Oh there's no maybe about it. Reagan - "an actor?!" was the perfect foil for photo ops and propaganda. His lickspittle Michael Deaver created them such that as wikipedia says,

As Deputy Chief of Staff, Deaver worked primarily on media management, forming how the public perceived Reagan, sometimes by engineering press events so that the White House set the networks' agenda for covering him.

Which was a quantum leap from the flashbulb-handshake photo ops of the earlier presidents.

He coincided with Mtv, cable television, and the nascent seedlings of Fox News. Every demented rapist presser where Orange Julius presents stacks of binders filled with blank paper is drawn from the work Deaver did with Reagan.

Also remember that while Reagan had more public office experience than the demented rapist, he wasn't trained on anything - he wasn't a lawyer, didn't study foreign policy, wasn't in the military - he was an actor. And so while he was a conservative at heart most of the ridiculous idiocies were pitched to him and pending any kind of ok were run by evil toadies, just as it is today.

So yeah, he was probably nice enough as a neighbor or something, but as a President he created huge waves of evil we're still getting hit with today. (And which were called out at the time, btw.)