A Conversation with Ronald Reagan

By Ronald Reagan, Hugh Sidey

The President sits in the Oval Office, that egg of light, as Author John Hersey once described it. He is all wired up to microphones that will transmit his words to the typists. A clutch of aides hover at the fringe, but otherwise Ronald Reagan and his guest are alone, as they have been a dozen times in the past 4 1/2 years.

There is at once a sense of power, of so many of mankind's aspirations coming to rest on this one person, and a new sense of fragility. The President is a convalescent. The conversation this Thursday morning is about cancer. It is his first press interview since being operated on twelve days earlier.

Reagan may be thinner, but it would take a practiced medical eye to judge the few pounds he has dropped during his illness. The news stories suggested a loss of color from his face, but here again the evaluation of fading hues would require the eye of a Michelangelo. He is still ruddy, but perhaps not as ruddy as he would have been had he gone to his ranch in California to chop wood. Hoarseness from the tube in his throat? He certainly sounded hoarse when he appeared on TV with the President of China, but now, at ease in his office, it would take an ear with perfect pitch to detect a problem. If anything, he seems more alert than he normally is. His eyes are concerned and clear. His answers are less rambling and nostalgic than usual. He obviously wants to dispel any suspicion of weakness or disability.

But physical vigor is the least part of the morning's display. A visitor is struck more by his determined spirit. Ronald Reagan is marching on. Cancer has been found and excised, and he believes in mind and heart that he has been cleansed of the disease. There is no crack in the armor. At no time in 34 minutes of conversation does a shadow cross his eyes. The words mortality and cancer come quietly and without theatrics.

His sense of humor is intact. He loved the cartoon that showed a nurse looking out of a hospital window, saying, "Somebody get down there and stop that clown from chopping wood before he disturbs the President!" The man beside her looks down and says, "Good heavens ... that is the President!" Reagan showed the cartoon around Bethesda Naval Hospital, only to have some of the nurses lift their eyebrows over the ample proportions of the nurse in the drawing. "So when I left the hospital," Reagan said, "I told all of [the nurses] I was going to do my utmost to see that the image as portrayed was corrected in the cartoon industry."

Not once but several times from his hospital room the President had talked wistfully about "going home." Over the years, Presidents have had any number of unkind observations about the rigid environs of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, about how it was like living over the store. But home it is now to Reagan. He credits most of this feeling to the nesting instinct of his wife Nancy.

Reagan's study beside his bedroom is the focus of his healing. With fresh flowers and family pictures, it is the nest that the President taiks about. "I'm a picture freak," says the First Lady. She brought some of the photographs to the hospital, then took them back home. She updates them frequently. "But the pictures taken at the hospital--I think I'll just put them away."

Meals have often been on trays in the study. No spicy food is on the menu for the time being. The other night the Reagans watched a video reel given to them by a Hollywood veteran and friend, Ken Murray. The scenes were from his home movies collected over decades and showed the greats, like Mary Pickford, Carole Lombard and Clark Gable at play.

It seems plain that something indestructible was forged deep down in Reagan's soul the day that John Hinckley tried to assassinate him. Reagan is going to outrun death, he is going to outthink death, he is going to outlaugh death if it is humanly possible. And Reagan thinks almost anything is possible.

Ahead lie big battles over the budget and tax reform and the much ballyhooed summit with Mikhail Gorbachev. Reagan would have seemed a whippersnapper next to Leonid Brezhnev or Yuri Andropov, but now the comparison may cut the other way. Reagan's visitor points out that the new man in the Kremlin is young and healthy. "Yes," grins the convalescing President, "but I'll try not to take advantage of him."

Q. How do you feel? A. Fine, really. Every day I'm amazed at the improvement. Only a few days ago [for me] to bend in the middle, somebody had to help. Now I can get up all by myself.

Q. The sore spots going away? A. Oh, yes. There's an eleven-inch line [scar] there [pointing to stomach].

Q. You don't plan to show your scar like Lyndon Johnson? A. [Laughing] No, no.

Q. You've got another adversary now--cancer. How are you going to deal with that these next 3 1/2 years? A. I'm going to do exactly what they've told me to do. The doctor himself was a little concerned because he'd used the term that I "have cancer." He says the proper thing is I "had cancer." That particular polyp, called adenoma type, is one that, if it is left, begins to develop cancerous cells. Well, this one had. But it's gone, along with the surrounding tissue. It had not spread. So I am someone who does not have cancer. But, like everyone else, I'm apparently vulnerable to it. And therefore there will be checkups for a period to see if it's going to return or if there was a cell that had escaped into the bloodstream or something.

