Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 13, 1991 TAG: 9103130063
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Reagan's stock as president likely will increase with time, but whether he will ever be perceived as "great" remains an open question, Edmund Morris is quoted as saying in a closed meeting in October at the University of Virginia.
"He is the most mysterious man I have ever confronted. It is impossible to understand him," according to an account of Morris' remarks, published - apparently prematurely - in the current newsletter of the university's White Burkett Miller Center of Public Affairs.
Morris told a reporter Tuesday the newsletter account appeared to be accurate, but "If you don't mind, I would prefer not to go any further than I did." He said he had intended his remarks for an audience of fellow historians.
Morris, who won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award in 1980 for "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt," has been working on a Reagan biography since 1985 under an arrangement that gave him access to White House meetings.
"He had the guts to let somebody come in from outside, stare at him, read his mail, go off and talk to his children," he was quoted in the newsletter. "Whatever you say about Ron Reagan, he has guts."
The biographer also said foreign leaders such as French President Francois Mitterrand and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were "seduced by [Reagan's] extraordinary personal sweetness," according to the newsletter.
"Of course, I was seduced by it myself," he said. "What hindsight shows us is that after he has left the room, after he has left the White House, after he has left our national life and gone off to retirement, the charisma goes with him and we realize how seduced we were."
The article said Morris commented on the decline in Reagan's popularity after he left the White House and said this is characteristic of departed presidents.
"I went through a period of a year or so of depression because I felt that with all my research, how come I can't understand the first thing about him?" Morris said of Reagan.
"He grew more puzzling the more I tried to study him. I only came out of this despair when I found out that everybody else who had ever known him, including his wife, is equally bewildered."
Kenneth W. Thompson, director of the Miller Center, said the writer took part in two He grew more puzzling the more I tried to study him. I only came out of this despair when I found out that everybody else who had ever known him, including his wife, is equally bewildered. Edmund Morris Ronald Reagan's biographer sessions, one off the record and one on the record.
"I am afraid our people jumped the gun a little bit, because he was supposed to see both versions before there was any release of them," Thompson said. Robin Kuzen, editor of the newsletter, said the quoted remarks were made in the on-the-record session.
Bill Garber, Reagan's spokesman in Los Angeles, said the former president and his wife were out of town but he did not believe they would have any comment.
`[Reagan's] large and he's slabby and he's cold," Morris said. "But he has an inexorable, slow force which carves out this great valley in the landscape. Rocks shatter as he forces his way through them, and they end up on his back and they ride his back as he inches forward; eventually, they tumble off. And the glacier keeps growing and growing."
by CNB