Cannon Fodder : Politics: Columnist, who covered Ronald Reagan as governor and President, will dissect those years today at an authors luncheon in Irvine.

It was Labor Day, 1984--the dawn of “Morning Again in America” under Ronald Reagan--and the President was set to kick off his formal bid for reelection with a flag-waving rally in the heart of conservatism, Orange County.

But there was a hitch in the grand opening: that morning, Washington Post correspondent Lou Cannon had come out with a biting column that accused the President’s advisers of handling Reagan as “a communicator in constant need of a keeper” and of using White House Secret Service agents to keep the public and the press at bay.

The usually unflappable Jim Baker, then chief of staff, wasn’t happy and summoned Cannon to his suite at the Irvine Marriott to tell him so, going so far as to call in the head of the Secret Service detail to help show the influential journalist where he had gone wrong in his column.

Baker didn’t win over Cannon. And some seven years later, the Irvine face-off is one of many incidents that Cannon uses to help illustrate a central theme in “The Role of a Lifetime,” the last book in what the author calls “an unintended trilogy on Ronald Reagan”:

That the onetime president of the Screen Actors Guild used his movie-making talents impressively in inspiring a rebirth in nationalistic hope; but that when the cue cards disappeared--and his Hollywood anecdotes failed him--Reagan’s skills and experience were often inadequate to meet the daunting challenges of the presidency.

Cannon, who covered Reagan from his days in Sacramento as governor through his two terms in the White House, will be dissecting the Reagan legacy further today as part of The Times Orange County Edition Book and Author Luncheon at the Hyatt Regency Irvine.

The event will also include novelists Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey, author of “Home Free,” and Whitney Otto, author of “How to Make an American Quilt.”

Cannon’s appearance comes in the midst of a five-city book tour that may serve in part to remind Kitty Kelley devotees that yes, there is another Reagan to read about.

Having spent much of his career behind the scenes as a print reporter, Cannon said he now faces both the drain and the excitement of promoting a book that is getting wide national attention as a comprehensive and essential history of the Reagan years.

After giving the umpteenth “sound bite” on the book for a local TV or radio station, Cannon said he gained a newfound sympathy for “the politicians who makes the same speech 27 times (to the point that) you can’t stand the sound of your own voice.”

“Really how much can you say?” Cannon wondered in an interview from his home in Summerland, near Santa Barbara--another of the author’s connections to Reagan.

But at the same time, Cannon said, contact with the public at book appearances, radio call-in shows and the like as part of the current tour give him a better idea of what people really want to know about Ronald Reagan--such as his estrangement from daughter Patti Davis.

As for Kitty Kelley and the massive exposure her “unauthorized biography” of Nancy Reagan has achieved, Cannon is quick to distinguish his 948-page work--which includes 54 pages of footnotes alone--from the more “gossipy” book put out by Kelley.

With early sales appearing to move briskly for his biography, Cannon said he thinks the public has the appetite for two books on the Reagans at once. But he acknowledges that he’d just as soon have had them come out at different times.

No, Cannon said he never heard anything about Nancy’s supposed lunchtime meetings with Frank Sinatra. In fact, “The Role of a Lifetime” contains few journalistic bombshells--scurrilous or otherwise.

It does not mention, for instance, the now-revitalized rumors about Reagan’s people playing politics with the lives of the American hostages in Iran, pushing off their release until the day of Reagan’s inauguration.

“I never, ever, found any evidence of that,” Cannon said, dismissing the current rumors .

Noting that these reports of hostage politicking are often linked to former Reagan campaign manager and CIA chief William Casey, Cannon said: “I think Bill Casey was probably capable of anything . . . but he wasn’t a fool.”

But its lack of earthshaking revelations aside, Cannon’s book has nonetheless gained widespread praise from reviewers--even from such conservatives as former Reagan aide Lyn Nofziger--for its breadth and vivid detail on the workings (or non-workings) of the Reagan White House.

There is the story told by Cannon, for instance, about Reagan’s preparations for a 1983 economic summit of the world’s industrialized nations in Colonial Williamsburg.

The day before the summit was to open, chief of staff Baker had given Reagan a thick briefing book to help prep him. When he returned to the President’s room the next morning, he discovered the book still sitting on the table, apparently untouched.

A bit frustrated, Baker asked Reagan why he hadn’t cracked the briefing book.

“Well, Jim, ‘The Sound of Music’ was on last night,” Reagan said calmly.

After having built much of his career on a reputation as a chronicler of Ronald Reagan, Cannon said, he has no desire to return to the White House beat. “I’ve done my duty there,” he said.

Now finished with his book and removed from the daily grind of covering Presidents, Cannon has just recently begun his new assignment as Western correspondent for the Post. In that position, he said, he plans to tackle such broad topical issues as the survival of our natural resources in the face of an influx of 65,000 new people a month into California.

It’s not exactly “Inside the Beltway” political fodder, but Cannon--able to travel and work much of the time out of his Summerland home--isn’t complaining.

“It’s a dream job,” he said.