A Conversation with Ronald Reagan

By Hugh Sidey

Even with the tax hike battle raging around him, Ronald Reagan retains the serenity and confidence that have been key ingredients of his amiable style. En route to Billings, Mont., last week to appear at a Republican rally, Reagan spent nearly an hour chatting with Washington Contributing Editor Hugh Sidey aboard Air Force One about the rewards and penalties of the presidency. Sidey's report:

After 18 months, the Grecian Formula myth is at last retired. "I say goody," says Ronald Reagan. "I think a little more gray is in there, which has stopped all those items that I dye my hair, which I never did." He is right. There is more gray in there. Whether it is the weight of leadership or nature belatedly catching up with him after 71 years is debatable. This morning the rest of him appears several decades younger.

The presidency so far: "I have enjoyed it," he says simply and convincingly, but declines to reveal whether he would relish another term. "Sure," Reagan continues, "there are days that are very rough, and there are some times when you are haunted by a problem for a few days until you know that a decision has to be made and there is no one else to make it but you." Yet he has no regrets, not even a Walter Mittyish twinge to be back in the movies in a juicy wide-screen part. "I thought that I would miss that," he says, referring to his switch from films to politics. Harking back to his days as Governor of California, he recalls, "Nancy and I looked at each other one night in the living room in Sacramento and said, 'This makes everything we've ever done seem dull as dishwater.' It is the same way here [Washington]. You get to help write the script."

One reason he feels this way may be his concern about declining standards in film making. "They don't make them any more like we made them then," muses Reagan, looking down on Lake Michigan. "We used to fret a little bit under the strict production code--rules, morality and so forth. It made for great writing. Today they can just turn to obscenities or profanity. The oldest rule is that you can't do anything onstage that's as good as the audience's imagination. Today they don't leave anything to the imagination."

His current world, of course, has not been unlike a giant stage filled with diverse characters. "It is amazing how quickly you befriend each other," he says of his counterparts round the world. "You know that you are faced with the same problems and the same frustrations." Companionship at that level of power is special, and he never felt it so deeply as at the time of Anwar Sadat's assassination. "It was not just a sorrow, the sympathy that you have for someone well known," Reagan says. "There was a feeling of personal loss. That was when I first began to realize that there is a bond when you meet these people.

"I have to tell you," Reagan goes on, "Queen Elizabeth is a most charming, down-to-earth person. It didn't surprise me a bit to hear how she handled that intruder. Incidentally, she's a very good rider." When the two of them rode near Windsor Castle, he says, it was "not like in the parades where it has to be traditional sidesaddle. It is called the forward seat, the modern riding, and you knew that she was in charge of the animal."

The Queen is one of the world's great stage presences, and Reagan fondly recalls his dinner in the castle. "At this magnificent banquet at which you had close to 200 people at a single table, you sit in the middle, the Queen and I on one side and Nancy and Prince Philip on the other. When the toasts are over, the two of us exit down that table. The footmen pull the chairs back, and the Lord Chamberlain precedes us walking backward. I suddenly saw this tiny figure beside me walking along waving her hand. She's steering him. She said to me, 'You know, we don't get those chairs even, and he could fall over one and hurt himself.' "

But if the images of these friends are etched deeper in Reagan's mind, the view of his principal adversary Leonid Brezhnev is elusive and even receding. "I had met him ten years ago. That was when he was at San Clemente. And I did write him when I was in the hospital, after my little episode. I wrote him a handwritten letter. I will admit that the diplomatic corps was shocked and was not quite sure that handwritten letters should be written. But it was delivered. I reminded him of our meeting, then I asked whether it is not governments that get in the way. What would a summit meeting be like if it were between the people of our two countries? How much they would have in common with each other--the raising of a family, the desire to work at the work of their choice. And I just said, 'Some day, maybe we can sit down and talk about what do their people and our people really want.' I must say I was a little disappointed. Quite a bit later an answer came, and I think it was less personal than my letter had been. It showed the hand of the bureaucracy." Now, of course, there is a mystery for Reagan. He does not know how much Brezhnev is still in charge.

