Does He Really Want It ?

There are some fascinating contradictions in Ronald Reagan's attitudes toward the biggest political prize. After traveling with him across the country for a week, TIME National Political Correspondent Robert Ajemian reported:

Hair. That thick, dark brown hair. Its youthful luster is the unmistakable badge of Ronald Reagan--no matter that the face under it is a weathered and suitable 64. Together, the face and hair form an extraordinary contradiction, and reporters are so fascinated by it that some of them have slipped into Reagan's barbershop, gathered the leavings off the floor and lab-tested them. No dye showed up, but the reporters remain skeptical.

That's the way it is with Ronald Reagan; you are never really sure. He flies around the country looking eager for the presidency; but he describes himself as reluctant. His speeches sound combative but he shuns open fights. He has no great appetite for politics but this week he will announce for President.

At a distance he sounds fierce. As California's Governor, his offhand statements rocketed around the country: if it takes a bloodbath to end the campus riots, he challenged California students, let's get it over with now; he ignored the facts and ridiculed Cesar Chavez, the farm union leader, as the only man he knew who gained weight during a hunger strike.

Behind all of that Reagan is quite different. Instead of fierceness there is a sort of mildness. He has the earnestness and good manners of another era. He speaks modestly about himself. The ardor of the man obsessed with a cause is not evident. "Reagan is both too fatalistic and too modest to be a crusader," says his friend William F. Buckley Jr. "He doesn't have that darkness around the eyes of a George McGovern."

One of his former close advisers says perhaps there is an emptiness in Reagan's leadership. "I never ever saw him initiate an order on his own," claims this adviser. "That's what made Reagan so easy for us to program. Candidates usually have their own strategies. Not Ron. He depended totally on others for ideas." The adviser's candor overcomes his admiration for Reagan, and he adds: "The question then is who owns the body? The public must know whose ideas they are. If he becomes President, it is a terribly important question--who's running the country?"

Reagan seldom looks or acts politically hungry. When a group of his former staffers and appointees got together last month for a lunch, some expected him to solicit their help. He never mentioned the subject. Recently, while his staff was quarreling about whether he should appear at a meeting of California county chairmen, Reagan excused himself and told them to decide. "He leaves the political grind to others," says a former staffer. Reagan dodges unpleasant scenes. Recalls a onetime advance man: "The maddest I've ever seen Ron get was to wave a pencil, and that happened only when we cut into his family time." Some members of Reagan's family too resent the political intrusion. Last week Daughter Maureen said that she opposes his candidacy "after eight years of having to make phone calls to arrange appointments to speak to my own father."

Reagan, for his part, is not comfortable away from home. "When I get into those cities and banquets and hotels," he says, "I really miss the sky and hills of the West." But a national campaign will offer little chance for quiet replenishment at home. Sitting around at 2 a.m. with pushy delegates and stale coffee is hard work. That may be a problem for Reagan, says one of his advance men: "You can't schedule him too hard. And he runs down if he doesn't get those eight hours' sleep." How then did Reagan win the governorship twice without exhaustive efforts? The answer: His two opponents, Pat Brown and Jesse Unruh, were easy setups for him, and it was the staff that burned the midnight oil. An adviser who helped direct Reagan's 1968 presidential fling says: "Things have come pretty easy for the Governor. Really, he's never been tested hard."

Reagan holds that the American way of life is at a historic brink and the nation needs a leader who can demand sacrifice. His followers and friends tell him furiously his is the only missionary voice that can make it happen. He has come to believe them, reluctantly. Heading back home by plane a couple of weeks ago he sounded quite unlike a missionary:

"I'd be much happier if someone else were in this position besides me." Why, then, is he running? He describes it simply as paying his dues. "This way of life doesn't come cheaply," he says. "You have to pay something back."

Some scoff at Reagan's preachments and see him instead as a man who grew comfortable with the trappings of power. But his is a consistent theme: he speaks of being moved by a sense of duty rather than a sense of personal destiny. An old western movie sticks in his mind these days, Reagan says, an episode from a book by James Warner Bellah. The fort is under attack by Apaches; the colonel is dying; the young captain is standing by. The colonel--in the sort of role Reagan was always too fresh-faced to play--tells the captain this may be the only time he will face such circumstances, and to rise to them. Fate, the way Reagan views it, now has put him in a similar position. He is in a tough spot not of his own choosing. But as long as he is there, he must look into the guns.

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