Last Act

by Craig Shirley

  During World War II, Reagan had tried for combat duty three times and three times he was turned away because of his lousy eyesight. It was so poor, at “7/200 bilateral,” that “a tank could advance within seven feet of him before he could identify it as Japanese.”77 But he’d served honorably in the army as a captain, as a part of the movie industry devoted to making training and morale films for the military.

  Reagan had always brooded about not being able to make it into combat. His friend Eddie Albert came back from the Pacific, where he’d seen plenty of combat as a daring navy pilot. Reagan and Albert had starred together in the screwball comedies Brother Rat and the sequel, Brother Rat and a Baby. Both were cadets at the Virginia Military Institute. Upon his return from the Pacific, Albert had given Reagan a Japanese “netsuke, tugged off the uniform.” Reagan blanched and shrunk away, sorry that he had not faced live ammo like other men of his generation.78

  Probably few Americans had thought much about Reagan over the past several years but when they did it was for the most part warmly and affectionately. He was the last successful president since Eisenhower and the most popular since JFK. The country had trudged through troughs of bad or mediocre presidents and soared to great heights with great presidents. The country, from George H. W. Bush to Bill Clinton to George W. Bush, was enduring yet another drought of greatness.

  Reagan was mentioned often in a political or governing context but for average Americans—as in wondering what Reagan was doing that day—they had turned their attention to other matters, which would have pleased the Gipper, who often said, “We don’t ask the people to trust us; we say trust yourselves.”79 Like his fellow Americans, Reagan also prized his privacy and the future.

  Oh, he’d shown up occasionally over the years in the newspapers at a birthday party for himself, or to make a surprise appearance at his Library in Simi Valley, or be seen walking in the park near his post-presidential office in Century City.

  The office in Century City was warmly appointed, with Western-themed paintings including a Charles Reiffle over the desk, the chair he’d had as governor, pictures of Nancy, pictures of himself with dignitaries, including one of himself with Dwight Eisenhower, which Mike Deaver said had been in every office Reagan ever had. Remington sculptures adorned the office and photos of all the children as well.

  In a glass dome was a .22 caliber bullet with the inscription “This is it!” It was the bullet pulled from his chest and that nearly killed him in March 1981.80

  Right after leaving the presidency, Reagan went to Europe where he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth; attended a dinner in his honor at 10 Downing Street, hosted by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher; went to Paris and was feted at the Eiffel Tower by Jacques Chirac. The French inducted Reagan into the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, which was a great honor. He then went to Rome to see his old comrade Pope John Paul II. Finally, in the pouring rain in front of thirty thousand Polish shipyard workers, Reagan gave a barn burner of a speech after being introduced by another old comrade, Lech Wałęsa. The thirty thousand men and women then serenaded Reagan with a favorite song, “May You Live a Hundred Years.”81 He also paid his respects at the Warsaw ghetto and spoke to the Polish Parliament.82

  Reagan called an inning for an all-star game in Anaheim, he went whitewater rafting, he went fishing in Alaska, he went to the rededication of the Eisenhower Library, and, for the first few weeks out of the presidency, he was startled to hear on the television, “Today, the president . . .” and then “wonder what he had done.”83 He also spoke at the Nixon Library. He spoke out against the 22nd Amendment, he spoke in favor of the line item veto, spoke out against gerrymandering, and spoke in favor of some limited gun control, putting him at odds with President Bush. But that was his only public disagreement with Bush.

  And for the first time in years, his car stopped for red lights. Startled commuters would turn their heads idly and see arguably the most famous man in the world waving and smiling at them!

  He met with college students, former aides, and heads of state; wrote letters; wrote two books, including his well-received autobiography; went golfing; went for a blimp ride; went to the ranch—all in all, a dizzying whirlwind of activity.

  Away from the glare, he and Mrs. Reagan went to visit his parents’ gravesites.84 He would stop for photos and always seemed to enjoy it when children asked to shake his hand. There were quiet rumors and occasional sightings but, as years passed, that was all. Around 1997, he stopped going to the office on a daily basis.

  In Washington, plans were underway for the 2004 GOP convention, to be held in New York City for the first time ever. Because of the attack of a handful of insane Islamic terrorists, it was also the first time in the nation’s history that thousands of civilians had been killed on the American mainland. The World Trade Center had been their target, as had the Pentagon and either the U.S. Capitol or the White House. George Bush had come to office promising a gentle foreign policy but events had forced his hand into something no one could have imagined before September 11, 2001.

  The world and the world of America changed radically and forever. In the process, Bush’s policies changed the organizing philosophy of the Republican Party from Reagan’s “Freedom” to Bush’s “Security.”

  The Security State led to—and was the result of—a worldwide war against terrorism.

  The beleaguered head of the CIA, George Tenet, announced his resignation but most believed he’d been pushed. America was at war in two countries and with all the second-guessing going on, many fingers and long knives were pointed at Tenet. He was described as “psychologically worn down.” To his ultimate misfortune, he would be forever linked to the words slam dunk85 when describing for Bush the chances of finding nuclear and biological weapons in Iraq. The phrase and the intelligence blunder also forever scarred the Bush administration. Afghanistan and Iraq were aflame with war, and skirmishes were breaking out elsewhere and there was no resolution, some of it due to miscalculations by U.S. diplomats, military personnel, and politicians.

