From Meet the Press today, Peggy Noonan recalls...

He was a doll. He was just a deeply courteous boss. He was so nice. Tim, you know what I was thinking about him this morning, is a funny thing about Reagan. I don't think you can say this of any other president. You knew Reagan was coming in the halls of the White House because suddenly you would hear laughter. That's how you knew the boss was on his way. He always had an entourage, and he was always saying something and people were always cracking up around him. So I was thinking very much about his humor.

But he was a doll to work with. I wrote a very big--well, my first speech for him, I was so excited. It was for something very small like the teacher of the year, but I was a brand-new speech writer and so I was keen to make an impression. I wrote a 20-page speech that was a defense of the West and a damnation of the Soviet Union. I sent it to Reagan. The poor man got it. He knew it was utterly inappropriate. It was just wrong in every way. Instead of sending it back to me and saying, "This is a bunch of garbage," he neatly put a line through about 80 percent of what I wrote, then rewrote a few things, then wrote a note to me at the end that said, "What a wonderful speech this is. Unfortunately, it's a little too long. I had to shorten it. I hope you don't mind." And I was so stupid, I believed him. It took me months to figure out, "Oh, man, this is a courteous boss."