The recent publication of the Reagan Diaries has led columnist Helen Thomas to reflect on the man she covered for eight years when he was in the White House.

Read the newly published The Reagan Diaries if you want a true insight into the mind of the nation's 40th president.

The diaries — written daily from 1981 until President Ronald Reagan left office in 1989 — reveal him to be much more involved in the nitty gritty of national and world affairs than many White House reporters thought. He had often been portrayed as a detached "chairman of the board" kind of president.

The diaries show that Reagan had something to say about everything and everybody; his thoughts were often summarized in one handwritten sentence. His notations mixed the profound with the trivial.

Historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited the publication of the diaries, had to toss out chunks to boil the entries down to a 696-page memoir. But no one is short-changed.

Reagan comes across as deeper, funnier, more religious and more humble than he seemed when he was striding across the world stage. He is true to his public persona — foe of communism, tax increases and organized labor — and often the news media.

Now that shocks Thomas, who never took Reagan particularly seriously during his time in the White House. She, like much of the White House press corps, seem to have thought that Reagan was either simple-minded or playing to his audience, not necessarily someone who believed in what he was doing (or, at least, not someone who had given much thought to what he was doing). These diaries dispel that point of view. That leads Thomas to make this obesrvation.

As a reporter having covered him for eight years in the White House, I am sure the press could have done a better job if we had known the real Ronald Reagan.

But that is precisely the problem -- Reagan was right there for the press to see, his public persona very much an expression of the real man. They just didn't want to see, much less know, the real man. That is enough to make one question their coverage of the current president -- and any other leader, especially those of a conservative bent.

Posted by: Greg at 06:17 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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