Last Act

by Craig Shirley

  With all the attention being focused on Reagan and his passing and his Library, overlooked was the impending opening of the Clinton Library in Little Rock. The ultra-modern design was inspired by Clinton’s line, a “bridge to the future”98 but locals joked that it looked more like a “doublewide to the future.” It was located alongside Interstate 30 in an undeveloped industrial zone.

  The cost had mushroomed to 175 million dollars and the size of the Library itself had doubled, too, from the original plans for 70,000 square feet to 152,000 square feet,99 in direct contravention of the existing guidelines governing presidential foundations.

  A Clinton aide said the former president was planning on staying in an apartment at the Library—once it was opened in the fall of 2004—a week or more each month. All presidential foundations were governed by and large by a federal law signed by Reagan in 1986 that had amended a previously established law signed by FDR.100

  Behind the scenes, Clinton was proving to be a royal pain for the Reagan funeral organizers. All the former presidents and high-ranking government officials and rank and file Reaganites were, almost to a person, being polite and understanding about the unbelievable pressures that Joanne Drake, Fred Ryan, Rick Ahearn, Jim Hooley, and others were under. There were simply a thousand moving parts and the logistics were indescribable. All seemed to get this except Clinton, who as the week progressed kept up a steady drumbeat of internal pressure on the Reagan team to allow him to speak at the National Cathedral.

  That schedule had been set long before. It would feature the current president, regardless of party; Reagan’s former vice president and former president and friend George H. W. Bush; John Danforth of Missouri, an ordained Episcopal priest and U.S. senator; a video eulogy by Margaret Thatcher; and remarks by Brian Mulroney, the former Canadian prime minister. The schedule was packed, and if the plane was going to make it to California that afternoon in time for a sunset ceremony, then adding a long-winded and self-absorbed Clinton to the schedule invited all sorts of unnecessary risks. Clinton’s minions kept up the pressure citing “bi-partisanship” and a “bi-partisan sendoff.” Finally Fred Ryan took the matter to Mrs. Reagan, who without hesitation said no.101

  The fact was Clinton and Reagan barely knew each other. They’d met once or twice at White House functions when Clinton was governor, in late 1992 after Clinton was elected president, and at the Nixon funeral in 1994.

  The 1992 visit to Century City by president-elect Clinton to see former president Reagan was pretty much a washout. First, Clinton was forty-five minutes late. Second, when he did show up, he made an unmistakable and crude pass at a young woman on Reagan’s staff.102 When they did meet, Reagan tried to give the younger man some advice about the presidency, but Clinton did not digest it. Reagan tried to get Clinton interested in the wasteful spending uncovered in the Grace Commission but Clinton was uninterested. Clinton was only a bit more interested when Reagan told him to salute the marines standing guard at Marine One.103

  Also, during the 1992 campaign both Bill and Hillary Clinton repeatedly labeled the 1980s as a “Decade of Greed.”104 There was no love lost between the Reaganites and the Clintonistas.

  As of Wednesday, some of the more thoughtful historical pieces delved into the story behind the story of Reagan’s coming-out speech for Barry Goldwater in 1964 and how Reagan’s brother Neil had a bigger hand in it than anyone knew. Also, the subject of the relationship between the two sons was covered. As children, their father had moved them around rural Illinois so often in search of employment, it was difficult for the youngsters to make friends, so they often played with each other; but even so, they were competitive and each sometimes let his more competitive side show. They hadn’t spoken much as elderly men and Neil suffered from his own struggles with dementia. “Moon” died before “Dutch” in 1996 at the age of eighty-eight and was cremated.

