Reagan legacy weighed amid 100th birthday

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. - Ronald Reagan's name is enshrined on an airport, an aircraft carrier, belt buckles and highways. His likeness, with that sunny smile, appears on drink coasters, statues, talking dolls and a Rose Bowl Parade float.

Conservatives and scholars make the pilgrimage to his presidential library in Simi Valley, a showcase of all things Reagan. Presidential candidates debate there, hoping to be dubbed heir to the Reagan legacy. Even prominent Democrats such as President Barack Obama sometimes invoke his name.

As the 100th anniversary of Reagan's birth approaches on Sunday, a generation after he left the White House, the nation's 40th president is held in higher esteem now than when he was in office. Still, the popular image of "The Gipper" - resolute, square-shouldered, unfailingly optimistic - overlooks a more complicated presidency, and person.

Do Americans have a clear idea of who he was? "No," says historian Kevin Starr.

How did a former radio announcer, middling actor and union leader in Hollywood become a titanic figure in American history? Even with his reputation as the Great Communicator, "there remains something opaque, something . . . even mysterious in Ronald Reagan," Starr says.

This week the nation will celebrate Reagan's life, with tributes from a video to be shown at the Super Bowl in Texas to a Beach Boys concert in California. Senators will do so in floor speeches in Washington, and Sarah Palin will speak at a banquet tonight in Reagan's honor in Santa Barbara, near his beloved ranch.

Long a Republican hero, Reagan was praised for his role in ending the Cold War, kick-starting an ailing economy and coaxing Americans out of a collective funk. At turns revered on the right and reviled on the left in his 1980s heyday, he now ranks among Americans' most admired presidents.

But the Reagan myth can obscure the man Reagan.

His son Ron says he sometimes doesn't recognize the pop-culture version of his father, the man held up as a patriarch of Republican politics. And he thinks attempts to idolize his father, known for his modesty, miss the point.

"When we are electing presidents we are electing human beings and all human beings have flaws," Reagan, 52, tells The Associated Press.

In his recently published book, "My Father at 100," Reagan describes his father as "warm, yet remote" and "easy to love, yet hard to know." "You may think you know Ronald Reagan, or at least the 90 percent or so that was so long and frequently on public display," he writes.

"However, even to those of us who were closest to him, that hidden 10 percent remains a considerable mystery."