  Kerry and Bush went back and forth in their own seesaw battle over size of forces and duration but, like the war, there was no end in sight to this pitched political battle. In an effort to woo Catholic voters, Bush journeyed to Vatican City to meet the pope but his campaign’s polling showed him lagging with American Catholics, who sided more with Kerry on many issues than with the president. Reagan never had any problems with the Catholic vote, especially since he was the first president to send an ambassador to the Vatican. Because of the expected closeness of the election, every voting bloc took on an outsized importance, especially the veteran vote. Kerry was a decorated war hero and Vietnam vet, whereas Bush had not seen combat while in the Alabama Air National Guard where he served.

  Democrats were champing at the bit to beat Bush. They just didn’t like him, didn’t like his people, and certainly didn’t like his policies, even though he was the most pro-government president since Richard Nixon. The cream of the Left met at the Campaign for America’s Future conference and there Hillary Clinton, the Xena Warrior Princess of the Left, told the assembled liberals, “Do you remember I once mentioned the vast right wing conspiracy? Some doubted me.”86

  It was at this confab where the matter of the nomenclature “liberal” was deliberated. Once, it had been a prized and cherished idiom. No longer. It came to symbolize nerdy out-of-touch bureaucrats (“faceless bureaucrats”87 as Reagan used to deride them) and frazzled, obnoxious out-of-touch college professors. One prominent liberal said of his own tribe, “The stench of their failure is simply inescapable.”88 Liberalism had become a tired cliché. Better to shuck the whole thing and go back to the descriptive “progressive” that had once before defined the American Left during the time of Woodrow Wilson until it had become sullied—and the Le
ft opted for the term “liberal.”

  Nuclear fuel rods went missing at two New England reactors and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission asked the management of the other nuclear reactors in America to check their inventory but said they doubted the missing rods fell into the hands of terrorists.89

  The NBA Finals were in full swing and the Stanley Cup Finals were underway. It was June and many still remembered when basketball and hockey were played in the winter. The boys of spring were fully engaged in the national pastime and in the growing game of lacrosse, and national awards resembling football’s Heisman Trophy were awarded to the top male and female college players in the country. The award was sponsored by a middlebrow Washington social club.

  A 5k race was taking place in Washington to support breast cancer research, and as such, the runners were decked out in pink. Studies showed the nation’s capital had the highest rate of mortality for women due to breast cancer, but no one knew why.90

  A national conference was taking place to determine how companies could control health care costs but one attendee revealed the futility. “You can’t talk to a CEO without hearing them complain about the rate of increase in their health care cost.”91

  The biggest movies in June 2004 were Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Troy, The Day After Tomorrow, and Mean Girls, starring an up-and-coming clean-cut actress, Lindsay Lohan, whom many thought had a bright future in wholesome family movies.

  Rain was forecast for much of the East Coast and cooler weather was said to be on the way for much of the mid-Atlantic and New England, though thunderstorms were also a part of the long-range projection. Meanwhile, the temperature in Los Angeles for the first week of June was typically monotonous—highs in the seventies and lows in the sixties.92

  Unlike many around the fortieth president, Hooley never got dragged into the spotlight nor did he drag the spotlight onto himself. He was content to do his job and let others be the judge of his work. Jim was a “Reaganite’s Reaganite.”

  After the assassination attempt, his fellow Reagan advance man Rick Ahearn became an accidental personage as he’d been standing right behind the president as John Hinckley fired six shots. Ahearn was full-sized and husky with horn-rimmed glasses. The photos of Reagan—looking to his left, reacting to the shots, depicted Ahearn right behind him—forever to become a part of presidential history.

  Ahearn had been working for then-Ambassador Bush in 1979 during the lead-up to the 1980 campaign but after some disagreements and clashes Ahearn left Bush, and his friend Hooley brought him aboard the Reagan campaign. Both were as Irish as Paddy’s pig. As singular as Hooley was, he was also much like most in the trusted inner Reagan circle.

  Good men seek other good men, and history cannot contemplate the presidency of George Washington without considering Alexander Hamilton or Benjamin Franklin. Lincoln cannot be mulled over without taking into account John Hay or William Seward or Ulysses S. Grant. FDR cannot be seriously entertained as a president without including George C. Marshall or Cordell Hull or Henry Stimson. But all these leaders also had aides and assistants who were not written large in history and yet were still important in their own right.

  So it was with Reagan. He sought public-spirited people much like him. Ethical, honest, successful, humorous, modest and patriotic. Men such as Baker and Meese but also George Shultz and Caspar Weinberger and Richard Allen and Richard Schweiker. He wasn’t always successful but he tried hard to find men and women of high integrity.

  One advisor and close confidant was Stu Spencer, who first got to know Reagan well in 1966, when he handled his first campaign for governor. They’d had their ups and downs but the bond and trust also ran deep, especially by and after 1980.