Q. Will the fear of cancer intrude into your life? A. No, I've never been that way about things of that kind.

Q. Twice you have been brushed by death since you've been in this office, and you seem unfazed. You keep going, you keep your hope up. What is it? A. Well, I have a very real and deep faith. Probably I'm indebted to my mother for that. And I figure that He will make a decision, and I can't doubt that whatever He decides will be the right decision.

Q. That's not going to affect your work? A. No.

Q. But if cancer should show up and you had to undergo treatments, is there the possibility that you would resign, turn the job over to Vice President Bush? A. I can't foresee anything of that kind. And that is not just me talking now. That's on the basis of all that I've been told by the doctors. But, as I said once when they were talking about my age before I was elected the first time, if I found myself ever physically incapacitated where I, in my own mind, knew I could not fulfill the requirements, I'd be the first one to say so and step down.

Q. When was the hardest moment in this whole episode? A. The most difficulty I have is in that period in which time disappears and you're no longer a part of the world, [you are] under the anesthetic. The most difficult time I had was trying to reorient as to where I was and had I been operated on yet or not. And they said, "Oh, yes, it's all over."

Q. Did you suspect you might have cancer before they told you? A. No. And I went in with a little handbag, fully convinced that I would be on my way to Camp David the next morning. And they came back in after having taken out the polyp and told me that they had found this other type. And they said, about this other type, that we have no evidence whether there are cancer cells, but it is the kind that can be cancerous. And they said, now you're all prepped, you're here. That prepping took a lot of imbibing of certain fluids for hours before I went there. They said you're all ready and you're here and why not now? And I said yes. I didn't want to get back on that fluid again. And then they told me that yes, there had been a few cancer cells in it, but it had not penetrated the outer wall. So, I'll take the checkups that they recommend.

Q. There was some comment when you only spent five minutes with the doctors when they told you that the specimen was cancerous. A. Yes, they were most reassuring.

Q. You're not unhappy with your medical advice? A. Oh, no, not at all.

Q. Why didn't you do it [the full exam] last year? A. Well, I think this is what has been misplayed somewhat. We knew at the time that there were two small polyps and they had got one, and we set a time later when I would go back in. And there was talk of the concern about blood. That was all dismissed because I took the further tests and examinations on that and there never was another trace. I'm a little embarrassed talking boldly about all of these plumbing secrets and everything. But I think I had an explanation for the very minute trace of blood that just once turned up in that examination and my explanation is that it was external, that I had irritated my self externally and had evidence of it.

Q. Have any of your priorities changed because of this illness, as far as being President? A. No. If there was any change it was back in 1981, with the indication of mortality after the shooting.

Q. So it's full speed ahead? A. Yes.

Q. Has Mrs. Reagan become more a part of the presidency in these past couple of weeks? A. No. But Nancy is a mother hen. Let something happen to one of the family and they become the chick. Being a surgeon's daughter, she is very insistent that no one's going to overwork me. And that includes me, because she knows that I tend to take such things a little lightly. I think she reached her high point this morning. You know, she's on her way to Denison University for a program on drugs. She'll be back today. But on the table by my side of the bed, there is one of those little Cabbage-type dolls in a nurse's uniform, and she has named it Nancy and has put it there while she's gone to remind me that I'm to do all those things like rest and so forth.

Q. She has displayed great courage. A. Yes she has. And it hasn't been easy because, as she admits, she is a worrier. And she has been through a lot, including the death of her father. And then to have what happened to me. I think I recovered far more quickly than she did from the shooting. And then along comes a thing like this.

Q. There was comment, Mr. President, about your staff and whether Donald Regan assumed too much power. A. No. He was carrying out things that I said. When I found out about the anesthetic, I designated, of course automatically, George Bush. But George had just come back from that very successful but also very tiring trip [to Europe]. And just for the hour of [the Friday afternoon procedure], I said to Don, tell George to stay where he is [in Maine]. He's in as much contact there as he would be here. I said, tell him to stay there and not to break up his weekend simply because I'm going to have this little thing snipped. So this was my order. But then when the subsequent thing came along it was George's decision to come back. And he was right. And that was all. I was the one from the very beginning who said to him I don't want you to give up your weekend.

Q. And you think Don Regan's function as the coordinator in that was the way it should be? A. Yes. Don's carrying out the things that I have said. I've witnessed no grabs for power on the part of anyone. There seems to be a concerted effort, and has been for the last 4 1/2 years, to try and build feuds within the Administration. There just isn't anything to it.

Q. I had heard that your color was a little off because you hadn't been in the sun, but you look the same to me. A. I thought I did too. I wasn't in there long enough to lose what tan I had. [The press] even suggested a limp. Well, I've been limping since 1949. After I smashed my thigh in that charity baseball game in Hollywood, this leg came out a little bit shorter than this one. I try to hide it and walk straight, but I cannot conceal it, I have a slight limp.