  President Carter had been at the Plains Baptist Church, teaching Sunday school, praising the life and times of his old adversary, Ronald Reagan, saying it was a “sad day for our country.” Then with grace and charm, he told his class, “I probably know as well as anybody what a formidable communicator and campaigner that President Reagan was. It was because of him that I was retired from my last job.”105

  Three thousand miles away, the new minister at the Reagans’ church in Bel Air, Reverend Roger Dermody, had told a capacity congregation two days earlier of the Reagans’ generosity in donating food to the church and clothes each year for the poor. “We have a lot of homeless people in downtown LA walking around with RWR on their sleeves and not knowing what it means.”106

  Meanwhile, Nancy Reagan said her family’s return to Washington was “surreal.”107

  CHAPTER 6

  HOI POLLOI v. HOITY-TOITY

  “He came to Washington like an occupying army.”

  In 1979, while preparing one last run for president, former California governor Ronald Reagan outlined his views on national defense and foreign policy and scrapping of the SALT treaties that had begun under Richard Nixon and continued under Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. His plan was to start over by building up America’s defenses. Reagan saw the SALT treaties and the long negotiations with Moscow as fatally flawed and détente as a joke.

  A nervous reporter suggested to Reagan that his plan might lead to an arms race with the Soviets, but Reagan replied, in essence, that maybe what was needed was an arms race. The establishment came down with a bad case of the vapors and went away convinced that he was a nutty nuclear cowboy who was going to wipe everybody out in an atomic war. Critics during his time in Sacramento said that California was the only state in the Union with its own foreign policy.1

  Twenty-five years later, with the United States emerging victoriously from the Cold War and millions having escaped the nightmare of nuclear holocaust, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, a handful of those very same liberal editorial critics were now praising his vision, his courage, and his program. “Against waves of ’expert opinion,’ he pursued his belief that the Soviet Union would crack under the pressure of an accelerated arms race, and he lived to see the Soviet empire crumble and a degree of freedom and democracy come to Russia itself,” said David Broder, an oft Reagan critic.2

  Even then those who did credit him said he and Gorbachev “ended” the Cold War rather than Reagan and the West “won” it. It was an almost eighty-year contest of ideas, with freedom and the free market winning out over communism and economic collectivism, enslavement, and mass murder. More than a few eggs were broken by the Evil Empire.

  Western Europe itself, however, was somewhat ambivalent about the passing of Reagan, even though his policies had steered their future away from nuclear war and toward peace and prosperity.

  In 1990, Reagan, seventy-nine years old, returned to the scene of the communist crime and took a chisel and a hand sledge and chipped away at a bit of history for him and for eternity. As he took his own whacks at what was left of the Berlin Wall, there was a knowing smile on his face. The Washington Post, however, led their coverage with a People magazine–like commentary on his age, implying for the one-thousandth time he dyed his hair, and wrote smarmily “the famous ambling stride has been reduced to the shuffle of an old man.”3

  Typical for the Post, the article used the words raspier and gaffe and spent almost as much time reporting on the advance work of the Reagan staff as it did on the tremendous outpouring of support for Reagan among the West Berliners. Thousands turned out. Said a supportive city resident, “He had the most vision of any politician in recent times,” saying what the Post failed to comprehend.4

  Even as of 1991 and beyond, his letters to friends, fans, and colleagues were convivial, frank, informative, and clearly demonstrated an agile and contemplative mind. In a long
missive to Lorraine Wagner, he discussed going back to Dixon, his views on the Bible and Armageddon, the Strategic Defense Initiative, the Patriot missile, the presidential library, and Gorbachev.5

  In 1991, Reagan was doing an interview with Lou Cannon for the revised edition of Role of a Lifetime, and the old scribe asked the older president what he thought about the fall of the Berlin Wall. Reagan, struggling, still gave a “thoughtful answer,” Cannon said. Reagan told him he “thought it would happen, but he didn’t realize that it was going to happen as quickly as it did.”6

  America was in its fourth day of mourning for Ronald Reagan and showed no signs of abating. Indeed, it was picking up momentum, and his passing had been front-page news for four consecutive days now and the outpouring from the American citizenry was only accelerating. Even so, much of the elite of the national media and the liberal establishment had come not to praise Reagan but to bury him. The American people had a different idea.

