I met him, once. First impressions: not good. Skin: thin. Self-esteem: high. Self-awareness: low. Saving grace: the odd good one-liner. He said people had asked him to be President of the United States (this was 2010) and I remember thinking: pah, fat chance. Proves what I know about people.

The reason I was meeting the then-future president Donald Trump was the honorary degree he was being given by Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen (he was stripped of it later when he called for Muslims to be banned from entering the US). Even at the time, lots of people were bewildered and angry by the idea of an honour for Trump; one RGU alumnus said to me “what’s he done to get it?” Good question.

But this was 2010. Things were different. A lot of us assumed someone like Trump couldn’t ever be elected, me included. All politicians have a high opinion of themselves I guess, but Trump’s was off the scale. He declared that only he could turn the US around. “With proper leadership, the country would do unbelievably well,” he said. He also told me about his golf course near Aberdeen and how only he could have pulled it off: “There were times when we probably should have given up – most people would have.” We saw all of this stuff, times-a-hundred, when he was president.

Now, of course, we have to worry about what he’ll do with his second term and the initial signs are troubling. First: his personality and attitudes are arguably worse: more arrogant, more angry. Second: the people he’s gathering round him: a vaccine sceptic as health secretary, a TV host as defence secretary, and a host of others with toast-dropping CVs who, above all, have shown loyalty to the boss and who Trump knows, when he asks them to do something, will say Yes Sir.

But what bothers me even more is the fact we’ve fallen so far in so short a time, and it’s been underlined for me by a superb new book, Reagan by Max Boot, that’s a reminder of how things used to be and what we’ve lost. Some people still see Ronald Reagan as a divisive or even derisory figure but read Boot’s extraordinary new biography and you may start to feel differently. You may feel, like I did, how timely the book is and hope we might be able to pick up some lessons for the future.

One of the particular reasons the book is so welcome is it really is the first comprehensive and fair biography of Reagan we’ve had. There have been hagiographies in the past, and hatchet jobs, but Max Boot looks with a clear eye at both the triumphs and the failures. Some of the latter may come to mind pretty quickly – Iran-Contra maybe – but Reagan’s approach in other areas which have traditionally been seen as black marks against him also get a much fairer analysis than they have in the past.

Aids for example. Reagan has often been accused of taking far too long to act and it’s fair to ask if treatment could have been accelerated, and more lives saved, had he made Aids a priority earlier. On the other hand, he did not take the more censorious approach his conservative critics wanted him to and by 1988, Aids was drawing the most federal money per patient of any other disease. The idea that Reagan was motivated by homophobia is also wrong: he was old-fashioned in some ways on the issue – he was born in 1911, remember – but earlier in his career, he opposed a ban on gay staff in public schools and his attitude on homosexuality was essentially live-and-let-live.

You can see similar trends in how Reagan behaved on other occasions. He was basically a likeable, humble guy who often thought about other people first. There’s a story in the book – and it may be the first time a political biography has made me cry – when, late in Reagan’s life and suffering from Alzheimer’s, his Secret Service agent and friend John Barletta had to tell the former president he couldn’t ride horses anymore. Barletta was in tears when he broke the news but instead of protesting or acting hurt, Reagan put his hand on Barletta’s shoulder and said, gently “It’s okay, John, I know.”

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Not only is the story touching, it’s significant because it goes to the heart of who Reagan was. In the entire book, there are only a couple of very minor stories about the president losing his temper, and there’s not a single quote from anyone, friend or foe, saying they didn’t like him. This – his amiability, his likeability – might seem trivial but it’s one of the reasons behind his greatest achievement: the end of the Cold War. Reagan didn’t have any great grasp of the details – we all know that – but he was able to establish a strong rapport with Gorbachev and it helped make agreement more possible.

Reagan was also pragmatic on the challenges of the Cold War, as he was on every issue in the end. Admittedly, a lot of his instincts came from his fear of Reds, born in the 1950s, and in public he spoke about the “evil empire”. But judge the man by his actions: he was willing to work with Gorbachev, he brought about the 1987 arms control treaty, and he was shrewd enough to support the changes that started to happen in the Soviet Union. It is this, above all else, that makes Reagan, of all the presidents, one of the greatest.

And in the end, it’s his pragmatism that matters most. He would often make speeches about reducing the size of the state and cutting taxes and welfare. But faced with a huge deficit in his first term, he actually increased public spending and raised taxes more than he cut them. He also increased some welfare benefits while tightening eligibility on others – reforms continued by Clinton. Boot’s conclusion is that in office, Reagan tried to make the right decisions rather than make decisions that would please the Right.

(Image: Reagan with the Queen)

If only the same could be said of Donald Trump; if only he could be more like Reagan. There will be some who see similarities between the two men – both former stars of showbiz, both often guilty of shocking ignorance of the details, and it was Reagan in fact who first used the catchphrase “make America great again”. But it’s the differences that matter. Reagan: humble, likeable, pragmatic, willing to listen and take advice, a good communicator, the greatest some say, and certainly considerably to the left of where Trump is now. Indeed, some Trump fans would call Reagan a RINO (Republican in Name Only).

Perhaps in office – like Reagan – Trump will be much more pragmatic and practical than he’s being now as president-elect. I hope so. But I do worry that politicians like Trump are becoming more common than politicians like Reagan. In our own country, Keir Starmer is at least trying to be pragmatic and that's good, although however hard he tries, he’ll never be as likeable or as charming as Reagan.

Much more worrying is the fact that the disillusionment and anger that helped get Trump elected are bubbling away in this country too. The historian Dominic Sandbrook said recently that one of the reasons the Democrats lost the US election is they spent more time talking about Trump supporters rather than talking to them and the same applies in this country doesn’t it? If we want fewer politicians like Donald Trump over there, or Nigel Farage over here, we have to start listening to the people who vote for them.