Before there was Arnold, there was Ronald

By Lou Cannon

PublicAffairs, 579 pp.,

illustrated, $30

The modern era of conservatism began with a 400-year-old Bible, a group of collegiate chamber singers doing a midnight rendition of ''America the Beautiful,'' a solemn oath - and one of the best jokes any American politician made in the last century. It was hours before dawn on Jan. 2, 1967, and the new governor of California, Ronald Wilson Reagan, turned to Senator George Murphy and cracked, ''Well, George, here we are on the late show again.''

Murphy would fade into the mists of history, remembered more as a curiosity than as a lawmaker. But the man who placed his hand on that Bible, carried to California by Father Junipero Serra two centuries earlier, was destined to endure in history - as the first modern conservative, as the greatest communicator of the 20th century, as a symbol of the ascension of entertainment values to politics, as a reminder that the politician who is underestimated is often the politician who is triumphant.

Ronald Reagan personified the new conservatism. He was an actor, not a banker. He was an open-faced optimist, not a cranky pessimist. He wanted change, not the status quo. He was the first American conservative since Calvin Coolidge whose governing style was to put up his own program, not merely to oppose somebody else's. He was a radical, and proud of it. He was, to borrow a phrase from Barry Goldwater, a choice, not an echo.

Reagan's political style was formed in the political struggles of the Screen Actors Guild, in the mashed-potato speaking circuit organized by General Electric, in the television studio where he filmed the most successful speech of the Goldwater campaign in 1964. All that was precursor. The main event began in 1967, when Reagan assumed the governor's chair in Sacramento.

The eight years that Reagan spent as governor have been overshadowed, of course, by the two terms he served as president. Those eight years, moreover, have receded into legend and lore. That is why Lou Cannon's new volume, ''Governor Reagan,'' is such a welcome contribution to the political bookshelf.

One paragraph shows why. That paragraph wasn't written by Cannon, who has spent most of his adult life chronicling the Reagan experience. That paragraph was uttered by Reagan himself, in the second, more traditional inaugural ceremony that followed the midnight swearing-in. It goes like this:

''The path we will chart is not an easy one. It demands much of those chosen to govern, but also from those who did the choosing. And let there be no mistake about this: We have come to a crossroad - a time of decision - and the path we follow turns away from any idea that government and those who serve it are omnipotent. It is a faith impossible to follow unless we have faith in the collective wisdom and genius of the people. Along this path government will lead but not rule, listen but not lecture. It is the path of a Creative Society.''

Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, we recognize that paragraph as a classic statement of American values in the third quarter of the 20th century. The beginning is reminiscent of John F. Kennedy, who until Reagan arrived on the scene and the screen was considered the master of the television arts in politics. Kennedy asked Americans to consider what they could do for their country; Reagan said his new path demands much of the American people.

But deep in that paragraph is a transition sentence that marks a great American transition. It introduces the truly big idea of the Reagan years, the notion that government must shrink in power, influence, and size.

All that began at the beginning of the Reagan gubernatorial years, eight years of conflict and, yes, contradiction. In Sacramento, Reagan developed his management style and found the sweet spot in American politics - the idea that the public was willing to equate smaller government with bigger freedom, was willing to treat taxation as a form of tyranny, and was willing to reward entrepreneurship and independence even as it devalued government dependency.

In Sacramento, Reagan, who didn't once describe himself as a ''conservative'' in his first campaign, embraced taxes to fight the budget deficit he inherited from Governor Edmund G. Brown, signed legislation broadening abortion rights, sided with prison-reform advocates, and built a strong environmental record. Much of this his acolytes would call pragmatism.

But he also was a relentless foe of permissivism - that's a word you don't hear anymore - on campus, he reshaped welfare in a state that had just become the nation's biggest, and he won a struggle to provide property-tax relief. He was on his way - to history, to the presidency, to forging a new conservatism.

Cannon knows Reagan like few others. As a reporter, he converted Reagan's first campaign, his gubernatorial years, and his presidency, the latter last with The Washington Post. He was not, perhaps, present at the creation, but he witnessed more than almost anyone. As a biographer, he has a breezy, moderate style, combining admiration and skepticism in doses that will neither please neither Reagan's supporters or his equally ardent opponents.

This volume, though titled ''Governor Reagan,'' begins long before the Sacramento years and takes Reagan to the cusp of his presidential inauguration. The chapters that deal with the period following his gubernatorial terms set the stage for the White House, but much of that is adapted from Cannon's earlier work and is in any case a standard interpretation. Not so the material leading up to Reagan's 1966 campaign and his years as governor.

It is no surprise to anyone that Reagan was possessed of one big idea but required considerable tutoring on the details. Cannon, however, paints a captivating portrait of a politician-in-training, explaining how a crusty California assemblyman named Charles J. Conrad ''explained to him how legislation was passed and the governor's role in the process.'' Then, according to Cannon, Reagan's handlers hired a team of behavioral psychologists who produced eight briefing books that eventually formed the bedrock of Reagan's gubernatorial program.

But they - the handlers, the behavioral psychologists - didn't make Reagan. His childhood in Illinois, his years as a lifeguard and radio broadcaster, his roles on the screen, his struggles in the political crucible of Hollywood, his evenings giving speeches in grim banquet halls - all these, plus the Depression and world war that shaped his entire generation - sculpted the Ronald Reagan who took that oath in the dark of early morning in Sacramento. He was of his time, of course - and he was his own man.

''I am not a politician,'' Reagan said in speeches in the gubernatorial campaign. ''I am an ordinary citizen with a deep-seated belief that much of what troubles us has been brought about by politicians; and it's high time that more ordinary citizens brought the fresh air of common-sense thinking to bear on these problems.'' He was not a politician, and yet he was one of the signature politicians of the age. It was in Sacramento that the main act began.

David M. Shribman, for a decade the Globe's Washington bureau chief, is executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.