Michael White

The pundits who yesterday claimed a place for Ronald Reagan in the pantheon of great US presidents spoke truer than many of them seemed to realise when they said he had restored America's self-confidence and made the country what it is today. As he boasted at the time: "It's morning in America." He won two landslide elections off the back of that boast, despite the vast federal deficit and being terror-bombed out of Lebanon, despite the self-deluding gaffes and much skulduggery, including support for what we now call Islamist terrorism. So Reagan's greatness is a bold claim, but a fair one

The former Hollywood actor turned 40th president did indeed become the symbol of America's final victory over the Soviet Union in the cold war. Side by side with Margaret Thatcher, he also led the rightwing reaction to the settlement bequeathed to the boys who stormed the D-day beaches by FDR's New Deal and the 1945 Attlee Labour government. From being the solution, the state became the problem. Much of the confusion inherent in current US policy - from Kyoto to Baghdad - stems from that flawed insight. As such, Reagan has a lot to answer for at the bar of history, as much at home as abroad. Y