President Bush led the accolades, as he mourned the nation's 40th president during a D-Day commemoration at Colleville-sur-Mer, France.

"Twenty summers ago, another American president came here to Normandy to pay tribute to the men of D-Day. He was a courageous man himself and a gallant leader in the cause of freedom. And today we honor the memory of Ronald Reagan," Bush said to applause.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, Reagan's national security adviser, said his former boss took a principled stand against communism and never strayed.

"The president always believed that the Soviet people deserved a better system than the system they had. And he was going to make it happen not by war, but by peace, by showing the power of democracy," said Powell, speaking on CNN.

He also reflected on Reagan's optimism. He recalled an Oval Office debate among administration officials in 1988 over a dispute about whether Japanese investments were giving Japan too much leverage in the United States. Some questioned if something needed to be done, Powell said, as Reagan sat and listened.

As Powell remembers it, Reagan "smiled and said, `No, I am not going to do anything about it. I'm glad they know a good investment when they see one.'"

"That just blew us away," Powell said.

Reagan's political opponents also offered praise.

Former Vice President Walter F. Mondale hearkened back to a day when campaigns were more civilized. In the 1984 contest for the White House, challenger Mondale remembered Reagan as someone who aimed to "get elected with a strong majority of Americans that would allow him to unite the country and go in the direction he wanted to go."

Still, Mondale said, "In the campaign, there was no meanness. There was no viciousness. There was no kind of personal attacks or that sort of thing."

Reagan won 49 of the 50 states, the largest landslide since President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first re-election, in 1936 over Kansan Alf Landon.

Tributes also came from ordinary Americans.

"Ninety-eight percent will say he was a great communicator -- we greatly miss that these days," said Cal Mathieu of Aberdeen, S.D., at the White House visitors center.

Reagan, the oldest man ever elected to the presidency, "proved that age does not deteriorate the ability to govern wisely," Mathieu said.