Reagan was a spaced-out, strange man — Biographer

“I do not hide the fact that Reagan was frequently an old, spaced-out man, inattentive to details,” he told interviewer Lesley Stahl. “I do not disguise the fact that he was boring”. Morris said: “Reagan never asked questions. He had no curiosity about other human beings and no doubts about his own beliefs”.

Morris also defended himself against attacks from Reagan friends and others critical of him for his unconventional technique of inserting himself into the story as a fictional character in the life of the 40th US President.

Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, was 14 years in the writing andhits bookstores on Thursday.

In it, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author depicts himself as a character who observes Reagan at various stages in his life, giving the impression he knew Reagan as far back as 1926, although he was not born at that time. Morris said he had reached a dead end in his efforts to understand the enigmatic former President.

“Let’s say I reached the point of writer’s block,” he said. “Something has to happen to break that block or writers go mad.” After poring over thousands of documents, Reagan’s diaries and other materials, “I was unable to deduce from those pages how his mind worked,” he said.

“I found myself wishing that I could have been there. Then a voice said, but you were there…“The reason I chose this device was to extend this closeness of observation I had in the White House,” where Morris was able to sit in on top-level meetings.

“Ronald Reagan was always acting the part in his movie — the Ronald Reagan story. What was real was what he became when hestepped on stage.”

“I do not think he was compassionate,” he said. “He regarded misfortune as weakness.” Morris also shed light on the often strained relationship between Reagan and his vice-president George Bush. Things were especially bad between Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush, he said. “Nancy, I think, regarded Barbara as the help, ” Morris told 60 Minutes. “Downstairs people are not upstairs people.”

“The Bushes sensed that and bitterly resented the fact that they were rarely invited upstairs.”

“Reagan was a man who admired strength,” Morris added. “I think he perceived Bush as a man who caved in at times of emergency.”

“Reagan thought that Bush was not `all man,” and Bush was aware of that,” he added.

And while Morris was very critical of Reagan, he still places him “way up there” in the pantheon of American presidents, especially for his role in winning the Cold War. His attachment to his subject became clear when he spoke of the 1994 letter he addressed to theAmerican people announcing he had developed Alzheimer’s disease.

The handwritten letter showed “an utter unblinking acceptance of what happened to him,” said Morris, fighting back tears.

“After he was through with that his decline was very rapid,” he said. “It’s an impossible task for any human being not to be distressed by that, a man of great gifts and achievements reverting to childhood…He’s still a mystery to me, and I think he always will be.”