One Has to ‘Make a Living,’ Bush Says of Big Reagan Fee

WASHINGTON —  Although he has been in office for less than a year, President Bush has some thoughts about retirement income: He has no qualms about a former President being paid by private industry.

“Everybody’s got to make a living,” he said at a news conference Tuesday in answering a question about the $2-million fee reportedly paid to former President Ronald Reagan by Japan’s largest mass media conglomerate for a lecture tour of Japan.

To a second question about the payment, Bush responded: “I will not have anything negative to say about President Reagan--if that’s an invitation for this--because I prefer to emphasize the positive parts of that trip, talking openly about the need for freer trade, the affection shown to him by the Japanese people.”

When asked his opinion of payments by private industry to former presidents, Bush said: “I have no problem with that, provided it’s not overdone.”

The President showed similar caution about wading into the question of whether, as vice president, he had rejected Nancy Reagan’s request to urge President Reagan to dismiss Donald T. Regan as chief of staff in early 1987 during the depths of the Iran-Contra affair.

Mrs. Reagan wrote in her book, “My Turn,” that she and Bush agreed that Regan should depart, but, when she asked him to take such a message to Reagan, he said it was not his role.

“I can’t help you on that. I don’t want to get into that one,” Bush said Tuesday.

To the shouted question of “Why?” the President responded: “Never mind.”