Today Americans, at work, at play or at home, will stop what they are doing and turn to listen or watch the funeral service for President Reagan. At 7 a.m. today, the public viewing of his coffin in the Capitol Rotunda will end, with hundreds of thousands, on two coasts, having paused to pray for him or to contemplate the meaning of his leadership or simply to try to understand why they, themselves, feel so moved at the time of his passing. And no doubt millions will wonder, what would Reagan do now? And who deserves his mantle?

The services will begin at 11:30 a.m. at the National Cathedral. Irish tenor Ronan Tynan will sing Franz Schubert’s “Ave Maria” and there will be remarks by Senator Danforth, Justice O’Connor, President George H.W. Bush, Prime Minister Mulroney, and Baroness Thatcher. Though we would have liked to see someone representing the sector known as the Reagan Democrats — Ambassador Kirkpatrick, perhaps — it’s a fine lineup.

The speaker the country will be listening to most attentively is President Bush. He will be delivering a eulogy, not a stump speech, so it’s not the moment for a tub-thumping pep talk. But it has to be an important moment for him, one in which he has the opportunity to give us a glimpse of his understanding of the man he looks up to more than his own father. And the opportunity comes at a moment when there are uncanny similarities between the challenges Reagan faced and those of the younger man who now holds his office.

Both men are being mocked for their policies on taxes and war. Reagan faced down an extraordinary amount of ridicule in respect of his stand on taxes. He understood the basic point that the tax burden was heavy enough that a reduction in top marginal rates could be put through in a way that would provide such an incentive to new economic activity that eventually revenues would be even bigger. President George H.W. Bush flinched on this principle and lost his presidency. But the current president exhibits a stubborn adherence to the Reagan faith in supply-side principles.

They are also similar in respect of the war. It has often seemed to us that the passage of time has dimmed the memory of what it was like as Reagan confronted the Soviet Union. When, after the Soviet tyrants deployed their SS-20s Reagan insisted on the deployment of Cruise

and Pershing missiles in the European theater, the Continental left went into a nervous breakdown. As they, and all too many editorial writers here at home, did when Reagan walked out at Reykjavik, rather than give up the idea of missile defense known as Star Wars.

People panicked. Editorial writers lost their nerve. The New York Times used the phrase “march of folly” and plugged for accepting the deal that the Kremlin offered. It accepted the formulation of the Soviet party boss, Mikhail Gorbachev, that Americans were “just itching to get this world domination and look down on the world from on high.” The idea seemed to horrify. Reagan’s judgment was mocked and his idealism denied.

It all reminds us of nothing so much as the ridicule that our current president faces as he tries for a “rollback” of long-entrenched dictatorial regimes in the Middle East, as he holds out the hope for the expansion of democracy to lands that haven’t seen it for decades, if ever. Reagan would have understood what Mr. Bush has been saying down to the ground. Reagan would have understood Mr. Bush’s social conservatism. Most of all, he would have understood and appreciated the appeal of a strong stand for a clear idea based on a belief deeply held.

Will Americans gain a glimpse of this today? Can Mr. Bush craft his eulogy in a way that illuminates the fact that President Reagan and Senator Kerry are polar opposites and that he and the 40th president are soulmates? A funeral is not an inapt moment for people to be thinking about what a man is made of. Or about the tricks that history can play.