What they said then, and what they're saying now

What a magnificent week it was wherein the nation buried Ronald Reagan. Overdone, perhaps, and a bit too much of a muchness. Still, it was wife and choreographer Nancy's final gift to her husband - regarding whom, her beloved Ronnie, it wasn't always so.

The week had unlikely people on the fringe - too often called "observers" - saying astounding things. As one watched in awe, one listened in incredulity. Many of those most fulsome in praise of Reagan now were most sneering in criticism of him then - which set the mind to comparing President Reagan's circumstances to President Bush's.

Reagan viewed his foremost achievement as winning the Cold War. During the funeral week, many agreed. But Mikhail Gorbachev did not. He termed the very notion as "not serious," adding: "I think we all lost the Cold War." What's more, Reagan's military buildup and commitment to Star Wars, he said, had "no connection" to either the Soviet implosion or the Cold War's end. Nancy Reagan graciously put Gorbachev on the list of invitees to Reagan's Washington service, but she did so despite his abiding faith in the virtues of dialectical materialism.

Tom Brokaw, reputedly the most moderate of the network anchors, got an invitation, too. And Dan Rather, in announcing Reagan's death, is said to have been close to tears. But if the two are offering themselves as Reagan disciples today, they were hardly so years ago:

- Brokaw, in Mother Jones, April 1983, on Reagan's values: "Pretty simplistic. Pretty old-fashioned. And I don't think they have much application to what's currently wrong or troubling a lot of people. . . . Nor do I think he really understands the enormous difficulty a lot of people have in just getting through life, because he's lived in this fantasy land for so long."

- Rather, on "CBS Evening News," March, 1992: "In America in the 1980s, what former President Reagan and those who support him call the Reagan Revolution put more money in the pockets of the rich. We already knew that. But a new study indicates that those who did best of all by far were the very richest of the rich."

Further quotes, culled from a report by the ever-vigilant Media Research Center:

- Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, 1991: "Reagan's approval ratings never put him in the top rank of most popular Presidents."

- ABC's Jim Wooten, 1990: "Ah, yes. The dreaded federal deficit - created, for the most part, by the most massive peacetime military buildup in America's history."