Last Act

by Craig Shirley

  The criticisms and conjectures continued. Television executives wondered if they were devoting too much coverage to Reagan’s death, even as cable ratings were “up 20 to 30 percent since Reagan died.”90 The networks, which were not covering the week of the Reagan funeral nearly as much as the cable cousins, had not seen their ratings budge upward an inch. As television had evolved into the nation’s town hall, the men and women on and behind the camera were dissecting their role in covering the death of Reagan, and whether they should be respectful or judgmental. But like Narcissus, they were fascinated with themselves, loved to talk and gossip about themselves, and generally celebrated and revered themselves.

  Phrases such as “His military successes had a price” and “costly misadventures”91 filled the stories printed in the nation’s newspapers, despite the fact that his military and foreign policies had been demonstrably successful in bringing down the Soviet Empire and relieving Americans from having Soviet nuclear missiles pointed at their children’s heads. Still, the disaster of Lebanon was repeatedly reviewed, as was Iran-Contra. Again.

  Standing in contrast were hundreds of stories of his thoughtfulness or kindness, the people who’d driven through the night just to stand in line for hours on the Mall. For each tale by the elites bashing Reagan were a hundred anecdotes about how people thought he’d saved the country, saved the world from nuclear war, or saved the future for their children.

  For some of the liberal elites and columnists during the week of the Reagan funeral, there was never any such thing as a cease-fire. Molly Ivins was a feisty (some said mean spirited) pedestrian writer based in Austin who made a living and a habit of tormenting George W. Bush in rambling and disconnected pieces, and she did not disappoint. The day before Reagan was buried she accused Bush of wanting to cut off health care for American military veterans.92 Watching the national fuss over Reagan, a professor from American University threw up his hands in exasperation and said, “He hurt the environment; there was double-digit inflation. I just don’t get it.”93 He was wrong about the environment, and he was wrong about inflation, and he was dead wrong in not getting it.

  So far, the hoped-for bounce for President Bush in the polls due to the death of Reagan was just that: hope. A new poll out from the Los Angeles Times had Kerry leading Bush nationally 48–42 and ahead in the battleground state of Ohio.94 Another Bush, number forty-one, however, was hoping not to bounce, as at the age of eighty he announced he would make another parachute jump to celebrate his birthday.95 The relative success of his one-term presidency was being debated by historians and scholars but never debated was the courage and character of George Herbert Walker Bush. He was simply one of the most decent men to ever occupy the Oval Office.

  The line grew as people continued to assemble, some arriving in the middle of the night, and despite being warned they most likely would not see the inside of the Capitol in time, they still did not leave. As of 11:00 p.m., the Washington Metro system was still full, still dislodging passengers at Union Station or Capitol South on Capitol Hill so people could walk over to the Mall for the privilege of standing in line for hours before going into the Rotunda. A commemorative card handed out said, in part, “In Final Tribute from a Grateful Nation” along with Reagan’s birth date and death date.96 Visitors clutched the keepsake closely.

  One woman who departed the lighted and gleaming white structure said, “I’m just speechless. It was just wonderful, beautiful.” People went through in shorts and tennis shoes and suits and dresses but all were quiet, somber, and respectful. Many had tears in their eyes and their own tales of Reagan, of once seeing him at a campaign rally or shaking his hand, or getting a letter from the White House. Many had driven for hours and were proud to say so. At the other end of the long, long, long line, it was another story. A man at the end of the line yelled if anyone ahead of him was for John Kerry, and “a dead hush fell over the crowd.”

  “Good,” the man yelled again.97

  CHAPTER 7

  ASSAULT ON JENKINS HILL

  “It enrages them still, which is why they’re so eager to diminish him, to peel him, even in death.”

  She told me that as he neared death and it became evident it was close, he opened his eyes and he gazed at her. His eyes were as blue as ever and he closed them and died. She told me it was the greatest gift ever.”1 The day before the funeral of the fortieth president of the United States, Joanne Drake related this emotional and deeply personal story of Nancy Reagan’s and Ronald Reagan’s last moments together to the American people, in the hopes they would understand that in death he remained dignified.

  Patti Davis echoed her mother’s recollections but was surprised how hard she was taking her father’s passing. “I thought I was prepared. So many waves of grief crashed over me during these years.”2

  At his final breath she said, “At the last moment, when his breathing told us this was it . . . and looked straight at my mother. Eyes that hadn’t opened in days did, and they weren’t chalky or vague. They were clear and blue and full of love.”3

  Most commentators had noted by now that Reagan had been out of the public eye for almost a decade. It had also been noted that Nancy Reagan had not and would not make any public statements during the week leading up to the funeral, other than the short release announcing her husband’s passing and thanking people for their support. The three children were scheduled to speak at the committal ceremony at Simi Valley but Mrs. Reagan would remain silent. She did tell her friend Merv Griffin, in confidence, of her surprise at the outpouring. “I thought they forgot Ronnie because nobody had seen him for 10 years.”4

  But even now, only five days after his passing, Ronald Reagan and his legacy were still being harshly knocked by some commenters and columnists alike, and on both sides of the Atlantic. Garry Wills, an erstwhile conservative writer for National Review and author of the book Reagan’s America, said that Ronald Reagan played “the heartwarming role of himself.”5 When Wills left conservatism, many on the Right were not sorry to see him go. His thought patterns and writing style could best be described as “macaronic.” Men and women of the Right said Conservatism, si; Wills, no.

