THE PICTURE PERFECTIONIST:

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200770819002>Close Reagan aide Michael K. Deaver dies (Johanna Neuman, 8/19/07, Los Angeles Times)

In a statement, Nancy Reagan said Deaver was “like a son to Ronnie” and “the closest of friends to both Ronnie and me in many ways.”

“Our lives were so blessed by his love and friendship for over 40 years,” she said. “We met great challenges together, not just in Sacramento during Ronnie’s years as governor, but certainly during our time at the White House. I will miss Mike terribly.” [...]

“He is the godfather of our business,” Mark McKinnon, a political consultant who helped steer George W. Bush’s first presidential campaign, told the Los Angeles Times in 2001. “He plowed a lot of ground that we now tread. Deaver was one of the first guys to understand the power of media, of pictures and images.”

His flawless backdrops – of President Reagan in a divided Berlin demanding that Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev “tear down this wall,” or of the president honoring “the boys of Point du Hoc” in Normandy at ceremonies marking the anniversary of D-Day in Europe, or even of Reagan being laid to rest as the California sun set over his presidential library in Simi Valley – were legendary.

“We remember the Reagan presidency through those stunning visuals,” Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, once said. “Image by image, Deaver took memorable visuals and paired them with memorable language.”