's death, I am carried back to an extraordinary moment with him during the first week of December 1987 -- and to historical revelations.
New Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev was visiting the nation's capital, and there was euphoria in the air. Already, starting the June before, President Reagan had been deep into the offensive against Soviet communism; he had stood at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, near the Berlin Wall, and challenged Moscow in memorable words: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
That week in December found Ronald Reagan in a jubilant mood. He had come to the conviction that Gorbachev was a new kind of Russian, a "man I can do business with." And suddenly during this in many ways magical week, while 3,000-some journalists from all over the world tried in vain to get a peek at the two "peacemakers," four of us columnists were invited to the White House to speak with President Reagan.
From the first moment that we sat down in the Oval Office, it was clear that the president was flying high. Meticulously dressed, slim and with a full head of hair even then, he looked far younger than his years.
Someone asked the obvious question: Mr. President, you have always talked about the Soviet Union as the "evil empire" -- how can you now be dealing with Mikhail Gorbachev?
Reagan looked at us first with curiosity that we did "not understand," then with a quizzical impatience, and finally almost with pity as we pressed along on this line of questioning.
"Don't you journalists realize what is happening?" he kept saying. "We and the Russians are friends now. Mikhail and I are friends. The rest -- it's all over. It's all over. That's in the past now." He repeated similar words several times.
As we walked out of the White House that day, I was suddenly breathless. I managed to say to one of my colleagues, "I think we just heard the announcement of the end of the Cold War!"
Berlin Wall
You can mark the Cold War's passing as the moment the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, when Eastern and Western Europe were effectively reunited, or when the Soviet Union officially dissolved in December 1991. But that week of December 1987 was as good a marker as any.
"It's all over," Ronald Reagan told us as we left the White House that day -- and it was.
But as the 1990s were ushered in, the world floundered over what to do with or for the new Russia -- it didn't immediately turn over to representative democracy or free economy models. On top of that ambivalent transition, Islamic fundamentalism of the most radical and feral type suddenly raised its head.
And today, a new Republican administration fights against a vicious enemy in the Middle East -- all the while employing the mantra of "Ronald Reagan" to try to relate its own ideology and world view to the popular, even mythical memory of "Ronnie" and what seem now to be the good years.
But President Bush's attempts to link his radical philosophies of pre-emption, unilateralism and total destruction of an implacable enemy with Reagan just don't wash. Their approaches could not be more different.
President Reagan, as we saw that day in our interview, never set out to destroy every communist in the Soviet Union. Rather, he believed that he could convince them of the superiority of the Western system and win them over. Even his military and economic pressures during the 1980s on Moscow always stopped clearly short of war and were aimed at encouraging collapse from within.
Realist/idealist
President Reagan's method was to hold his own principles and standards at the heart of his being and of his administration -- and to work outward from those principles. He was a realist/idealist.
The Bush administration, on the other hand, looks at its enemy in an apocalyptic way. Islamic radicals are never redeemable; they must be totally destroyed. They are veritable vessels of evil, not men formed by a history that can be changed by other human acts.
President Reagan had many of the same radical neocons that dominate the George W. Bush administration in his own. (Elliott Abrams, the lead official on the Middle East in the Bush National Security Council, is one.)
Many of these current-day Bush men were involved in the greatest single scandal of the Reagan administration -- the Iran/contra fiasco. But they were always on the far margins of the Reagan White House, and Ronald Reagan put every possible resource at the disposal of the investigation.
In the Bush administration, these same Iran/contra radicals and their philosophical descendants are at the center of policy-making, and their attitudes toward the world, far from the sunniness and hope of Ronald Reagan's, are dark and Hobbesian, dwelling on the uses of sheer power and unrelieved force.
Ronald Reagan's inspirational "City on a Hill" vision of America is, in truth, nowhere to be found in George W. Bush's shadowy view of the world, where America proceeds to build up walls across the world instead of tearing them down.
This week, as we sadly lay a remarkable president to rest, he still gives us a lot to think about. We might do him the final honor of not allowing his shining memory to be usurped by heretical interpretations.
Universal Press Syndicate