  Jet-set-celebrity-editor Tina Brown wrote a retrospective piece for a national paper about Reagan, and a photo shoot and another article in 1985. However, the article was more about her stewardship at Vanity Fair (from which she was long departed), though she did manage to get to the second sentence of her piece without using a first person pronoun.6

  Even the history of Reagan was getting all tangled up. Glenn Kessler, a writer for the Washington Post, said Reagan won the election of 1980 with “a simple but devastating question: Are you better off than you were four years ago?”7 This closing statement of his debate with Jimmy Carter was important to help close the sale with skeptical voters in 1980, but it was that and a thousand other things that helped or hurt Reagan and helped or hurt Carter, including the continuing hostage crisis in Iran, the bad economy, Reagan’s new message of optimism, and the palpable sense of malaise in America.

  To no one’s surprise, the Post’s first editorial after his passing repeated the old shibboleth of his “inattentiveness to detail, as well as to some fairly major goings-on . . .” Iran-Contra was mentioned in the first paragraph but the victory over communism was relegated to the third paragraph, and then only as an allusion. The two-column, page-length editorial was typically and frequently tough on Reagan, shot through with words and phrases such as “his naiveté . . . dubious anecdotes . . . occasional confusion of reality with movieland myth.” The editorial called his support for SDI “preposterous” and complained that permanent Washington never accepted a Reagan presidency including,

  people in government, journalism, think tanks, lobbying, law—whose frame of reference was never quite able, even after two administrati
ons, to accommodate Ronald Reagan in the role of president. In the land of the quick, articulate and thoroughly briefed, Mr. Reagan seemed out of his depth from the day of his first press conference as president—obviously not conversant with the subject matter that was being thrown at him from all directions, evasive, fumbling, off-balance . . . Mr. Reagan will forever be seen by certain of his adversaries as an easily manipulated executive, something of a figurehead, fronting for the traditional interests of his party.8

  It was his first press conference in early 1981 where Reagan eviscerated the Soviets causing the Washington insiders to get positively faint.

  The frosty editorial conceded that Reagan was pretty good if he could be “alone in front of a camera and give a proper scripted speech.” In passing, it noted his ability to connect with people but not without also hitting him again on the so-called budget cuts of the early 1980s, which “hurt” “a lot of people,” and asserting that he lacked the conscience to be worried about those people. The Post also lauded Reagan for the massive tax increase of 1982, which he himself always regretted, feeling he’d been sold a bill of goods by Tip O’Neill and the Democrats. It also mentioned the arms deal with the Soviets of 1987 but did not recognize that it was Reagan’s hard-line policies that brought the Kremlin to the negotiating table in the first place.

  Throughout, the whisper of “poor” and minorities was faintly heard. In the end, the piece only grudgingly allowed that Reagan had a role in ending the Cold War but never once said he’d actually won the Cold War. Oddly, it did say he continued “the policy of his predecessor, Jimmy Carter” with regard to a military buildup.9 The editorial was a classic study in liberal sophistication and was typical of the Post. A little grudging praise here—to give it a patina of fair-mindedness—but a lot of heavy criticism to reveal their real attitude toward Reagan, which was smarmy, unctuous, and condescending. However—and to the everlasting gratitude of conservatives everywhere—the Post never claimed that Reagan had “grown” in office as it often patronizingly said about politicians who moved from the Right to the Left.

  Offsetting those harsh judgments of Reagan was a column by the Post’s E. J. Dionne that praised Reagan’s abilities as a politician and political leader in part because the Gipper did not talk like a traditional Republican. “Reagan had the New Deal bred in his bones and could talk to Democrats like a Democrat, and in a way no Republican has matched since.”10 Adding his voice was another liberal scribe David Ignatius, who also positively described Reagan as the president who “mobilize[d] moralism and pragmatism in a way that eventually toppled the Soviet Union.”11

  Reagan’s memory was warmly celebrated by people who did not read the New York Times or the New Republic at the Ropewalk Tavern in Baltimore, where there was a six-foot statue of him—outside the establishment—made reportedly out of bronze. Busts of the Gipper also were featured on the bars inside the establishment.12

  Despite their public protestations to the contrary, the Bush reelection campaign was draping the image of Reagan all over its website. A faxed daily political newsletter The Bulletin’s Frontrunner devoted day after day of coverage to the political ramifications of the death of Ronald Reagan and how the Kerry and Bush operations were denying their attempts to politicize the Gipper’s passing—even as each side did their best to politicize his passing. “Kerry Says He Sees Personal Contrast Between Reagan, Bush” and “Bush Campaign Reworks Web Site to Prominently Feature Reagan.”13

  The campaigns weren’t alone. “Effect of Reagan’s Death on This Year’s Presidential Campaign Examined,” screamed one story touted in the LA Times. The Philadelphia Inquirer said all the Reagan “hagiography” could not be good for Kerry. But the Chicago Tribune brought up the 1978 House campaign in Texas, where a young George W. Bush sought the GOP nomination but was opposed by none other than former governor Ronald Reagan. It was the only primary that year in which Reagan took sides.14

  Newsweek noted “neither Bush nor Kerry fares well alongside a president who entered the history books long ago.”15 It was not clear, however, if the editors thought Reagan great or the other two men small.

