This man was truly a wonderful person.

Read the newly published “The Reagan Diaries” if you want a true insight into the mind of the nation’s 40th president.

The diaries — written daily from 1981 until President Ronald Reagan left office in 1989 — reveal him to be much more involved in the nitty gritty of national and world affairs than many White House reporters thought. He had often been portrayed as a detached, “chairman of the board” kind of president.

The diaries show that Reagan had something to say about everything and everybody; his thoughts were often summarized in one handwritten sentence. His notations mixed the profound with the trivial.
Historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited the publication of the diaries, had to toss out chunks to boil the entries down to a 696-page memoir. But no one is shortchanged.

Reagan comes across as deeper, funnier, more religious and more humble than he seemed when he was striding across the world stage. He is true to his public persona — foe of communism, tax increases, organized labor and, often, the news media.

The diaries are replete with his devotion to his wife, Nancy, and his despair at being lonely when she was not around.

On July 6, 1983, Reagan said: “Nancy’s birthday! Life would be miserable if there wasn’t a Nancy’s birthday. What if she’d never been born? I don’t want to think about it.”

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