READING REAGAN

October 4, 1999
		Author Edmund Morris defends his use of fact and fiction in the newest biography about President Reagan. Then, presidential historians Doris Kearns Goodwin, Michael Beschloss, journalist Haynes Johnson and journalist Christopher Lehmann-Haupt of the New York Times, discuss the technique.

Character Above All: In this 1996 special, Peggy Noonan writes about Reagan and his character American Experience: The Presidents: Features additional information on Reagan and a tour of his library Dec. 19, 1997: Dinesh D'Souza answers questions about his book on Reagan The Online NewsHour's coverage of the White House.   Ronald Reagan Library and Museum	MARGARET WARNER: Now to debate Edmund Morris's biographical technique, we turn to three NewsHour regulars who have chronicled the lives and times of American presidents: Historian Michael Beschloss, who has written about Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson; Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of books on Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson; and author/journalist Haynes Johnson, whose "Sleepwalking through History" chronicled the Reagan years. Joining them this evening is Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, a book reviewer for the weekday editions of the New York Times. And a note to our viewers, I'm assured that all of our panelists, completed their homework assignment, have read the book. Haynes, to you, what do you make of Edmund Morris's explanation of and defense of his technique? HAYNES JOHNSON: I just fascinated. I was sitting her listening to him watching him tell about the magic fingers and the leap and you can believe it because I wrote this narrative. If you look in the index of the book, there are nine people named Morris. Every one of them, with the exception of his wife, there are ten actually, is a fictional character. It isn't just him. It's his wife, I mean, his mother, his grandmother -- son, friends and so forth. There are many others in this thing. He asks you to accept that this device is well understood. He can use any device he wants to. We all have a right to apply anything you want to the world of writing, but I think he didn't square and play straight with the reader. You do not know that this is a fictional version of a story, a romantic story, a mystical, as he says a magical story. That is one thing. The second thing is I think he doesn't really deal well with the Reagan presidency. I think this is where we can get in arguments. There are literary criticisms. I think that in the case of this book, you have to say that he, fictional author, narrator, memoirist, gets in the way of a very important president. I think that is the sad part. The other thing hasn't been said on this program. Let me just say one thing quickly. He is the only biographer in American history who is authorized by a sitting president to have the access over 14 years. I would like to have known a lot more that he learned in that period and I don't think I did in the book.
	Was it clear enough?
	MARGARET WARNER: All right. Doris, let's go on, lets address the technique issue first. Did you find it as Haynes did, basically confusing, that Morris didn't play it straight with the reader, that you didn't really know which was fact and which was fiction? DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Well, I think if he had included a prologue at the beginning that described the technique and secondly if he hadn't put fictional footnotes in for the fictional characters, I think the technique would have worked. I understand that everything he did that talks about Reagan was sourced. He has evidence, he has footnotes but footnotes are the building block for anybody reading a book. And because he went all the way to make fictional footnotes, I just don't understand that. But I do understand the dilemma he found himself in. He said he was back at Eureka College wishing that he had been back there in the 1920's when Reagan was there. The documents hadn't revealed the inner springs of Reagan's character. The interviews hadn't revealed it. So he needed to come up with some way that he as a biographer could go back in time and reenact experience. I remember being at Rose Kennedy's house at the Hyannis port compound when she was 90 years old, and it was eerily quiet. And I kept saying, suppose that the devil in "Damn Yankees" came to me and said, I will take all your research, all your documents, all your letters, all your diaries that you've worked on for five years but I'll let you see them once the way they were when Joe and Jack were alive, when Joe and Rose Kennedy were mother and father, I had this horrible feeling I would give them all up. Every biographer has to find the technique. Had he made it clear at the beginning what he was doing, had he not made fictional footnotes, it was his technique to create an impressionistic version of Reagan, which is quite dazzling the way it comes out. MARGARET WARNER: Michael, how did you see it? MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I think it is dazzling at points. I think his description of the assassination attempt in 1981, of the summits with Gorbachev and especially the crisis that Ronald Reagan had in his life in the late 1940's -- you see, Morris, this great writer that we saw very much on display in his biography of Theodore Roosevelt -- but I'm very upset by what I think Haynes and Doris was saying which is the why idea of representing something as nonfiction as biography and to some extent straining the bond of trust between the writer and the reader. A lot of people are going to read this who perhaps have not been exposed to the news coverage of the last week and also in the future. Kids will get this out of the library. They'll pull it off the shelves. They won't see the jacket necessarily that says this is somewhat fictionalized. They're going to assume that Edmund Morris is someone who was Ronald Reagan's contemporary and viewed him throughout his life. They're going to assume that the gossip columnist whom Edmund Morris invented and who is in that book existed, and that is something I think it's hard for a nonfiction writer to be in favor of. If there had been something in the text explaining this device, I think if he had taken out the fictional footnotes and also I think perhaps it is a little bit too much even to refer to this as biography. Edmund said in his interview, which I thought was terrific, the interview that Terry did with him, he said the art of biography needs shaking up. He said elsewhere that he has created a new biographical style. I'm really worried about that because what that suggests is, in the future Edmund is someone people are going to emulate and I think we can very well expect five years from now, 30 other biographies being published by people who wanted to get inside their subjects. And so therefore they fictionalized as well. We're in an era in which fact and fiction are blurring. And I'm a huge admirer of Edmund. I just wish that he had not hurried that process along.
