Cinema News: Remembering Reagan biographer Lou Cannon

December 29, 2025 | View in browser

By George Skelton

Capitol Journal Columnist

Lou Cannon was a good friend and a daunting competitor. And he was a national treasure.

The retired newspaper reporter and Ronald Reagan biographer died Dec. 19 at age 92 in hometown Santa Barbara from complications of a stroke.

I use the words "national treasure" hesitantly because they smack of trite hyperbole. But they truly fit.

That's because it was Cannon who brought to light through several Reagan books innumerable broad details of the actor-turned-politician's important and often controversial actions as America's 40th president and California's 33rd governor.

Bookshelves are crammed with Reagan tomes. But no author has been so thorough on a sweeping scale as Cannon. That's because he put in the time and did the hard work of sifting through records and conducting hundreds of interviews, then painstakingly explaining it all in very readable nongovernmentese.

Cannon also covered Reagan up close as a reporter during the early years of his governorship and both his terms as president.

Reagan once asked Cannon why he was embarking on yet another book about him. "I'm going to do it until I get it right," the writer replied, only half-jokingly, according to Cannon's son, longtime journalist Carl Cannon.

In all, Lou Cannon authored five books on Reagan's tenures as governor and president.

That's an invaluable contribution to historians and contemporary America's sense of this oft-misunderstood and underestimated world leader.

But that's not what mainly prompted me to write this column. I wanted to point out Cannon's core strength. And that was his dedication to strict nonpartisanship in writing, whether it be straight news stories for the Washington Post, syndicated columns or his Reagan biographies.

I knew Cannon for 60 years, competed against him covering Reagan for at least 20 and we became friends very early based on professional respect. In none of my countless conversations with him did I ever learn whether he leaned right or left. He registered to vote as an "independent," as do many of us political journalists.

Cannon was the type of journalist that millions of Americans — particularly conservative Republicans and MAGA loyalists — claim is rare today: An unbiased reporter who doesn't slant stories toward one side or the other, especially left.

Actually, most straight news reporters follow that nonpartisan credo or they leave the business. Columnists? We're supposed to be opinionated. But for some, their opinions are too often rooted more in predetermined bias than in objective facts. But that has always been true, even in the so-called "good ol' days."

Cannon's sole goal was to report the news accurately with analysis and, if possible, beat his competitors to the punch. He beat us plenty, I hate to admit.

I vividly remember one such beating:

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At the 1980 Republican National Convention in Detroit, Cannon scooped everyone for a full news cycle on Reagan selecting former campaign rival George Bush as his vice presidential running mate. Still pounding in my ears are the loud whoops and cheers by Cannon's colleagues as he walked into the Post working area — next to the Los Angeles Times quarters — after Reagan formally announced Bush's selection. It was deflating.

News sources readily opened up to Cannon, who was intense but always wore a slight smile.

I asked former Reagan speechwriter and Republican strategist Ken Khachigian what Cannon's secret was.

"You'd get a fair shot from him," Khachigian says. "He'd always be straight. He just wanted to get information mostly and find out what was going on.

"He had a way of talking to people that made them comfortable and he'd get a lot out of them. He wasn't aggressive. He had a soft personality, one of his benefits. He'd put people at ease, a big advantage."

His son, Carl Cannon, says: "If he'd been in politics, he'd have been a Democrat. But he didn't go into politics. He went into journalism. He wasn't partisan. He was a reporter who wanted to know what happened and why."

Cannon began covering the state Capitol in 1965 for the San Jose Mercury News and became friends with Jud Clark, a young legislative staffer. Clark ultimately co-founded the monthly California Journal and persuaded Cannon to write for it on the side. Cannon did that for many years and when it folded, followed up by writing columns for a successor publication, the Capitol Weekly.

Cannon just loved to report and write and juggled it all in — reporting full time for the Washington Post, authoring books and writing for friends' small publications in Sacramento.

"He would always want something new. In interviews, he didn't want the standard stock story," Clark says.

"Lou was curious about everything," says Rich Ehisen, his longtime editor at Capitol Weekly. "He liked understanding what was going on and breaking things down. He told the straight story unvarnished. Never shortchanged on facts."

Cannon was a workaholic, but he also knew how to carve out time for fun.

One summer while we covered Reagan vacationing at his beloved Santa Barbara hilltop ranch, Cannon decided he wanted to drive down to Los Angeles to see a Dodgers' night game. But it's risky to abandon your post while bird-dogging the president. Anything could happen. And you'd need to explain to your bosses why you weren't there but your competitors were.

Cannon's solution was to also get good seats for the two reporters he considered his main competitors– Steve Weisman of the New York Times and me at the L.A. Times. We'd provide each other some cover if any news broke out around the president, which it didn't. Cannon even managed to wrangle us free dinners in a large suite overlooking the playing field.

He'll be missed as a friend and a journalist — but not as an unrelenting competitor.