Last Act

by Craig Shirley

  Gore, like Clinton, had also made himself a pain in the neck to the planners over being seated with the senators rather than at the front of the church with the grownups, Ahearn said. Gore did not seem to grasp that he was only a former senator and only a former vice president and thus was a creature of the legislative branch and not the executive branch. He was such a nuisance voices were raised and threats were made until Gore reluctantly promised to behave himself.53

  Some commentators made catty comments about Barbara Bush’s outfit, including Tom Shales of the Washington Post. “Barbara Bush . . . made the curious choice of wearing a comparatively bright gray suit, oddly jolly and casual attire for such a supremely solemn event.”54 It may have been the first time in the life of Barbara Pierce Bush that she’d been accused of not dressing to the occasion.

  And there were Walter Mondale and Colin Powell and George Shultz and Dan Quayle. There were many, many of the children and grandchildren of presidents, from Julie and David Eisenhower to Tricia Nixon Cox and Edward Cox, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and husband Edwin, Lynda Bird Johnson Robb and her husband Chuck, and so many others. Unlike Gore, Mondale and Quayle did not squawk about their seating arrangements.

  There were Bill and Pat Buckley and son Chris, Ed Meese, Dick Allen, and Jim and Sarah Brady, and Ed Koch, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, and George and Mari Will. Laura Ingraham was there as was Caspar Weinberger, Reagan’s first secretary of defense. Alan Knobloch, the president of Reagan’s Eureka fraternity, was there as was Eureka student body president Jeremy LaKosh, and the president of the college Paul Lister. Reagan had been a TKE—Tau Kappa Epsilon—and the national office was in mourning. Reagan had served many years as a trustee of the beloved little college in rural Illinois. The school had written a private prayer for Reagan that they planned on giving to the family.55

  Nearly all the living former cabinet members were in attendance as well as nearly all the White House staff, including Frank Donatelli, Reagan’s political director, his wife Becki, and Ron Robinson and his wife Michelle Easton. Also present was Al Haig, with whom Reagan had clashed on more than one occasion, and David Stockman also surprisingly was in attendance. Bud McFarlane was there, unsurprisingly. There was Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich, two of whom Tip O’Neill had often dismissed as “Reagan’s Robots” because they had done such an effective job implementing the Reagan Revolution in the U.S. House. Their wives Joanne and Callista, respectively, accompanied them. Also the Supreme Court was there, sans robes, although a few foreign leaders were decked out in their own ceremonial robes.

  Seated together were Reagan’s four White House chiefs of staff, Jim Baker, Don Regan, Howard Baker, and Ken Duberstein. And there was Lyn Nofziger and Jeane Kirkpatrick and Larry Speakes, all Reagan White House veterans. Seen in an aisle seat was Jim Burnley, Reagan’s last secretary of transportation. His first job in 1981 was supervising the dismantling of ACTION, a corrupt government boondoggle, and Burnley, aided by Mark Levin and Tom Pauken, both original Reaganites, tore the agency apart much to the joy of the Gipper.

  Surprisingly, Carter and Clinton were spotted chatting with each other and seemed to be enjoying it. Everybody knowledgeable in politics knew the two Democratic men of the South despised each other and had for years. It wasn’t quite the Hatfields and the McCoys, but the animus between the Carters and the Clintons had been thick for years.

  Before the ceremonies had begun, Clinton had positioned himself in the driveway outside of the Cathedral, acting as some kind of national game show host, greeting every motorcade that arrived—and there were thirty-two of them—according to Ahearn. Some motorcades only had a couple of cars but others were long and extended affairs.56 Of course, each former president was afforded his own motorcade. And there was Clinton, greeting all, in his syrupy and saccharine style. Some people actually fell for his act.

  George H. W. Bush was seen animated in discussion with soon-to-be Democratic nominee John Kerry. Clinton also chatted up Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, with whom he shared little in common politically but with whom he shared other things. Hillary Clinton stood off by herself with an alternately angry or bored look on her face. It had been known for years that she personalized politics and deeply despised anyone who was a Republican or conservative. The same look was on her face at the funeral for Richard Nixon several years earlier, and when former First Lady Pat Nixon had died in June 1993, First Lady Hillary Clinton snubbed the memory of Nixon’s dead wife, refusing to attend her funeral. Instead, she hosted a fund-raiser for liberal candidate Mary Sue Terry, who was running for governor of Virginia.

  It was well known Hillary Clinton hated the Reagans. She once said if you compare “Reagan’s eight years with Bill’s eight years, it’s like night and day.”57 She also was known to make wildly exaggerated statements about Reagan and Clinton when it came to the economy and job creation.

  President George W. Bush arrived and as he and Mrs. Bush were shown to their seats the band played “Amazing Grace,” and then an astonishing thing happened. All the talking heads and nattering nabobs and Chatty Cathys and leakers and schmoozers and suck-ups and the like all shut up. The great grey hall went mostly silent for more than ten minutes as the nearly four thousand attendees waited for the proceedings to begin. They actually started five minutes ahead of schedule.

  Some like Linda Bond ruefully noted later that there were empty seats along the wall on the other side of the stone columns that adorned the center hall of the National Cathedral. These seats had been reserved for Congress at the request of Speaker Denny Hastert but they’d never been distributed. Sadly, they could have gone to deserving Reaganites from the campaigns and Sacramento and the administration. “There were other people who would love to have been there.” Still, she was pleasantly surprised when Bush’s chief of staff Andy Card called her and offered to give back fifty tickets for the funeral service that had been reserved for the Bush White House staff. Bond immediately called Becky Norton Dunlop at the Heritage Foundation and Dunlop gladly took twenty-five of them to distribute to appreciative recipients.58 Dunlop had, of course, been a Reaganite’s Reaganite going back to 1976 and even before.

