Negroponte reminded me of something about Reagan. (Negroponte was deputy national security adviser during Reagan’s last years in office.) Whatever you gave him to read, he read. (“You” a top staffer.) You had to be careful what you handed him to read — he took it as an assignment. Even though he was president (and you were a staffer).

Reagan was an incredibly hard-working man. He studied, wrote, and spoke endlessly in his career. No wonder he accomplished so much.

And yet there was this image, cultivated in the press, that he was lazy. And Reagan, strangely enough, enjoyed playing along. He’d quip, “They say hard work never killed anybody, but I say, ‘Why risk it?’” And Reagan, as it happened, never napped — never, ever napped. Nothing wrong with napping. He just never did it. But there was this myth that he did. So he’d just play along.

During some particularly difficult time, for the nation or the world, he said, “It’s cost me many a sleepless afternoon.”