Richard Reeves on Writing and Presidential Politics

Interview by David Cross

With the recent publication of the final installment of a presidential trilogy, Richard Reeves has accomplished a major achievement. The three books-- President Kennedy:  A Profile in Power, President Nixon: Alone in the White House, and President Reagan:  The Triumph of Imagination-- are really a history of the late cold war era from the unique perspective of three key presidents.

I spoke to Reeves at his hotel room in Philadelphia, where he was staying during the last legs of his book tour. "You know, some of the things you do while you're promoting are just asinine," he tells me, glancing momentarily at his laptop that is set up on the desk. "I mean, those two minute interviews with television and whatnot," he continues. "And I don't know if they work or not, nobody knows if they work or not. It's just like politics-- only ten percent of the campaign works, but no one knows which ten percent it is."

Reeves himself has enjoyed a much higher rate of success. He recalls with undiluted joy the day he nonchalantly picked up a Newsweek International at a candy shop in Paris and was stunned to see a two page review, with pictures, of his first book, American Journey:  Traveling with Tocqueville in Search of Democracy in America. "Amazing!" he says, still exhilarated by the memory.

In 1993 he published his book on Kennedy and it was instantly praised as a major triumph. Again, Reeves was incredulous. "You just dream this stuff!" he says, recalling those initial reviews. "People using words like 'triumphant,' 'masterwork,' and, Jesus, it was amazing. There may be people who anticipate those kinds of things, but I'm not one. You get hit so hard so often when you're a writer."

The positive reviews of the Kennedy book were well-earned. Neither a romantic remembrance nor a petulant redress, Reeves' book is one of the few on Kennedy that seeks to present a balanced portrait. What was also unique about the book was that it was written from President Kennedy's perspective, not the perspective of an all-knowing scholar looking back at prior decisions. "I realized that what I read about presidents was not what the presidency was like, no matter how good the books were. Because they were written backwards.

"I picked Kennedy not because I related to him but because I thought there was a story to be told about this man who lived life as a race against boredom." By presenting the presidency "sometimes day by day, sometimes hour by hour, sometimes minute by minute," he produced a fascinating portrait of a man juggling numerous political, personal, and physical/health concerns in an almost neurotic fight against monotony.

The choice of Nixon as a follow-up seemed natural. "Nixon and Kennedy through history have been bookends, and that will continue, so I decided I would try to do it again through Nixon."

Reeves was able to provide new insight about a man of whom many millions of words had already been written. "Nixon was a man who didn't like people, he wanted to be alone, he couldn't stand having other people around, said he thought it would be a great job if it weren't for the people," Reeves says. "The book is about this incredibly brilliant introvert trying to govern the country by surprise, which took secrecy, and then secrecy led to his own self-destruction, as smart as he was."

Why, I asked, did he decide to follow the books up with one on Reagan? "Because I knew I got it wrong," he said without hesitation. "I knew that we were wrong about Reagan." Reeves considers himself one of the many liberal democrats who underrated Reagan at the time he was president.

"In doing this book I found out, greatly to my surprise, that almost all of the conventional wisdom that I had read and heard about Ronald Reagan was not true at all." Reagan, for instance, was not the "passive" individual that so many thought he was. "In 1976 he committed the most aggressive act that an American politician can make, and that is that he ran against a sitting president of his own party, and damn near beat him," he says of Reagan's campaign against President Gerald Ford. "Passive people don't do that." 

A key to understanding Reagan, Reeves maintains, is understanding the differences between young men and older men. "I'm the same age now Ronald Reagan was when he was elected president," he notes. "I don't think I could have written this book when I was younger. Reagan was not like Nixon and Kennedy, who were young men who wanted to know everything, who wanted to control everything. This was an old man who was conserving his energy most of the time, and didn't want to know anything he didn't know already. Much of what he knew was wrong, but he knew it and he wasn't going to find out too much more."

"The title, Triumph of the Imagination, came from my feeling that Ronald Reagan created an American past that had a lot to do with Tom Sawyer and Norman Rockwell, and he sold that to us, and we liked it. We were persuaded."  

A life-long liberal with good things to say about Reagan? Neither liberals nor conservatives seem particularly comfortable with this. William Buckley wrote a review about the book calling Reeves a "back bencher" and stating that Reeves failed to represent how "airborne" and "buoyant" the times felt. At the end of a speech at a Washington D.C. bookstore, a woman was heard saying, "He's falling into the trap! You can write a book about Reagan, but you should write about all the bad things about Reagan."  

"The lady may be right," Reeves says when I tell him the story. "I don't think I made the point strongly enough about the tax-and-spend and the borrow-and-spend."

He leaves the thought hanging in the air. His three books will remain classics on the subject of presidential politics for many years to come. For Reeves, it is time to move on. "There comes a day, and, boy it's coming fast, where I'll wish I never heard the word Reagan. And then I'll be healthy again when it's totally out of my system." What will remain is his absolute love of writing, of putting together such memorable books. "It makes me think I should be writing," he laughs, glancing at his computer. "I should start to write right now, before I lose it all."

"It's what you do," he says of writing. "It gives you pleasure to have it done. I don't know if it gives you pleasure to do it. I've never known a writer who stopped. You know, they're at it every day. And it's torture, but, you can't live without it." He looks at the computer again. "It's sadomasochism, I think." 

David Cross is a full-time freelance writer in the Philadelphia area who has printed articles in numerous local and internet publications. He is currently writing a biography of jazz saxophonist Art Pepper, and his e-mail address is davidpcross@hotmail.com.

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