	A character study
	MARGARET WARNER: Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, your review which was a good review of the book, you seem to find the device useful. CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT: Well, it was a good review, thank you, but it was also positive. MARGARET WARNER: Positive is what I meant to say as well as good. CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT: Thanks, well, I was initially shocked. I very much disapprove of the technique in theory, but I was instantly alerted when I learned that had Mr. Morris was born in I think it was 1912. I knew that couldn't be. And so I began to look as I read for that, for what was real and what was made up, and I think while the book is difficult and good books often are, I think it deconstructs itself as you go along and I think, I haven't thought it through, I think Mr. Beschloss's point -- that what is a reader in the future going to think -- but I suspect that you can figure it out if you read it carefully enough. I also think by that time it will be known for its fictionalizations just as certain highly experimental fictional works are known for their breakthroughs in form. So, once I knew, I even found the distraction almost helpful in the sense in trying to pick your way through what is real and what is false, what is presented actually and what is kind of allotted between reality and fiction. I found myself thinking in the way I used to think about President Reagan anyway. So while that may be what they call the fallacy of imitative form I found it helpful and useful in getting inside of Reagan. The other big criticism which has not necessarily been put forth by the three distinguished people on this program is that Mr. Morris wasted all this time when he could have been giving us the real history of the presidency. I really dispute that. I think that his assignment was not to look at the presidency but to look at the president, to inhabit the center of power, not necessarily to inhabit the tentacles of power -- and I think as the portrait of the president who was also in many cases seemed almost out of touch with the tentacles of power is tremendously useful. It puts a human face on it. There is nothing in any of the very good books on Reagan that have been written like the portrait of Bud McFarland in the Shoreham Hotel where Morris is standing there and he says this devastated man and he sees everyone avoiding him and he says I think it's because political people try to avoid raw human emotion where writers seek it out. I think that is the positive magic thing about this book where it works so often. MARGARET WARNER: Haynes, address that point because Morris did also namely that wasn't trying to do a conventional heavily reported book. He was trying to plumb the depths of character of this man and sort of expose the mystery of him. Does he have a point that is more a character study than it is a conventional biography? HAYNES JOHNSON: Sure, he can make that point and I must say my friend Christopher has a very good point there. There are scenes in the book memorable. Brilliant. McFarland is one. The assassination that Michael mentioned is another. There are a number of these things, but they kept moving in and out of the phase and the focus and you don't know where it stops and where it ends. I disagree with Christopher on another point. You don't have to give the litany of the record of the presidency, but I think you have to come to terms with what kind of president was he and here for example, nowhere in this book is the name The Wall Street Journal mentioned -- the editorial page which is so central in his thinking.-- nowhere -- not one mention of supply side economics. It's not defined. You don't talk about the deficit. There is a whole range of things that were really significant if we could put Ronald Reagan as a president, as a leader and not just as a mythic figure out of the soil of the Middle West and this magical guy who goes off to Hollywood. He is a very central and important figure and I would like to have seen more analysis of this, how did he come to this thought and how did he come to these impressions? So I disagree on that.
	A choice of biographers
	MARGARET WARNER: Doris, where do you come down on this balance between trying to get at the character and maybe a little less of the facts of the political history versus the critique Haynes is making? DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: I think each biographer has certain strengths. Some are more journalists and had they chosen a biographer who was more of a journalist then they might have gotten a fuller report of what went on in Reagan's presidency. And it's true that Morris was there but he has to bring his strengths and talents to the job. If you look at the Teddy Roosevelt book its incredible strength is portraiture. It is not even a history of the era, it is portraiture. If they knew what they were doing, they were getting a portrait. There are times when you wish that the evaluations have be sharper. The one part that really gets to me is he talks about the fact that Reagan had absolutely no compassion for other people; he thought poor people were weak people. It was their problem they were poor; but then a couple of sentences later he will say he is a great man, he was a great President. I don't think you can be a great president without compassion. I think that's a critical quality. So the impressions leave you with a bunch of jarring understandings and you do hope that in a story -- an historian will bring to bear their judgment. They've lived with this guy for 14 years. That understanding doesn't come through. You have to make your own impressions after you finish reading it. MARGARET WARNER: Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, that is another criticism which is -- he points out the paradoxes but he never tries to resolve them. CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT: True enough, and he says the more you try to figure them out, the less you are going to be able to. He doesn't, he says that Reagan lacks compassion for the people. But he has the most extraordinary scenes in which he says that he thought that Reagan was not aware of his presence when he was worried about something - I've forgotten the particular example. Then what he saw Reagan the next day, he knew when he was thinking about but he said you shouldn't worry about that. I'm being general, but that kind of example of Reagan's extraordinarily -- his total unpredictability and knowing what he was sensing and what he wasn't. I think he gets that across and I think he gets across the implicit judgment that he thought he was a great president even though he doesn't spell it out in exact words. No he doesn't mention supply side economics but he gives this portrait of Reagan's relationship with Stockman. If you know the framework, which has been given so well by people like Haynes Johnson, then you can read into it exactly what is going on. MARGARET WARNER: I want to get back to Michael here. Do you think this that this technique does add something what all is said and done to our understanding of Reagan the man? MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I think it does, and my big quibble is with the way it was labeled because I think it shouldn't be called nonfiction or biography. There is an honorable history of fiction that's written about political leaders - Gore Vidal on Lincoln -- Robert Penn Warren on Huey Long - they felt that they had to resort to fiction in order to explain pretty complex and rather indecipherable figures but in the end they called them novelists. MARGARET WARNER: They labeled them as such. Alright, well thank you all four very much.