More Richard Reeves: “A reporter who fairly bristles with opinions, a porcupine among parrots and trained seals.”

From a Richard Reeves obit by Harrison Smith, in the Washington Post:

Richard Reeves, a veteran political reporter, columnist and author who chronicled the nation’s history and politics in graceful prose for more than half a century, bringing readers inside the White House during pivotal moments of modern presidencies, died March 25 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 83. . . .

With his baritone voice and conversational writing style, Mr. Reeves was a personable, erudite guide to American politics, both in print and on television. He co-hosted the NBC magazine show “Sunday” in the 1970s, was chief correspondent for the PBS program “Frontline” and won honors including Peabody and Emmy awards, for documentaries on the Soviet war in Afghanistan and TV’s impact on politics.

Reviewing his 1977 book “Convention,” a colorful account of the previous year’s Democratic National Convention in New York, cultural critic John Leonard called Mr. Reeves “one of our smartest political reporters and analysts, a man who fairly bristles with opinions, a porcupine among parrots and trained seals.”. . .

Mr. Reeves studied engineering, not journalism, and was working for the manufacturer Ingersoll-Rand in New Jersey when he began a double life as a journalist. On a lark, he and a few friends started a newspaper, the Phillipsburg Free Press, with Mr. Reeves serving as the editor by night, investigating local politicians and presiding over the paper’s headquarters — a converted movie theater big enough to house an old printing press. . . .

“Reeves wrote with narrative flair, which came out of a deep dive into great novels,” Brinkley added. “He was one of those literary biographers who had journalistic scruples to get every fact right. Anything Richard Reeves ever wrote was eminently footnotable.” . . .

“Journalism is so attractive,” he told the Boston Globe in 2001, “because it’s the one field where you don’t need any qualifications.”. . .

Although Mr. Reeves spent much of his life covering politics, he said he was chastened by his wife’s unsuccessful run for the state Senate in 1992. “From my new perspective, as candidate consort, the business of running has rubbery rules and a lot of desperate practitioners, more like addicts than professionals,” he wrote in a Los Angeles Times essay.

The campaign trail offered a few unhappy lessons, he added. Among the most discouraging:

●“ ‘Buying a seat’ is not a political charge, it’s our political system.”

●“Campaign strategy is simple: Create an opponent, who may or may not resemble people living or dead, and run against that creation.”