BOOKS

By Laurence I. Barrett

PRESIDENT REAGAN: THE ROLE OF A LIFETIME

by Lou Cannon; Simon & Schuster; 948 pages; $24.95

The first question in an intimate Oval Office session came from George Skelton of the Los Angeles Times. Ronald Reagan looked squarely at Skelton and started to respond: "Well, Lou . . ." The reporters present, though used to Reagan's lapses, were embarrassed for Skelton as he reintroduced himself. The President had in mind Lou Cannon of the Washington Post, who, like Skelton, had covered Reagan's trajectory from Sacramento to Washington. To Reagan, Cannon was the generic newsie of that vintage.

In fact, capital insiders viewed Cannon that way too because of his superior coverage of Reagan. Now, in his third book on the subject, Cannon caps 25 years of Reagan watching in monumental fashion. The volume's heft and density are intimidating, but President Reagan is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the star of politics in the 1980s. On one level it is an exhaustive account of the Administration, with new material added to the familiar chronology.

Reagan ignored his homework on the eve of a summit meeting because, he explained to an aide, "The Sound of Music was on last night." Reagan's fascination with Armageddon theology fueled his enthusiasm for the Star Wars missile-defense system. Decision making occasionally stagnated not only because of intra-Cabinet disputes, but also because his advisers often had to rely on the President's body language as a code for intentions Reagan refused to articulate. The supporting cast speaks candidly in these pages. Jeane Kirkpatrick recalls an agonizing conflict over policy toward Nicaragua, and Reagan's role: "Just absent. Just not there."

The book's second level, an archaeological dig through Reagan's attitudes, deals with why the President was often AWOL and other puzzles. Growing up the son of an alcoholic father explains in part Reagan's aversion to conflict in the official family. Cannon, having lived with the same burden, writes of this with special sensitivity. More-opaque layers of the Reagan psyche -- his capacity for self-deception and his tendency to let myth taint important policies -- tie in to his Hollywood fixation with happy endings.

But even so dogged a digger as Cannon cannot totally excavate all the paradoxes. How a politician so adept at the techniques of public leadership and so closely in tune with Everyman's dreams could habitually divorce himself from the realities of governance remains elusive. Cannon concedes frustration and ambivalence. In one passage he reports his best sources' belief that "Reagan usually operated on the basis of sound instincts and common sense." Later, the same inner circle sees its task as "protecting the Reagan presidency from the clear and present danger of Ronald Reagan."

Still, Cannon refuses to join the now fashionable club of Reagan bashers. Why? Because the country needed the muscular optimism Reagan brought to the White House and, after a siege of presidential paralysis, Reagan showed that innovation at the top was still possible.

What the country did not need was the surfeit of feel-good illusions Reagan sold so successfully. Every politician peddles hope in bright ribbons. The saddest and scariest conclusion one takes from this book is that Reagan fully believed his spiels even at their most outlandish. That gut sincerity and his actor's skills let him ring up record sales in the '80s. Paying the bills is America's hellish task in the '90s and perhaps beyond.