Jun. 12 - For some folks, one person can be the common thread connecting people and events over the years, even decades.

For me, that person was Ronald Reagan.

I was in college when he first ran for governor of California.

"Yeah, and I'm running for Superman," was my first thought.

But people often underestimated Reagan. That worked to his advantage.

I paid scant attention to his two terms as governor while I finished college and served in the Army. But in 1978, about the time I began writing politics for the Orange County Register, Reagan launched his second White House bid.

It's the 1980 campaign and the early White House years I remember best. By then, the common thread I just mentioned was getting thicker, thanks to some amazing Reagan yarns. Like the one about Reagan offering former President Gerald Ford a "co-presidency" - in the form of the vice presidential nomination.

That one probably was bull.

A friend, campaign staffer Kathy Beasely, was in a suite with Reagan at the Republican convention when Walter Cronkite interviewed Ford. Millions watched as the nation awaited Reagan's choice of a running mate.

Beasely told me Reagan's reaction to the Ford's scenario for power sharing was disbelief, then anger.

"I've seen enough," Beasely said Reagan told an aide. "Call George Bush."

The episode helps explain how we got Bush I. And Bush II.

Some call Reagan's "There you go again" debate quips to President Carter the decisive moments of the campaign. But the key event, which I covered, may have been Reagan's pledge that, if elected, he'd name the first woman to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Strategist Stu Spencer, who grew up wanting to coach football and wound up coaching the actor who played "The Gipper," called that the turning point in what had been an even race.

In 1981, Reagan kept his word, appointing Sandra Day O'Connor to the court.

There are other stories I had a piece of.

Reagan's claim - seemingly ludicrous but not entirely wrongly - that trees cause smog. Passage of his first tax cut bill.

Seventy thousand-plus people cheering at the Orange County rally that launched his 1984 re-election campaign.

The list goes on.

In his second term, I watched and sometimes wrote as Reagan revved up the arms race - really a dollars-versus-rubles race. Dollars, of course, won hands down. In the meantime, we scribblers struggled to reconcile Reagan's "Evil Empire" rhetoric and his making nice with Mikhail Gorbachev.

But there we went again, underestimating Reagan. Just look at a new world map. Where's the Soviet Union?

Meanwhile, of course, the deceptive, ruinous Iran-Contras arms-for-hostages fiasco nearly led to Reagan's impeachment.

And, in 1988, a University of California, Irvine medical researcher reported that a computer analysis of Reagan's speech patterns indicated "cognitive impairment."

Of course, things would get worse.

Years later, I'd wonder if that analysis was a precursor of the Alzheimer's disease that slowly disabled him. Throughout it all, the hunt was always on for the "real" Reagan.

Few except for his wife, Nancy, really knew him. Edmund Morris, his official biographer, was so stumped he fabricated a character - an older version of himself - as an interpretive device.

I think another biographer, Lou Cannon, came closest to finding the essential Reagan.

Cannon said Reagan was an affable loner whose bounce-around, place-to-place childhood made it hard for him to get close to people. He was smart in a throw-back way; he reasoned more by analogy than deductive logic. He was good at it; that's why his speech segments that began with, "That reminds me of a story" were so persuasive.

His values - which even he conceded he didn't always live up to - flowed from an old small-town America that some say never was, except in his imagination.

But that, Cannon implies, made him unabashedly - even naively - decent. And appealing to a country weary of malaise and cynicism.

Reagan himself wrote - and re-wrote - key parts of his political scripts. But he remained an actor and proud of it. The presidency, Cannon wrote, was the role of his life.

It was one hell of an act. And - by and large - a class one.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Larry Peterson, senior reporter