The Making of a Great Communicator
Morgan, Edward P.
BOOKS The Making of a Great Communicator REAGAN by Lou Cannon Putnam. 464 pp. $18.95. By Edward P. Morgan To borrow from the E.F. Hutton ad, when Lou Cannon talks, his White House press corps...
...Probably neither Cannon nor anybody else can accurately answer those questions now...
...The unwritten strictures of truth in journalistic advertising require me to state publicly what my friends already know," Cannon writes, "that I like and respect Ronald Reagan while remaining skeptical that his actions will achieve the results that he intends...
...It's a good book, a valuable study of the Great Communicator from his boyhood in Illinois to the halfway point of his first term as the fortieth President of the United States...
...Cannon has covered Reagan almost steadily since 1966, when the actor was elected governor of California...
...Cannon does not neglect other important matters: Reagan's formative years...
...Such an insight may help us anticipate, to a degree, the answers to those pressing questions...
...Lyndon Johnson showed rare talent in manufacturing history to suit him, such as the fabrication that his granddaddy fought at the Alamo...
...Reagan is a thoroughly likable individual...
...More than any other public figure, Reagan represents the perfect marriage of politics and television...
...Cannon says candidly that he likes and respects the man...
...The question, which Cannon does not attempt to answer, is whether this leadership via the electronic media will lift the country or sink it...
...On the issue of arms control...
...his love for the outdoors bewil-deringly coupled with his Administration's devastating assault on the environment, and his utterly simplistic belief in the way government should function...
...This is not a profound book, but it is so loaded with facts that it is easy to see how unprofound President Reagan is...
...He has not left the world the way he found it...
...The militant Left of the electorate will be furious that Cannon has not torn his subject apart...
...the strength and counsel he derives from the inseparable Nancy...
...his virtually unbounded optimism (and stubbornness...
...He is not apologetic about his collection of Reagan gaffes...
...Reagan's ignorance and his unwillingness to make himself conversant with the complex issues of strategic nuclear weaponry has [sic] substantially undermined his own campaign positions of negotiating from a position of strength...
...How much influence did his Hollywood career have on his later life as a politician...
...Cannon's account demonstrates that Reagan has captured the tube and proved himself a far better actor in politics than in Death Valley Days or as the Gipper in Knute Rockne—All American...
...Now this seasoned Washington Post correspondent has written a biography entitled, appropriately, Reagan...
...And are the changes in the world he may have had a hand in for better or for worse...
...Ronald Wilson Reagan has been a leader," Cannon concludes...
...But they are towering questions...
...The question is, what kind of a leader...
...What Cannon has done in this biography is to provide a kind of Baedeker's Guide into the mental processes, character, and actions of the most powerful man in the world today...
...The man is a horseback-riding bundle of contradictions, and one weakness of the biography may be Cannon's failure to analyze deeply enough these bewildering paradoxes...
...How could a man betray his ignorance so abysmally and still climb Edward P. Morgan has been a journalist and broadcast commentator in Washington for more than twenty-seven years...
...What really caused Reagan to switch from a Roosevelt Democrat to a Goldwater Republican...
...through two terms as governor of the nation's most populous state to the coveted cockpit in the Oval Office...
...That perhaps is the main reason his staggering misstatements have not destroyed him...
...On various key defense and foreign policy issues," Cannon observes, "Reagan has simply failed to do his homework...
...Reagan may well top him...
...This failing could have grave consequences...
...his enormous belief in himself...
...Is he marching forward or backward...
...Hutton ad, when Lou Cannon talks, his White House press corps colleagues listen...
...For Cannon is the unchallenged journalistic expert on Ronald Reagan...
...The militant Right will be enraged that Cannon has omitted none of Reagan's major gaffes, an incredible collection of boo-boos, from Sacramento to Washington and beyond...
...The key word is "like...
...And when he writes, they pay special attention...
...his dubious if now fraying alliance with Jerry Falwell and pious company...
...In two pages Cannon cites three Reagan goofs and an outright lie...
...His winning personality has buoyed him up while Reaganomics and his other policies are losing in the polls and at the voting booths...
Vol. 47 • January 1983 • No. 1