  The line that had formed behind Carol Williams on Wednesday evening stretched into the oppressively warm night, snaking around the Capitol building, down the front sward, and along the Mall for as far as the eye could see. It streamed passed the Air and Space Museum a half mile away and beyond, all the way to Seventh Street. It was a twisting line that had gone back and forth and back and forth, snaking under the occasional shade of trees to escape the scorching daytime sun. Others held up umbrellas as they stood patiently following the route of metal fences hastily arranged to add some order to the procession.

  Citizens had been advised not to bring purses, rucksacks, cameras, or food into the sanctum sanctorum, and all would be required to pass through a magnetometer. Outside, some carried flowers and a few signs that made political statements. Children fidgeted, understandably bored after many hours, but some took advantage of the time to study homework or just chat with their parents about Reagan or Washington or the U.S. Capitol building. There were many touching stories about fathers and daughters and grandmothers and grandsons driving long distances together and, along the way, bonding. In a sense, Reagan was once again uniting Americans. Ministers, priests, and rabbis were all seen waiting patiently in line.

  “The Capitol Police estimated that 30,000 visitors had passed through by 9 a.m.” on the morning after the private memorial service.16 That was in twelve hours and overnight to boot. In all the time Lyndon Johnson laid in state only forty thousand came to pay their respects.17

  The wait time was up to nine hours for citizens to make their way slowly up what was once known as Jenkins Hill to pay their respects to Ronald Reagan. Thomas Jenkins pastured his cows on the small rise that overlooked the rest of the new federal city in the last years of the 1700s, before the government acquired it for their new Capitol building. One woman was unfazed by the long wait. “I loved Ronald Reagan.”18

  Even in the late evening, the weather was almost unbearable. The sun had gone down hours before but the humidity was such that men and women were perspiring heavily, staining their clothes under their arms and down their backs. There was absolutely no breeze for respite. But nobody complained. The good news was that row upon row of portable toilets were available.

  Standing in line were oldsters and youngsters and Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and grandmothers and grandfathers and mothers and fathers holding the hands of children or pushing strollers. There were men and women in uniform and of all races, all ages. And they weren’t just from Washington or the Virginia or Maryland suburbs either. They were from all over the country.

  One eighty-five-year-old, Boydson Baird, had flown from Knoxville to Atlanta and there, after his son and grandson joined him, the three went on to Washington all for the privilege of standing in line for Reagan. An elderly couple drove from Florida in their motor home along with their cat. “If I can drive from Orlando to see him, I’m sure I can wait eight hours to see him.” A construction worker sporting tattoos, Don Coles, also drove a long distance to pay his respects to the Gipper. He told reporters, “This is the way a good man should be buried.”19

  They were not unique. A blind couple was spotted waiting patiently in line. “Joanne and Harold Wilson, both blind, used their walking sticks to tap their way along the circuitous route . . .” “You feel the respect and the awe, the feel of the crowd, the historical moment,” Joanne said.20

  Sheryl Gay Stolberg, a talented writer for the New York Times, captured the moment perfectly. “The people came to the People’s House, to honor a president many remember as a man of the people.”21

  Overhead in the night sky, a sliver of a moon danced in and out of the clouds and the thick, moist mist.

  Also
coming to pay their respects were President and Mrs. Bush, but so quietly and with so little fanfare that people were surprised to see the first couple. The Bushes were silent and simply and reverently approached the coffin, and Bush bowed his head and then reached out and touched the flag over the coffin. He gently smoothed it, which made for a memorable and historic moment.

  Those in line behind the velvet ropes were admonished again not to take pictures while in the Rotunda and none did, respectful of the somber occasion. There was nary a sound as only the scuffing of shoe leather on the sandstone floor could be heard. Wisely, the lines went both ways, clockwise and counterclockwise, so twice as many people could move in a half-circular motion around the funeral bier, a flag-covered casket sitting atop a catafalque with a black velvet skirt.

  The subject of the weight of the Reagan casket had been much debated during the week. One report had it as heavy as 735 pounds because it was lined with marble.22 Three groups of military bearers had to rotate when taking the casket up the many stairs of the west front of the Capitol because of the heaviness, the heat, and the number of steps.

  In an elaborate and thoroughly planned ceremony, the Honor guards standing at post around Reagan changed every half hour, but they were all on duty for fifteen-hour shifts. Six guards were always at post with four carrying M1s, though they did not have bullets or firing pins. They did have bayonets. A “supernumerary” was in charge. He inspected each of the other men but was also there in case one of them faltered. Four armed guards stood motionless at each of the four corners of the casket. The fifth, unarmed, stood at attention at the head of the coffin.23 The changing of the guard was a long and beautifully choreographed ceremony, rich with ceremony and symbolism.