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14:49 December 20, 2025An earlier version of this story included a photo caption identifying journalist Sander Vanocur as Lou Cannon.
Journalist and author Lou Cannon, considered by many to be the nation's leading expert on the life and career of President Reagan, died Friday at a Santa Barbara hospice. He was 92.
His death was the result of complications from a stroke, his son Carl M. Cannon told the Washington Post, where his father worked for years as a White House correspondent.
The elder Cannon covered Reagan's two terms in the 1980s, but his relationship with the enigmatic Republican leader dates back to the 1960s, when Reagan transitioned from acting to politics.
Cannon interviewed Reagan more than 50 times and wrote five books about him, but was still trying to understand what made Reagan who he was.
“The more I wrote,” Cannon told the Reno Gazette-Journal in 2001, “the more I felt like I didn’t know anything.”
Cannon was born in New York City and raised in Reno, Nevada, where he attended the University of Nevada at Reno and then San Francisco State College.
After serving in the U.S. Army, he became a reporter covering Reagan's early years as governor of California for the San Jose Mercury News. In 1972, Cannon began working for the Washington Post as a political reporter.
Cannon recalled meeting Reagan for the first time in 1965, when he was assigned to cover a luncheon for reporters and lobbyists, and was surprised by how Reagan owned the room when he spoke.
Reagan began his campaign for governor by proving that he could answer questions and was “not just an actor reading a script.” At that time, the word “actor” was “synonymous with a frivolous person. Well, Reagan was not a frivolous man,” Cannon said in a 2008 interview at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.
To Cannon's surprise, reporters and lobbyists surrounded Reagan after the event to get his autograph. Cannon introduced himself.
“I remember his steely eyes. I thought he had such a gorgeous face, but his eyes were hard,” Cannon said. “His eyes are really something.”
Later on the phone, Cannon's editor asked him what he thought of Reagan. He replied, “I don't know anything, but if I were running it, why would anyone want to compete with someone that everyone knows and everyone loves? Why would you want him to be your opponent?”
“I predicted Reagan would become president, but I had no idea he would become governor,” Cannon said. “I was just amazed by the fact that he influenced people not as if he were a politician, but as if he were a celebrity, a force of nature that people wanted to rub against. It was like seeing Kennedy again. They wanted the aura, the sun.”
In 1966, Reagan was elected governor by nearly 1 million votes, and Cannon found himself “writing about Ronald Reagan every day.”
Reagan's political opponents in California and Washington consistently underestimated him, believing the former actor could be easily defeated at the ballot box, Cannon said. Reagan ran unsuccessfully for the presidency twice, but he had the will to keep trying until he won—twice.
“Reagan was a tough, determined man, and you couldn’t talk him out of what he wanted to do,” Cannon said. “For God's sake, Nancy couldn't talk him out of what he wanted to do. And certainly no advisor or any other candidate could. Ronald Reagan wanted to become president of the United States.”
Cannon's first book about the president, Reagan, was published in 1982. In 1991, he published President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, considered the definitive biography of the 40th president.
Cannon also wrote a book about LAPD and the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, and has also recorded numerous stories over the years, including a federal arrest 1970s heroin kingpin in Las Vegas.
Mr. Cannon's first marriage, to Virginia Oprian, who helped him research his early books, ended in divorce. In 1985, he married Mary Shinquin. Washington Post said. In addition to his wife, he left three children.
