Best Wishes from Newsmakers for a Joyful Holiday Season -- in Remembrance of Our Friend Lou Cannon

As the anti-authoritarian movement gains strength against the forces of darkness, we reflect on the passing of SB's most-esteemed journalist, who spent an uncommon life telling democracy's stories.

As Santa Barbara celebrates the season of many holidays, Jerry and Hap wish the Newsmakers community of readers, viewers, and supporters all best wishes for joy, warmth and connection, in whatever form the time of winter solstice takes for you.

Our annual holiday toast tastes a little bittersweet this year, as we raise a glass to our friend and colleague Lou Cannon, who died last week at Serenity House. He was 92.

A genuinely great man, Lou was a legendary journalist, a trusted mentor, and a caring neighbor. His passing puts us in mind of that great line by E.B. White: “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.”

Lou was both.

A prolific daily newspaperman, he wrote the first draft of history in countless articles about California and U.S. politics and policy during the seven decades of his working life. He was the author of eight non-fiction books, most famously multiple biographies about Governor and President Ronald Reagan, an oeuvre which led the presidential historian Douglas Brinkley to describe Lou as the “fountainhead of Reaganalia, whose books on the president have never been transcended.”

Lou used to recall telling Reagan once that, “I’m going to write about you until I get it right,” delighting in the president’s instant rejoinder — “Good line!”

“Which from Reagan was about as much praise or comment as you were going to get,” Lou would say, the deft raconteur putting a kicker on his story.

Measure of a man. Lou’s huge talents for biography, history, and political journalism have been widely and properly celebrated across major media in the days since his death. The full measure of his consequential professional career may be found in obituaries by Robert B. McFadden in the New York Times and Adam Bernstein in the Washington Post.

For our money, though, the local obits penned by Josh Molina at the Santa Barbara News-Press, and by Nick Welsh for the Independent, offer fuller, personal portraits of the man. They reflect an innate toughness, bound to heartfelt compassion, and an uncommon generosity, tethered to basic human decency, which seem to have been bedrock values of his judicious, fair-minded and rigorous insights into Reagan’s character.

“As legendary as Lou Cannon was, what stands out most to me was how consistently kind and gracious he was,” Supervisor Laura Capps, a close friend, told Josh. “He always asked about others. He paid attention. Only when asked would he offer political advice, but when he did, it was sage and unfailingly spot on.”

Nick for his part resurfaced a series of extraordinary and pugnacious exchanges Cannon had in print with the former billionaire owner of the News-Press print newspaper, at a time when she was waging journalistic, economic and legal warfare against her own staff, myself included.

“I am not beholden to any party, government, sect, faction, corporation, union, “ Lou at one point wrote, responding to one of her characteristically personal insults — “nor to anyone, like yourself who believes that your wealth entitles you to harass, smear, and intimidate honest people.”

A man who mattered. Lou’s voluntary enlistment in that momentous and painful chapter of Santa Barbara history helped draw national media attention, elevating a small town business tussle into a high-stakes showdown between an oligarch owner and a staff of working stiffs on the local news beat.

With great ethical and moral clarity, he put his personal stature to public use, explaining what those reporters and editors understood far better than she ever would: that what mattered in the Santa Barbara battle was preserving journalism in the public interest — not withering it away via celebrity fawning and special interest dealing.

No one knew it at the time, but it was a prescient struggle — one that, sadly, metastasized across the nation and around the globe in the two decades since, witness the current shameful spectacle of billionaire media owners and tech overlords stooping and groveling for the right to hawk the propaganda of autocrats.

Lou didn’t have to put himself on the line in that long-ago fight - he had a nice, quiet life writing his books at the lovely Summerland home he shared with Mary.

He lent his reputation, his integrity and his moral authority to it, however, because he knew it was the right thing to do — for journalism, for justice and for Santa Barbara.

RIP, old friend.

Please lift a cup of Newsmakers cheer to the memory of Lou Cannon, and to our loyal audience, whose members share his love of democracy, community, and civic virtue.

See you in the New Year.

Image: Charlestown Gazette.