Covering the Gipper
BARNES, FRED
Covering the Gipper One of Reagan's great advantages was that he didn't care for or about members of the press. BY FRED BARNES RONALD REAGAN had an unusual way of dealing with reporters and...
...Actually, relationship overstates it...
...The public thought otherwise...
...They hissed when I asked it...
...He didn't flatter them, as some politicians do, by pretending to admire their work, in hope they'd produce puff pieces about him...
...My friend Tom DeFrank, now Washington bureau chief of the New York Daily News, suggested I ask Reagan why he didn't go to church...
...The question, in my humble view, turned out to be better than the answer...
...Several months later, I got a note from Reagan...
...I must admit that I was surprised by the speed with which things have been happening," he added, "but I never doubted communism would eventually fail...
...I was part of the blur again...
...I glanced at Fitzwater and Griscom as Reagan spoke...
...He instantly named the movie, Sergeant Murphy, outlined the plot, and recalled being tricked into riding a wild horse one day after filming was done...
...of course I thought I was different...
...He wouldn't say what he thought of Walter Mondale, his Democratic opponent...
...But the chief effect of Reagan's obliviousness was to empower him...
...The crowd went silent, and Reagan soon left the stage...
...He was free to be Reagan...
...As a reporter for the Baltimore Sun in 1980, I mostly covered Democrats...
...I covered him when he was denouncing the "giveaway" of the Panama Canal and racking up primary victories...
...I'm sure this wasn't Reagan's idea...
...In fact, it never really worked...
...Maybe other politicians just have no self-deprecating thoughts...
...Reagan didn't give a single bad speech in 1976, not one that I covered anyway...
...But looking back and knowing now how the Panamanians have trashed U.S...
...I'd brought a photograph of him taken in 1937 in Monterey, California, with a group of extras—including my grandmother—from a movie he was making...
...It was not trading arms for hostages," he told me, contradicting what he'd said in a nationally televised speech six months earlier...
...Reagan would give the planned answer to a question, then continue talking...
...This ruled out the budget deficit and a lot of other tedious topics...
...Maybe somebody on Reagan's staff had noticed I'd begun writing freelance pieces for the conservative American Spectator while still covering politics for the Sun...
...Afterwards, I approached him to shake hands...
...Crowds would go berserk when he declared the United States had bought, built, and should keep the canal...
...So far as I know, he didn't have friends in the Washington press corps and didn't want any...
...I asked if Reagan remembered the film...
...The worst part was I'd heard him tell the same Lubitsch story at the afternoon session in 1984...
...The pilot stayed behind to comfort the young man and to die with him...
...I was impressed...
...Now, on the eve of Reagan's 90th birthday, I wish I had, just to distinguish myself from the blur...
...He was merely trying to influence the government that would succeed the man he called "the Khomeini...
...Mondale, meanwhile, was grinning so broadly he couldn't talk...
...In the next debate, Reagan made that joke about Mondale's age, and won going away...
...Few reporters did...
...At least I never heard that he had...
...This was no accident...
...In any case, if Reagan noticed a difference between me and the pack, he didn't let on...
...At that moment, I understood the feeling of unrequited love experienced by so many Reagan aides...
...In closing, he invited me to drop by if I came to Los Angeles...
...facilities in the Canal Zone, I suspect he was right...
...His aides were often thrown into a tizzy by critical stories, especially in the Washington Post...
...For some reason, I was granted an interview with Reagan in 1987, in the aftermath of Iran-Contra...
...I disagreed with him on this point...
...I didn't normally attend presidential press conferences, since that was the job of full-time White House reporters...
...Press secretary Marlin Fitzwater and Tom Griscom, Buchanan's replacement as communications director, sat in as Reagan's minders...
...It drove journalists crazy, particularly the few conservative ones, because they crave recognition as individuals, distinct from the pack...
...He knew he'd done poorly and looked stricken...
...He gave no indication of knowing who I was...
...Since he didn't worry about the press, his presidency and his campaigns were not shaped by media coverage...
...At the 1976 GOP convention, President Gerald Ford delivered the best speech of his career...
...Reagan usually emerged unscathed...
...I last saw Reagan in 1988 at the White House Christmas party...
...But I saw Reagan tell one of his most famous and mesmerizing stories (even if it doesn't bear fact-checking...
...Reagan operated on the assumption that nothing is really off the record in Washington...
...Reporters thought calling Vietnam a "noble cause" was a gaffe...
...But Reagan wasn't...
...But Reagan's against-the-grain concession speech about eliminating nuclear weapons was better...