  Spencer traveled often with Reagan on political trips, including one to Lynchburg for a meeting with Reverend Jerry Falwell. The men gathered and Falwell did all the talking; Reagan did all the listening. Falwell told Reagan he needed to emphasize social issues and other such matters, to the exclusion of all others. As they departed and got into the limousine, Spencer said to Reagan, “Are you giving any serious thought to . . .” all that? Reagan deadpanned, “Do you think I’m crazy?”93

  Alzheimer’s ravages not only its victims but also the families of victims. There is nothing to look forward to except decline, and the same was true for Nancy Davis Reagan. Nancy and Ronnie were mad for each other and had been for more than fifty years. Stu Spencer recalled many years earlier—long before the presidency—going on a political trip with Reagan and meeting him at the Los Angeles train station. Mrs. Reagan was not going and the two embraced there in the terminal saying good-bye, as the passengers and redcaps and newspaper boys and secretaries and businessmen came and went—as if the two were all alone—the only two people in the world. Spencer had never witnessed such remarkable love, such singular devotion.

  For years and increasingly, Nancy Reagan had been living alone as Ronnie sank deeper and deeper into the darkness of his Alzheimer’s. As he slowly faded, she tried to will him back, as if she was giving a part of her life to him to bring him back. The toll showed in her tiny physique and her mood. “She is physically frail.”94 It did not take much for her eyes to well up at the thought of the decline of her husband. By 1999, she had told Brian Lamb of C-SPAN that she and Reagan could no longer carry on conversations.95

  It was exactly what he’d wanted to spare “Mommy” from as he’d written in his letter to the nation a little less than ten years earlier. Her spirituality never flagged but her morale drooped, and she ate infrequently. Friends who had not seen her for a time were aghast at how fragile and thin she’d become because she was spending all her time helping and worrying about Ronnie—but not about herself.

  The Bush White House and the president’s entourage in France were closely monitoring the developing situation in California, and a wire service reported a source as saying, “the time is getting close.” Bush aides had been informed by Reagan aides that his “health had changed significantly in the past several days.”96

  The gossip mill was slowly spreading among knowledgeable people and some in the media. Former Reagan aide Mitch Daniels said, “Even though the day must ultimately come, it will be hard to say goodbye. Few Americans have done more for their country than Ronald Reagan.”97

  By the end of the day, June 4, Hooley got the long-feared phone call telling him to get to California as quickly as possible. Robert Higdon also got a call from Joanne Drake, telling him the same.98

  Two days before, Nancy had broken down in the garage, clinging to Patti. Sobbing into her daughter’s arm, she said, “Nothing is ever going to be okay without him.”99

  The death watch had begun.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE DEATH OF THE HIRED MAN

  “We’ve lost him.”

  Fred Ryan was one of the original members of the California mafia around the Reagan White House. He was low-key, despite his towering height of six feet four inches. For years, people in national politics had known of Mike Deaver, Lyn Nofziger, Marty Anderson, Ed Meese, and the other Californians around the Gipper, but not as much about Ryan. He’d been in the presidential scheduling office and later in the White House Office of Private Sector Initiatives. Because of his work and his height, he was much respected and impossible to miss among those who knew him.

  Regardless of his blond California surfer appearance and laid-back manner, for his entire life Ryan had put the “O” in overachiever. He was president of his college fraternity at USC, a standout high school football player, a nationally ranked karate competitor, and member of his college ski team. He graduated with honors from USC and again with honors from USC’s law school. Later, he became the chairman of the Reagan Library, chairman of the White House Historical Association, founder of
Politico, and president and COO of Allbritton Communications.

  Ryan had been there at the beginning and would be there at the end, a witness to and participant in the history of Ronald Reagan.

  In 1987, as the Reagans were preparing for their move back to the Golden State, Ryan was tapped to become chief of staff for the post-presidential years. These were expected to be eventful years because the Reagans had always been busy and showed no signs of slowing. There would be the new office and staff to assemble and put in place. Reagan’s and Mrs. Reagan’s schedules would include not only social engagements but also plenty of policy speeches for the former president and charitable work for both. Plus, they had a hankering to travel, just as many former presidents had done, like Teddy Roosevelt. “In 1989, he visited London, Paris, New York, and Washington, and in 1990, he went to San Francisco, Seattle, Berlin, Warsaw, Leningrad, Moscow, Rome, New York, Dixon, Illinois and Cambridge, England,” recalled John Barletta, his riding companion and longtime Secret Service agent.1

  The rap on Reagan early on was that he was lazy, but it was a myth that had largely been dispelled during his presidency. He’d nodded off several times during boring cabinet meetings as president, but knowledgeable aides knew he preferred motion. During his tenure as governor, it came up as an issue from time to time but as staff and others knew, Reagan did not like to idle at the office. Upon moving back, Reagan also wanted to get some golf in and liked to attend Sunday services at the Bel Air Presbyterian Church. In church, he always sat on the aisle because, as daughter Patti said, her father was “claustrophobic.”2 He also preferred the aisle seat on airplanes.