The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

Ronald Reagan, retired President, drifted through Europe last week on a cloud of warm reverie and adoration. He collected a knighthood from the British (only the 58th American to do so), and was inducted into the French % Institute's Academy of Moral and Political Sciences (only the sixth U.S. President to make the cut).

He was, he told TIME before he journeyed abroad, going back on the "mashed- potato circuit," admittedly upgraded to include palaces and potentates. But his message will be the same: the triumph of freedom. He delivered it eloquently in London's Gothic Guildhall and in Paris, where fireworks heralded the 100th birthday of a great lady, the Eiffel Tower.

Of the four living ex-Presidents -- Reagan, Carter, Ford and Nixon -- Reagan alone can boast of an exit from power in good health, both political and physical, and after two full terms of general peace and prosperity. What's more, he even liked the job at the end.

Without the constitutional prohibition against a third term, might he have run again? Reagan, in his first full interview since leaving the White House, gave that slow, easy smile, ducked his head in a kind of protest against such audacity. "I cannot answer that, really," he said. "With ((the 22nd Amendment)) in place, you did not even think of it. You knew that it was all over at the end of two terms." Hunch: he sure would have.

Reagan's presence promises to be unique, a kind of grandfatherly seminar on a range of issues that have touched his long life, from Communism to kissing. His respect for the Soviet Union's Mikhail Gorbachev has grown stronger. "I have met a number of leaders, and he is different," insists Reagan. "He is trying to straighten things out." For his part, the old actor would like to straighten out Hollywood. "((In)) a movie kiss in the old days, the two of you were barely touching lips. You did not want any face being pushed out of shape. It is awful." Maybe he should get back in the movies to show them how? "I think that would look like trying to cash in on the presidency," he says. "Besides, if they did a remake of a Knute Rockne picture, this time I would have to play Rockne instead of the Gipper."

Speaking of cashing in on the presidency, what about his reported $2 million deal to appear in Japan in October and his supposed lecture fee of $40,000 to $50,000? "I do not have a price," Reagan declares. "I am at ease with myself. I was invited, first by the government of Japan, and then this private organization entered in. That corporation has pledged a very sizable gift to my library. And I think there is a possibility that there will be other such things from that. My friend William Buckley asked me to be on the board of the National Review. I thought I could do that."

For all his continuing engagement in the world, there is a melancholy note in Reagan's small office high atop a sterile pile of glass and stone in Los Angeles' Century City. The old intensity is gone; the view is of sprawl and smog, not Thomas Jefferson's gentle green mounds on the White House lawn. When Nancy goes off on her own he gets lonesome, he admits. But he does have an antidote. "I decided if I had to be lonesome, I would be lonesome at the ranch. We are doing a lot of tree pruning. I ride in the morning. In the afternoon I get out the chain saws and go to work." Therein lies his secret: happiness lurks in a pile of firewood just as surely as in Buckingham Palace.