Reid did mind, telling at least two local media outlets he was not happy about the characterization. I hate to be so abrupt about this, but Reid probably would not mind.” The retired senator also talked candidly (as best I could tell, at least) about his health (he will soon be in a wheelchair), which has received much speculation since The New York Times’ Mark Leibovich wrote : “Reid, who is 79, does not have long to live.

Reid was in a reflective, contemplative mood as he answered my questions about current events and his career, often directing the flowing conversation into tributaries about his run-ins with the mob (he told me about how the pressure caused him to offer his resignation as the state’s top gaming regulator), his most difficult race, how he didn’t really want to try to get Nevada early-state status, the two things he was advised to do when he was first elected to Congress and even his wealth. “He starts out by saying, ‘Harry Reid is adored by many and abhorred by many.' That was his introduction…I couldn’t criticize him for telling the truth.” Reid recalled how Dallin Oaks, a Mormon elder, introduced him at an event two years ago. The longtime pol knows he remains a polarizing figure – people on Twitter already were sputtering with venom when I teased this piece – and he all but revels in it. But considering what he was able to do in the Senate’s inside game – with Jeffords, with Nelson, during the Keating Five scandal as a broker of exit deals – the wrong person wrote the book, “The Art of the Deal.” There are those who have compared Reid to President Trump, whom the senator recently called “amoral” and “the worst president we have ever had,” for coarsening the civic discourse.

He is not a boastful man, but he clearly was proud of his efforts on behalf of MGM and against NV Energy, as well as his willingness to take on Mitt Romney, to surrender a powerful chairmanship to get Jim Jeffords to switch parties and change the balance of power in the Senate (Why? “I wanted to take care of the Republicans.”) or to relinquish a seat on appropriations to Ben Nelson (“I felt with my position running the Senate that I could get what I wanted anyways.”). Reid, looking a bit gaunt after treatments for pancreatic cancer, used the words “no one” in this context several times during the nearly 90-minute interview as he sat behind a small desk near the foyer of his home next to a bookcase that proudly displays his “Office of the Majority Leader” sign. “No one would have done that….but it paid off.” “No one in their right mind would have done what I did….” the 79-year-old told me. Reid then proceeded to wax rhapsodically about threatening bankers after the recession when MGM Resorts, which now employs him, couldn’t get funding for City Center, and, at about the same time, intimidating hedge fund managers who were preparing to fund coal plants for NV Energy in rural Nevada, facilities that were never built.

In all the years I have known Harry Reid, never has he so well encapsulated his career as he did last week when I sat down with him at his Anthem Country Club home:

Dana point unplugged