Taking Notes for History

By Hugh Sidey

The Presidency/Hugh Sidey

For a year and a half, Oregon's Senator Mark Hatfield, history buff and former professor, urged Ronald Reagan to sit down with presidential biographers to talk about preserving the record of his White House years. Last week on Valentine's night the minisummit was held around the Hatfield dining-room table in Georgetown. Four noted biographers, the Librarian of Congress and their wives spooned homemade strawberry ice cream and counseled Reagan to cling to every scrap of evidence for history's sake.

Curse the telephone, chimed the writers, with one reservation. Theodore Roosevelt wrote 150,000 letters, and his eye-weary biographer, Edmund Morris, joked that he rather wished T.R. had used a telephone more. All at the table were concerned that nowadays Presidents phone Prime Ministers and Senators leaving no record of their conversations. Couldn't Reagan write short notes when he finished his calls? He'd create a mountain of paper, maybe, but 200 years from now his jottings would be invaluable. There followed a minor scholarly disagreement George Nash (The Life of Herbert Hoover, Volume I) mentioned that Hoover was the first President to have a phone in his office. No, countered Arthur Link editor of the Woodrow Wilson papers, there is a photo showing three phones on Wilson's desk. Frank Freidel, biographer of Franklin Roosevelt, reminded them that Benjamin Harrison said it was beneath the President's dignity to answer a telephone.* The relationship between Reagan and his wife Nancy was absolutely vital in understanding his presidency, said Morris' wife Sylvia, herself a biographer (Edith Kermit Roosevelt). Keep the private letters and notes, she advised. The Reagans' marriage seems unusually strong at a time when the national norm seems the opposite. Devotion shapes history.

The group compared immigrant forebears, Reagan rising to eloquence on how newcomers built the country. That struck a chord with Morris, an immigrant from Kenya 14 years ago. Now he was sitting at the table with the President of the U.S. Just the point, said Reagan. America needed to stay open so that its democratic miracle could be renewed from generation to generation. "You may be the first President to say that since Wilson," Link told Ronald Wilson Reagan, adding, "I like your middle name."

Did Mrs. Reagan know, asked Freidel, that Eleanor Roosevelt was for school prayer and against ERA? Nancy was amazed. Eleanor also held regular press conferences, the professor related. Nancy signed.

Presidential character and personality often affect history as much as policy decisions, observed Daniel Boorstin, Librarian of Congress. But fully farming a President's character is most difficult for historians, since the term of office is relatively short and prior evidence sometimes scanty. Monarchs, visible for life, are easier to pin down. Reagan, of all recent Presidents, seems genuinely more modest about his role in history and perhaps less concerned about keeping records. At first allowed Reagan, when somebody said "Mr. President, he had an impulse to look over his shoulder and find the fellow. "I can understand paying attention to the presidency," said Reagan, "but why me?"

Freidel made the point that the more he got to know about F.D.R., the better he found him to be as a President. Hatfield contended that Hoover would be judged by history not as a President who ended an era but as a man who began one Nash brought mirth when the discussion turned to the press: Hoover once said that any President should have the right to shoot at least two people a year without explanation."

The Reagans became so engrossed in the discussion that twice they ignored the signals from their Secret Service escort that the scheduled time was up. Not until nearly 11 p.m. did they push away from the table, and even then Nancy said she still had a lot of questions to ask. She probably will get her chance. The President told Senator Hatfield he would like to meet again with the men and women whose views go beyond the morning headlines.

* White House curators say Hoover was first to have a phone permanently installed on his desk, though phones came to the White House in Rutherford B. Hayes' years. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.