I thought his self-deprecating humor was priceless - in fact I miss it. It was a quality I admired in him. As for his political stuff, there are good and bad things. All in all, I'd give him a B, mainly for the fall of the Soviet Union, building up our military, the ability to make all politicians like him on a personal level despite any political disagreements, his admiration for FDR, and giving the nation what seemed like hope again after the Nixon fiasco, the inept Carter administration (and mind you I really like and admire Jimmy Carter - he was just to pure and puritanical IMO to be effective in D.C.), and the Iranian hostage fiasco. The bad things were the poor economy (which I never credit or discredit solely to the Pres.), the rise of the current push to a Theocracy. I guess the AIDS crisis was a bad deal for him as well. He should have acted sooner. That he did not is sad because many may have altered their behavior and not contracted the virus had they known earlier. Having said that, many govt.'s on the local levels did try to act earlier but the gay community would have none of it - not really their fault because not much was really known for sure about the disease and thus, the acts of the local govt.'s were seen as an oppressive acts attempting to shove gays back into the closet and gay rights were just really coming about, etc.
Note: this is my opinion and I am not going to debate it, lest we have WWIII
BTW - I think Nancy ALWAYS looked fantastic (yea I know "on the backs of the people" but hey all do it
) and say what you want about her, but a friend of mine was in her personal security detail and said, years later and under no apparent duress, that she was one of the classiest and nicest people he ever knew much less worked for. Interestingly, I loved the fact that she had an astrologer and the fact that she seemingly bucks the far right wing of today a la the FDR off of and RR onto the currency.