...And Reagan didn't have many...
...In 1990, I wrote a piece for Reader's Digest on the collapse of communism...
...BY FRED BARNES RONALD REAGAN had an unusual way of dealing with reporters and columnists: He transcended them...
...This was a gift, not a shortcoming...
...Almost from the first time I covered Reagan in the 1976 Republican presidential primaries, I generally agreed Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...I never did...
...The lunch was off the record, but I figured I'd pick up some fascinating tidbits I could leverage into pieces...
...Reagan in 1976 was the most exciting candidate I've ever seen...
...He was free to pursue policies and say things the press was sure to loathe...
...Over the years, I've been surprised at how few politicians have copied Reagan's style...
...And when they stopped working for him, they never heard from Reagan again...
...The truth is Reagan's aides worried too much...
...They had that look of terror I'd seen on the face of Reagan aides at press conferences...
...Except for a few fleeting interludes, I was part of the blur...
...I asked if he thought the questions were softballs...
...What the press declared a gaffe often wasn't...
...Reagan, in preparing, had overdosed on details and didn't play up the conservative themes that had always served him well...
...If you looked around at the White House staff lining the wall behind the reporters, you'd see a look of terror cross their faces as Reagan went into uncharted territory...
...They'd admired him, worked for him, expected to bond with him, but found him detached...
...I thought my question was airtight, mentioning the possibility of bringing a preacher to the White House or Camp David...
...Mondale had the greatest night of his life...
...Buchanan was communications czar at the White House, and I was writing the White House Watch column for the New Republic...
...I got closer to Reagan in 1984...
...This line was supposed to satisfy the press and put an end to the scandal...
...He didn't complain about what they wrote or said on TV...
...The Reagan people in the audience didn't agree...
...Reagan was totally off his game...
...I was a panelist (along with Diane Sawyer of ABC and Jim Weighart of the New York Daily News), chosen after dozens of others were vetoed by the campaigns...
...The White House often releases transcripts of private interviews, but not this time...
...I mention Reagan's treatment of the press to help explain my own relationship with him...
...By the way, watching even a brief clip of the D-Day speech still makes grown men tear up...
...It gave Reagan some credit, but didn't say he'd personally won the Cold War...
...Not that my stories in the Washington Star reflected any agreement...
...They contained little more than cold-blooded reporting, as they should have...
...Reagan ignored all that and said he didn't go to church for security reasons, to protect both him and the church (from being blown up by terrorists...
...The problem was Reagan didn't believe it...
...He said he'd enjoyed the article and believed his policy had played a role...
...When he did, there was a ritual that was fun to watch...
...Reagan cared about his words...
...with him...
...And I don't know why I was invited...
...I went through the receiving line with my wife Barbara and shook hands with Reagan and Nancy...
...Jim Lake, his press secretary, told me years later he was chewed out by Reagan only once, and that was for interrupting while Reagan was going over the stump speech he was about to deliver for the umpteenth time...
...My theory is that the best questions are ones you really want to hear the answer to...
...I was sadly mistaken...
...This wasn't Reagan's idea but Pat Buchanan's...
...I was thrilled in 1986 to be invited to lunch with Reagan in the small study next to the Oval Office...
...He felt no need to pander to the press...
...Reagan told great Errol Flynn stories and one about director Ernst Lubitsch's subtle way of dealing with sex in movies, but not much else...
...Later in 1984, I was part of the worst night of Reagan's career, the first presidential debate with Mondale...
...So he said nothing newsworthy or even interesting...
...I was invited with five other journalists for a late afternoon chat, off the record...
...No, not really," he said...
...I did hear from him again...
...It was at Liberty University in Virginia, and Reagan recounted the experience of a wounded tail-gunner pinned in a bomber as it hurtled to earth...
...I asked exactly that...
...It was a stunning moment, exceeded in the power of its patriotism only by Reagan's speech at Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1984...
...I guess it was supposed to be part of Reagan's political recovery...
...As candidate and president, Reagan was amazingly disciplined...
...Reagan had been cajoled by his aides into saying that the sale of weapons to Iran was, in effect, an arms-for-hostages deal...
...Fitzwater and Griscom weren't...
...Reagan ended the story something like this, speaking of the pilot: "Medal of Honor, awarded posthumously...
...I think the press—with a few exceptions such as Bob Novak, Lou Cannon, and George Will— was a blur to him...
...Reagan was in fine fettle...
...He told compelling stories and twitted himself with self-deprecating humor, and people loved it...
Vol. 6 • February 2001 • No. 20