Mostly, Reagan's mind is back home. He uses the phone on Air Force One to rally support for the tax bill. It is vital to meet what he believes is the country's greatest need: "to get those people back to work who want to work."

There is another part of the problem. "Once this recession is under control," he says, "we're going to have to face that there has been such an increase in the work force, we've got to look at our economy as to how we create the new jobs."

He sees another pressing need: "To reawaken that American spirit of self-reliance, community pride, where the first reaction to a problem isn't 'Let's call Washington.'" Here, believes Reagan, there is progress, shown by the hundreds of examples of community enterprises that are being catalogued by a task force. He mentions one, the handicapped mother maintaining a family on a pittance but still able to write how blessed she is. When he got the letter, Reagan recalls that he said, "Good Lord, here is an American who has not been asking for a thing."

The President rates his economic program enacted last year as his best accomplishment so far, this despite the glum statistics that have followed. "We got ahead of inflation far faster than we thought, and then we found it created a problem for us," he says, just a bit wistfully.

The image of saber rattler obviously bothers Reagan. He clouds a bit when it is mentioned. "I realize," he says, "that some have a perception of me as being a threat to peace. But, you know, having to be with the military as much as I do, for example in the ceremonies when heads of state come, you see these young men in uniform. I've said to Nancy, 'How could anyone think that you'd want to send these young men out to be killed?' "

When he spoke of the Falklands and of Lebanon, Reagan frowned and looked toward the distant clouds. "Lebanon, particularly, is such a horrible one because of the loss of civilians. And this I don't think is ever out of my mind. This is what every day begins with--the latest cables from Habib. And, incidentally, I'm going to say in his behalf, if this encouraging situation does bear fruit, he would have been the greatest factor in it--he's tireless."

The old professional actor admits that he can still get nervous before a command performance, such as when he addressed the British Parliament. "Some audiences can do that to you," he declares. "I had that same nervousness in doing a State of the Union address before Congress. You recognize that you face a professional audience that is aware of all the same problems you are going to discuss. It is like a clergyman who is speaking to a convention of ministers. You knew the same about Parliament, that there was a group sitting there kind of saying show me."

In the second-floor family sitting room in the White House, Reagan has set up a corner with a telephone and some old furniture from California; it is his favorite haunt in his new home. There are times when he yearns for real escape. "Once in a great while," Reagan says, "you glance out the window and the people are walking around Pennsylvania Avenue and you say, 'I could never say I am going to run down to the drugstore and get some magazines.' You suddenly look out at what is so commonplace for everyone else and was for you throughout all your life and you say, 'I can't do that any more.' "

But when he goes to Camp David, Reagan finds a kind of contentment. "At Camp David," he says, "suddenly you're in a house that's house size." His trips beyond Washington ("a company town") remind him that it is "not quite as real there. You get out and you rediscover America." Reagan's daily newspaper reading is the editorials and the comics. He gets the news in a digest prepared by his staff. His favorite place remains his small ranch near Santa Barbara. He sounds almost biblical when he talks about it. "I look to the hills from whence cometh my strength. In my case, it is absolutely true." His college years stand out now more in his mind as he looks back. "It was a small school, and it was during the depths of the Depression. I think now I can see that there was a bond among our people. I worry that younger people don't realize how those times will be in their own lives, how close they'll remain with them."

Reagan's life has rushed by at a frantic pace, which seems not to perturb him at all. Of course he tries to slow it down with a laugh whenever he can. Now and then, when the band strikes up Hail to the Chief, the President leans over to Nancy and says, "They are playing our song." He chuckled to himself, an old sportscaster, that the baseball All-Star game was played without his even knowing. Even that garish glen-plaid suit that rattled European style arbiters brought a guffaw. "Did you see that suit on NBC? I like that suit. And then I saw an NBC shot indoors and that suit gleamed like it was lighted up."

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