Setting Speakes Straight on a Matter of Presidential Delicacy

Five years ago this month, President Reagan counseled a group of young people at a Houston drug and alcohol rehabilitation center to take care of their bodies so they could enjoy an active sex life in their later years. At least, that is the way it apparently sounded to many of the recovering addicts, who responded to the grinning President’s advice with laughter.

It certainly sounded that way to some startled Reagan aides and bemused reporters, including me. “Did you hear that?” people asked. “What’d he just say?”

What the 72-year-old President had said was: “When you get along to where I am, you find out taking care of that machinery sure pays off when . . . you can still tie your shoes and pull on your own socks without sitting down--and do a lot of things that are much more enjoyable than that.” There was a smile on his face.

A few days later, I asked longtime Reagan aide Michael K. Deaver whether the President had been referring to sex. Deaver, whom I had known since college, said he thought so, and other aides had, too. But this was a question only the President could answer.

All right, I asked, how about setting up an interview where I could ask him a whole series of questions about his age? Reagan would be running for reelection next year, I pointed out, and many voters may be concerned about the physical stamina, mental agility and commitment to work of America’s oldest President.

So as Air Force One flew from Washington to Santa Barbara for a July 4th holiday, I sat across a table from the President in his private cabin and asked him dozens of questions about his age and health. I asked for an elaboration of his Houston comments.

Reagan replied that he had been referring to such activities as cutting tree limbs, riding horses, swimmming and diving. Had he been talking about sex? “It wasn’t in my mind,” he said, chuckling, but added that he instantly had realized the young people had interpreted his remarks that way.

“Well, I’m on shaky ground here, OK?” I continued.

“Fine,” he said.

“But I’ve got to ask a 72-year-old President. . . . “

“Yeah?”

“If you still have an active sex life?”

Reagan’s eyes opened wide, he grinned broadly and he laughed. (Later I received a White House photo of the moment, autographed by the President with the comment: “Then I said -- !?” ) Nearby, presidential spokesman Larry Speakes nearly fell off a couch and Deaver sat up straight.

“I don’t think, no, George--and I’m remembering things like Mr. Carter in Playhouse (sic) and so forth,” Reagan responded, referring to candidate Jimmy Carter’s “lusting” interview with Playboy magazine in 1976. “No, this is a subject I think I’ll stay away from.”

The President then was asked what he found physically different about himself compared to, say, 10 years ago or 20. “Well, in many ways I feel better,” he said.

After that initial exchange, I felt I could ask the President virtually anything at all germane to his health and age and he would feel comfortable answering it. I was right. He talked freely and candidly about such things as how he loved his ranch but would be “bored” if he were not President, how he often left the Oval Office “feeling 10 feet tall,” why he was not worried about senility, his sparing use of alcohol and shunning of tobacco, the slow loss of hearing in his right ear, the gradual curling of a finger because of a rare hereditary malady called Dupertron’s Contraction--and the attempt on his life, the inevitability of death and his deep religious faith.

My story touched on the the human side of a man I had covered since he first ran for California governor 17 years earlier. It did not contain anything about sex, the subject he had first raised indirectly back in Houston. I didn’t think he had said anything about it in the interview that warranted reporting.

In fact, until now I have never written a word--seldom even talked--about that unusual question-and-answer exchange. But others have, because Speakes’ office immediately leaked word of it to reporters.

What finally prompted me to write about it here for the record is Speakes’ current book, “Speaking Out.” In this bitter autobiography, Speakes not only admits unethically making up quotes for the President; he also callously assails many of the people he dealt with in Washington, including the President, the First Lady, the vice president, some Cabinet members, White House officials and most of the reporters who regularly covered Reagan, including me. Speakes says I asked “foolish and embarrassing” questions, and he gives as one example the sex query, sloppily citing the wrong interview and misquoting the dialogue.

My questions did not seem to bother Reagan, because a year later I was the only newspaper reporter granted a one-on-one interview with the President at the Republican National Convention.

And I’ve since been invited to the President’s Christmas party. I would be surprised if Speakes ever is again.