  On Wednesday evening, June 9, the very first citizen in line for the viewing of Ronald Reagan lying in state in the U.S. Capitol was Carol Williams, a teacher at Strayer University located in Chesterfield, Virginia. That it was a woman, middle-aged, and a college professor was uniquely interesting. The intelligentsia for years had said those demographics despised Reagan.7

  Williams arrived at 5:00 a.m. on Wednesday and waited for some sixteen hours in the stifling heat and humidity before being admitted into the cool and darkened Rotunda. There she would have only a few moments in which to move around the historic catafalque, upon which nine presidents had lain, to pay her respects. By the time Williams was admitted, thousands of Americans were lined up behind her, and it was just the beginning.

  Ronald Reagan’s seven-hundred-pound coffin arrived on schedule aboard SAM 28000 precisely at 5:00 p.m. (EST) at Andrews Air Force Base in suburban Maryland. They’d left Point Mugu that morning at precisely 9:30 a.m. (PST). Mrs. Reagan, the Reagan children, and staff also were on the plane, including Joanne Drake. The plan was for her to stay at Mrs. Reagan’s side for the week.8 The Military District was following a 138-page playbook,9 and the Reagan team of Jim Hooley, Rick Ahearn, Linda Bond, Robert Higdon, and dozens of others was following a slightly larger playbook of three hundred pages.10 The Military District was issuing helpful press releases complete with phone number, routes, times, and places.

  A group of spectators aware that the funeral motorcade, upon leaving Andrews Air Force Base, would take Suitland Parkway into the city, set up lawn chairs at a McDonald’s along the way to watch.

  Everything was moving along with military precision—a phrase not overused this week because everything, at least in public, was coming off without a hitch, or nearly so. Behind the scenes was another matter. For whatever reason, Mike Reagan was not pleased with the car he was assigned in the motorcade at Andrews. After a delay of ten minutes, and a loud and not happy discussion with Rick Ahearn in front of the live television cameras, he finally walked away and entered another car at the back of the motorcade.11 Hundreds of thousands of people and a national television audience of millions were left wondering what the holdup was.

  The motorcade was late in departing but eventually followed a preplanned route that took it across the Memorial Bridge and ultimately to Constitution Avenue and Sixteenth Street NW. Spectators began lining up as early as 10:00 a.m., securing choice shady positions under the few trees along the historic street. The procession would pass under the statue of General George Meade, the victor at Gettysburg and the first man to vanquish Robert E. Lee in battle. Parade organizers passed out fifty thousand small American flags to the spectators along Constitution Avenue.12

  In the Rotunda shortly before the VIP ceremony at which Vice President Cheney and House Speaker Denny Hastert (whose district covered Reagan’s old Illinois stomping grounds) were scheduled to speak, alarms suddenly went off and the Federal Aviation Administration ordered the immediate evacuation of the Capitol. This was no drill. An unauthorized plane was heading into the restricted airspace over Washington and right for the U.S. Capitol. Memories of September 11 were still fresh and everyone knew but for the courage of the passengers of Flight 93 that plane would have likely plunged into the U.S. Capitol rather than a rural area of Pennsylvania.

  At around 4:40 p.m. people were firmly and loudly told by the Capitol Hill police and other security personnel to run for their lives, and if women could not run in their high heels they were ordered to remove them and run stocking footed. Had it not been so serious and the day so serious, it would have been comical to witness power brokers like Ed Meese, Dan Quayle, Rupert Murdoch, Tricia Nixon Cox, and dozens of others, dignity askew, streaming out of the U.S. Capitol into the blistering heat all because of a false alarm. As it later became known, it was due to the broken transponder on the private state plane of the Kentucky governor Ernie Fletcher as he flew into Washington for the Reagan funeral.13

  “Airborne threat! Four minutes out!” was heard through the halls of the Capitol.14 Police told the VIPs to move as if their lives depended on it. The dignitaries had been gathered in a private room for a reception before the beginning of the ceremony in the Rotunda before their frenzied flight from the old building, shucking shoes and jackets, running and falling head over heels. “I didn’t know Rupert Murdoch could run so fast,” quipped Bob Colacello, who was a writer and close friend of Nancy Reagan.15

