The death of Ronald Reagan, coming as it does in a season when world leaders are marking the liberation of Europe, is a reminder that great men are handed up by each generation — and sometimes from surprising quarters. Mocked during his quest for the presidency as a former actor, he bested his opponents with his mastery of the political stage. Derided as a dunce by his critics in the Ivy League, the president with the Eureka College education turned out to have a superior understanding of the economic errors that had ravaged America in the 1970s. And the man set down as a simple conservative overturned a strategy of stalemate that had become entrenched in the nuclear age and introduced the idea that the tyranny of communism could be rolled back and the reach of liberty extended where all too many had stopped dreaming it was possible.

He was neither a farmer like Washington, nor a lawyer like Lincoln, nor a military man like Eisenhower. Reagan was an artist. It turns out that he took his acting career seriously, read widely in intellectual journals, and crafted his own speeches with an extraordinary ear that was no doubt tuned in Hollywood. It was in Hollywood, during his presidency of the Screen Actors Guild, that he first confronted the communist enemy with whom he would spend the rest of his career locked in combat. Reagan was the only president to have been the leader of a labor union. It was no coincidence that it was he who awarded the Medal of Freedom to free labor’s most celebrated point man in the struggle against communism, Irving Brown of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Reagan’s political apprenticeship was in the job that produced the Roosevelts — the governorship of a big and diverse state. His great qualification, though, was to have stood apart during the years of détente and appeasement. His accession at a relatively advanced age gave him an ability to remain calm and, in some ways, detached in a way that completely confounded his opponents. One of our favorite moments was when he came under criticism because his staff had failed to wake him when American military jets downed two Libyan aircraft in the Gulf of Sidra. Reagan seemed to be saying, “You wanted them to wake me for that?”

Another of our favorite stories about Reagan is told by Evan Galbraith, one of the several wonderful ambassadors Reagan sent to France during the 1980s. The ambassador had flown to Washington to brief Reagan on a pending visit with President Mitterrand. Once Mr. Galbraith got inside the Oval Office, he told Reagan that he needed to give him a quick education of the complexities of the trade issue that dwarfed all others in Mitterrand’s mind — corn gluten. Reagan laughed and told the ambassador that he didn’t need an education on corn gluten or its importance. He was from Illinois, after all. Then he leaned forward, opened the bottom drawer of his desk, and said,”I keep a jar of corn gluten right here in my desk — I use it to feed the squirrels.”

It was a practical grasp of economic realities that, in our opinion, explained Reagan’s triumph in economic policy. He was from California, where the tax revolt began, fueled by the discovery by ordinary persons that inflation had pushed them into tax brackets that were originally intended only for the rich. Reagan also understood the concept of incentives and marginality, that it was important to target tax cuts on the top margin, on the next dollar earned. It was this recognition that undergirt supply-side tax cuts, which reduced the top rate and not only brought in higher revenues in absolute terms but boosted the share of the overall tax take that was paid in by the highest earners.

Reagan was master of the strategic negotiations with the Soviet Union. He may have been mocked by Vice President Mondale for failing to understand that an intercontinental missile couldn’t be recalled once in flight, but he knew at whom to aim them. Reagan’s greatest moment was no doubt at Reykjavik, Iceland, at the summit called by the Soviet party boss, Mikhail Gorbachev. The meeting was the moment Reagan refused to back off from his strategic defense initiative known as Star Wars. Kenneth Adelman, who directed the arms control and disarmament agency, related, in an account in the Wall Street Journal, how, after negotiations had gone into overtime, the president left a second-floor huddle with his staff and descended a flight to the negotiating room. His staff settled down for another long wait.

Suddenly, as Mr. Adelman told the story, a huge Secret Service agent flung open the door to say, “They’re breaking!” Reagan’s staff scrambled to gather its papers and raced downstairs. “I spotted Mr. Gorbachev and then the president leaving the parlor for the front door,” Mr. Adelman wrote. “Mr. Reagan’s face, red and angry, told me all I needed to know.” The president escorted the general secretary to his limousine. Mr. Gorbachev tried to console him. He said he couldn’t imagine anything else they could have done. Mr. Reagan, still steaming, looked him in the eye and said, “Well, you could have said yes!”

A dozen years later, Mr. Adelman wrote, Mr. Gorbachev was asked how it happened. “How he came into office ruling the communist Soviet Union, and left office with no Soviet Union and no communism. What was the turning point? Without hesitation, he answered: ‘Oh, it’s Reykjavik.'”

From Reagan, President Bush can draw much encouragement, but also guidance. Reagan would not be discouraged by the derision being heaped on his stands on the war, on taxes, and on culture, even if it comes from the elites of the Ivy League and the progressive elements on both coasts — or the same liberal editorial writers now singing Reagan’s praises in gauzy prose. But neither would Reagan have shied away from the intelligentsia. Reagan found one of his greatest envoys, Ambassador Kirkpatrick, by reading an article she wrote in Commentary. He also reached out to his adversaries. He ran an exceptionally inclusive administration. His big tent was called the Reagan Coalition because it included many Democrats. No doubt this is one reason such a wide array of Americans are offering such heartfelt encomiums at the hour of his passing.