Reagan biographer, legendary California journalist Lou Cannon dies
Lou Cannon, a journalist and author considered the nation’s leading authority on the life and career of President Reagan, died Friday at a Santa Barbara nursing home. He was 92 years old.
His son, Carl M. Cannon, said in a statement to the Washington Post, where his father served for years as a White House correspondent, that his death was due to complications from a stroke.
The elder Cannon covered Reagan’s two terms as president in the 1980s, but his relationship with the enigmatic Republican leader stretched back to the 1960s, when Reagan transitioned from acting to politics.
Cannon interviewed Reagan more than 50 times and wrote five books about him, but he still struggled to understand what made Reagan Reagan.
“The more I wrote, the more I felt like I didn’t know,” Cannon told the Reno Gazette-Journal in 2001.
Cannon was born in New York City and raised in Reno, Nev.; where he attended the University of Nevada at Reno and later San Francisco State College.
Following his service in the U.S. Army, he became a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, covering Reagan’s early years as governor of California. In 1972, Cannon began working as a political reporter for the Washington Post.
Cannon recalled first encountering Reagan in 1965 while assigned to cover a luncheon event for reporters and lobbyists, and being surprised by Reagan’s command of the room when he spoke.
Reagan was beginning his gubernatorial campaign by proving that he could answer questions and was “not just an actor reading a script.” At the time, the word actor “was a synonym for idiot,” Cannon said in a 2008 interview at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.
To Cannon’s surprise, after the event ended, reporters and lobbyists swarmed him to get Reagan’s signature. Can introduced himself.
“I remember her steely eyes. I thought she had a great face, but her eyes were hard,” Cannon said. “His eyes are truly magnificent.”
Later on the phone, Cannon’s editor asked him what he thought of Reagan. He replied, “I don’t know anything, but if I’m running this business, why would anyone want to run against someone everyone knows, everyone loves? Why would you want him to be your opponent?”
“I predicted Reagan would become president, but I had no idea he would become governor,” Cannon said. “I was struck by the fact that he affected people not like a politician, but like he was a celebrity, like a force of nature that people wanted to confront. It was like seeing Kennedy again. They wanted the aura, the sun.”
In 1966, Reagan was elected governor by nearly 1 million votes, and Cannon found himself “writing about Ronald Reagan every day.”
Reagan’s political rivals in California and Washington consistently underestimated him, assuming the former actor could be easily defeated at the ballot box, Cannon said. Reagan ran for president twice but had the will to keep trying until he won twice.
“Reagan was strong, determined, and you couldn’t talk him out of what he wanted to do,” Cannon said. “For God’s sake, Nancy couldn’t talk him out of what he wanted to do. And certainly no advisor or other candidate could either. Ronald Reagan wanted to be president of the United States.”
Cannon’s first book about the president, “Reagan,” was published in 1982. In 1991, he published “President Reagan: A Lifetime Role,” which is considered a comprehensive biography of the 40th president.
Cannon also wrote a book about him. LAPD and the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, as well as chronicling various stories over the years, including the federal raid A heroin lord in Las Vegas in the 1970s.
Mr. Cannon’s first marriage, to Virginia Oprian, who helped him research his first books, ended in divorce. He married Mary Shinkwin in 1985. Washington Post in question. In addition to his wife, he is survived by his three children.