  Joan Rivers was also observed running and for once was speechless as the police yelled, “Air Con Red! Air Con Red!” Linda Bond was yelling, “Run! Run!” She later saw Rivers walking around, shoes in hand, even after the alarm had passed. Bond said Jeane Kirkpatrick refused to run, saying, “I’ve had a good life. I’m not running out there.” Someone then threw Kirkpatrick over his shoulder and carried her out.16

  The summer heat they ran into was stifling, and when they finally returned for the Rotunda event, all were drenched. Bond was impressed with Senator Bill Frist’s calm demeanor through the false crisis; she was also impressed when they returned and she spotted Jack Kemp, his shirt damp with sweat, behind the bar helping to serve drinks. She noted Tricia Nixon Cox, whom she surmised was surprised to be invited to the VIP event, was humble and appreciative.

  Bond was less than impressed that Al Haig objected to the protocol that held that George Shultz should go ahead of him.17 Then again, Reagan had also taken note of Haig’s super ego, writing in his diary the day he fired Haig that the only thing the two disagreed on was who was president.18

  A young intern for Patrick Kennedy who had only been in Washington for a few days exclaimed that he’d been part of an evacuation and seen a presidential funeral and these “are the most historic things I’ve seen!”19

  The police and security presence was felt everywhere in the city. Bomb-sniffing dogs were frequently spotted.

  In story after story after story, many American citizens in chapter and verse told of their admiration for Reagan, their affection for Reagan, their esteem for Reagan, and their devotion to Reagan. Even from those who’d opposed him, there was respect. A black man from Memphis said that while Reagan was “sometimes-offensive . . . to African Americans . . . ’he definitely believed in freedom, and I certainly enjoy freedom.’ ”20

  In Dixon, Illinois, a life-sized statue of Reagan atop a stone pedestal was quickly disappearing under flowers and other tributes. A group of Girl Scouts was photographed in a circle around the statue, holding hands, offering a prayer.21 Social critics wrote lengthy pieces analyzing the meaning and significance of the grassroots shrines that came in to vogue with the death of Princess Diana. One or more sites of significance became makeshift memorials, and within a short period of time the locale became a heaping pile of florae and other memorabilia.

  The little town of Dixon was overrun with camera crews and satellite trucks from nearby Midwe
stern cities, all in search of the not-so-elusive man on the street or woman on the street to discuss his or her thoughts and memories of Reagan. They knew they’d hit the mother lode, though, when on occasion they found someone who actually knew Ronald Reagan in the old days.

  The state of Reagan’s birth announced that a stretch of Interstate-88 from the Iowa border to Dixon would be designated “The Ronald Reagan Memorial Highway.” The decision to do so was announced in an executive order by the governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich. However, the press release from the governor’s office mistakenly said the Gipper’s birthplace was Dixon, rather than Tampico.22

  There was renewed public discussion about a Reagan monument on the Mall and issuing a RWR dime along with the FDR dime. Yet another proposal being floated was to put Reagan on the twenty-dollar bill.23 As with nearly everything else, the Republicans on Capitol Hill got into a fight on how to commemorate Reagan. Grover Norquist knew the path of least resistance was right over the memory of Alexander Hamilton, who was not a president and who didn’t have the lobbying muscle of supporters of Andrew Jackson, or John Kennedy, or FDR, and besides, as Norquist quipped, “Alexander was a bad shot.”24

  The irony about talk of a memorial on Washington’s National Mall was that Reagan, as president, had signed a bill that designated a twenty-five year wait before anyone could be memorialized on the strip of land between the Capitol and the Washington Monument.25 And Nancy Reagan had earlier opposed the likeness of her husband on the dime and in fact had issued a statement saying as much.26 (Nancy Reagan had earlier received a handwritten note from Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, thanking her for wanting to keep FDR on the dime.)27