As Ronald Reagan journeyed triumphally from Texas to California in the closing hours of campaign '88, tipping his stetson to the crowds lining the streets for a glimpse of the Gipper on his last hurrah, it was plain that, whatever his failings, the American people are both forgiving and adoring.
More than any other modern President since John Kennedy, Mr Reagan has restored the ceremonial functions of the presidency. Although his popularity slipped during the Iran-Contra debacle, it is now back at its peak, and the Reagan era is being hailed as one in which America found heart and confidence again.
Although we have come to know over the years that everything sensible Mr Reagan says is scripted, down to small talk with child visitors to the Oval Office, his engaging style of saying it, his natural sense of humour, and his goodwill always come through.
Intellectually, he has never left Hollywood. Even his own favourite nickname, the Gipper, based on his role as the ill-fated quarterback in the film Knute Rockne - All American, was culled from silver screen archives. As Mr Reagan formally handed the baton to Vice-President George Bush in New Orleans this August he used his famous catchphrase once again: "Win one for the Gipper."
Mr Reagan's record is likely to be debated by historians for years. There have been achievements: the INF treaty with Moscow; the moves towards settling conflicts in Afghanistan, Angola, and the Gulf; successful military operations in Grenada and Libya; the reduction of inflation and interest rates; and the longest period of sustained economic growth in the post-war era. In short, he has provided the agenda of peace and prosperity on which Mr Bush seeks the White House.
However, the roots of these accomplishments, particularly on the foreign policy side, are more tangled than the conservative fans of Mr Reagan would admit. Moreover, economic prosperity has been built on a fragile base which means that young Americans may be required to pay the cost for generations to come with depressed living standards.
While American conservatives would argue that the US's new relationship with the Soviet Union was built on the firm defence policy of the Reagan team and on the modernisation of the strategic triad of the intercontinental MX missile, the Trident 2 submarine and the B-1 bomber, together with research on Star Wars, critics might argue that he was simply lucky. He was the American President who happened to be in office when the most important changes in the Soviet Union since the revolution were set in motion. There could have been no INF deal without Mr Gorbachev, as there could have been no movement on Afghanistan or Angola without the newly elevated Soviet President's contribution. However, Mr Reagan's conservative credentials enabled him to achieve the extraordinary rapprochement with the Soviet Union more easily than might have been possible for a Democratic President. But whereas Mr Reagan has been reasonably successful in managing big-power relations, he has often failed in his dealings with the little countries.
He began his presidency with the return of the 50 US diplomats held in Iran. But he has nothing to compare in the Middle East to the Camp David accord won by President Jimmy Carter. In Lebanon he was forced to retreat after the loss of 241 marines.
His amateur attempts at freeing hostages in Iran brought the greatest crisis of his presidency - the Iran-Contra affair. Mr Reagan has had good fortune with the economy. After the oil price shocks of the 1970s he came to office when an age of cheap energy was just beginning. This, together with the firm grip on monetary policy imposed by Mr Paul Volcker of the Federal Reserve - the other towering American figure of the 1980s - meant that the spiral of ever-higher inflation and interest rates was broken.
Under the guise of supply-side economics, the movement born in California where resentment of high taxes was at its peak, Mr Reagan built prosperity on an old-style Keynesian boom. But instead of using the fat years of prosperity to pare back the deficits and federal debt he allowed them to burgeon, creating a domestic debt legacy of $2,100 billion - or 43 cents for every dollar of US income - which will take generations to eliminate.
Moreover, the value of the dollar became caught up in the nationalist burst which Mr Reagan brought to the presidency, sending it soaring to new heights on the international markets and pricing US goods out of competition.
The result was a decline in basic heavy industry and agriculture and a foreign investment and takeover binge in the US which has created a bizarre value system. The Ivan Boesky affair and the Michael Deaver lobbying scandals provided grim evidence of a society which had abandoned self-discipline and had a value system out of kilter. It has also given rise to a fierce strand of economic populism and, potentially, isolationism, should the next Administration begin the long task of correcting fiscal and trade imbalances.
The darker side of the Reagan legacy is already being explored in popular books such as Landslide by the reporters Jane Mayer and Doyle McManus, Day of Reckoning by the Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman, and Rendezvous with Reality by Muray Weidenbaum, the former Reagan chief economic adviser.
Such works, written even before the old campaigner has ridden off to the sunset years at his ranch, lack the perspective history will bring. President Truman left office widely despised: in the 1988 campaign he was the President whose name was most invoked by both parties as the epitome of fighting American values.