Reagan was first and foremost a gentleman

John D. Negroponte is a United States career diplomat and national security official. He has served as a U.S. ambassador to four countries, as well as a U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Ambassador Negroponte also twice served on the National Security Council staff, and was named America’s first Director of National Intelligence under President George W. Bush. Negroponte’s most recent position in government was as Deputy Secretary of State, where he served as the State Department’s chief operating officer.

I worked for the Reagan presidency in three different positions: as an Ambassador, as an Assistant Secretary of State and — during the last fourteen months of his second term — in the White House as his Deputy National Security Advisor under General Colin Powell.

Reagan was first and foremost a gentleman. He was always courteous and composed. General Powell and I would provide his national security and intelligence briefing every workday morning in the Oval Office from 9:30 to 10:00. The meetings inevitably started with about five minutes of ice-breaking banter, often with the President reciting one of the latest jokes he had heard about the floundering Soviet economy. The jokes were never off-color.

The President was punctilious about doing his homework. If we gave him something to read in the afternoon, he would usually have read it by the time we met the next morning. For example, he read Secretary Gorbachev’s just-published book Perestroika on the eve of their Washington summit in December of 1987. In a similar vein, he had lunch with 12 academic experts to prepare for his summit meeting. Ronald Reagan was a good study and a good listener.

When it came to foreign relations, President Reagan was especially intent on building good relations with our principal neighbors, Mexico and Canada. He began the now-established tradition of an American president meeting his Mexican counterpart when one or the other was president-elect. So, as President-elect, Reagan met Mexican President José López Portillo in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on January 5, 1981. And, in turn Reagan met with Mexican President-elect Miguel de la Madrid on October 8, 1982, in Coronado, California. For President Reagan, being a good neighbor was a core value. I am convinced that his model for relations with the hemisphere was inspired by Franklin Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor” policy of the 1930s, a formative period in Reagan’s own life. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Ronald Reagan presided over the most important immigration reform of his time.

Ronald Reagan was a man of wisdom, humor, unfailing courtesy and measured temperament. I personally observed these traits for some fourteen months during daily meetings in the Oval Office, meetings with foreign leaders and in the Situation Room. He would have been appalled by Donald Trump’s utterances and behavior. Mr. Trump has no claim whatsoever to the mantle of Ronald Reagan.