The thing is that Reagan was a communicator and could get his message across. He had pretty simple messages, because the actual policy groundwork was done by others and he knew the general concepts and could express them well.
My point is that Ryan is great at the policy groundwork, but he’s not good at the message. What we need is somebody like Reagan, who had a general conceptual idea, was intelligent and an excellent speaker and obviously a good administrator (I think he had managed his own acting career at various points), and relied on people like Paul Ryan to give him the information and the key talking points that he needed.
I had the opportunity to be involved in some actions taken by Reagan when he was Gov. of California. Reagan was his own ‘man’ which I believe started in his childhood. As governor he certainly listened to advisers and even the ‘common’ person, but when push came to shove he was Reagan. There were somethings that I would have preferred he had acted on differently but all in all Reagan was a man of and by and for the people.