  Television monitors placed around the sanctuary showed the hearse pulling up in front of the church via closed circuit. The crowd then heard the band play “Ruffles and Flourishes” and that was the signal that the funeral procession was to begin. As the procession entered the back of the church, the band played Brahms’s “Requiem.”

  Just a few days earlier syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, a veteran of the religious wars, wrote movingly of the Gipper, “Reagan used to say that America’s greatest days are ahead of it. Now it can be said, so are his.”59

  Mrs. Ronald Reagan and her family then entered at the back and walked slowly down the center aisle, thousands of eyes on her, pitying her, encouraging her, praying for her, envying her, and, for a few, detesting her. Some things in Washington never changed.

  As the casket approached the front of the church, Jimmy Carter and others could be seen putting their hands over their hearts in reverence for the American flag that was covering the casket of President Ronald Reagan. Mrs. Reagan and her family were followed by the pallbearers, walking alongside the coffin as the U.S. Coast Guard band struck up a slow rendition of “Hail to the Chief.” For a moment some thought it was for President Bush, until they realized it was for Reagan.

  Reagan’s remains were officially received by Reverend John Bryson Chane. Danforth celebrated the procession, the “collect for burial,” the Homily, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Commendation. As the men of the cloth moved slowly down the center aisle, Danforth read John 11:25. “I am the resurrection and the life . . .”60 During the Collect Mrs. Reagan, Patti, Mike, and Colleen bowed their heads but Ron and Doria did not.

  “Under gray, sprinkling clouds
, a time capsule opened, and out stepped the men and women who strove and clashed, rose and fell, won and lost in an age that seems long ago and far away.”61

  The casket was carried again by eight uniformed young men from all the military branches and was led by three robed children, a girl and two boys, carrying candles and a cross. The Joint Chiefs marched slowly up the aisle in remembrance and in a final recognition of their fallen commander. Reagan’s coffin was gently placed on a catafalque covered with red velvet at the center of the front of the church, just under the altar. Nancy Reagan was escorted by General Jackman to the front of the church.

  President Bush stepped forward, smiled, and took Mrs. Reagan’s arm gently from General Jackman. She looked up and seemed startled for a moment, and then smiled in return as Bush showed her to her seat in the front pew. The president then took a few steps to the other side of the aisle and sat down next to his wife, Laura. The entire church was silent.

  The flag-covered casket, at the front center, was just a few feet away.

  “The pomp was nearly unprecedented in American annals, more than two extraordinary hours of thundering organ, swelling chorus, haunting silences and eloquent prayers.”62 A passage from Matthew 5:14–16 (“Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid . . .”63) was read and the church choir sang “Jerusalem.” A children’s choir also sang.

  There were pool cameras everywhere for the networks and the cable systems and there were some magnificent shots. But attendees never felt their presence, as they often did at other affairs of state.

  The speakers finally selected by Mrs. Reagan, in addition to Danforth, were former president George H. W. Bush, former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, and the president of the United States, George W. Bush. Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor was chosen to read from John Winthrop’s “We Shall Be as a City upon a Hill,” the Pilgrim’s tract written upon his arrival in the New World and detailing his hopes for a brand-new world. Winthrop’s observations often found their way into speeches by Reagan.

  Also speaking was Rabbi Harold Kushner, who read from Isaiah in both English and Hebrew. “Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”64

  Each in his or her own way summoned his or her best public speaking abilities, and each in his or her own way more than met the challenge, especially Thatcher. Thatcher was evocative of Churchill in her recorded annotations.

  “With the lever of American patriotism, he lifted up the world. And so today, the world—in Prague, in Budapest, in Warsaw and Sofia, in Bucharest, in Kiev, and in Moscow itself, the world mourns the passing of the great liberator and echoes his prayer: God Bless America.” In so doing, she bestowed a new moniker on the Gipper by calling him “The Great Liberator” to go along with “The Great Communicator.”65

  Like her intellectual and ideological predecessor, Thatcher pulled no punches when it was important to drive home a point. “I cannot imagine how any diplomat or any dramatist could improve on his words to Mikhail Gorbachev at the Geneva summit: ’Let me tell you why it is we distrust you . . .’ His policies had a freshness and optimism that won converts from every class and every nation—and ultimately, from the very heart of the ’Evil Empire,’ ” Thatcher intoned.66

  Her remarks, delivered in her neat and pleasing British accent, were truly stunning for a mostly American audience used to the bland platitudes of their recent leaders. She paid homage to Nancy Reagan, saying, “Reagan’s life was rich not only in public achievement, but also in private happiness,” and in speaking of Reagan she mostly focused on his role as world leader and the victor over Soviet Communism. Words like daunting and invigorating and decisively and unyielding infused her remarks.67

  “We here still move in twilight, but we have one beacon to guide us that Ronald Reagan never had. We have his example.”68

  Ailing, Lady Thatcher was fortunately there at the funeral in person, escorted down the aisle by Prince Charles. She’d suffered from a series of small strokes, and the tape had been made some months earlier in anticipation that her declining health would prevent her from attending “Ronnie’s” funeral. Very few people called Reagan “Ronnie” other than his two ladies—Nancy and Margaret. Thatcher was outfitted, of course, in the black dress and black hat and other accoutrements she’d been traveling with for a number of years in anticipation of Ronnie’s demise.69

  An Irish tenor Ronan Tynan sang “Ave Maria” and “Amazing Grace.” Former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, another Reagan favorite, spoke as well. But because of his galloping fear of heights, he did not speak from the pulpit high above the congregation in true Church of England and Episcopalian tradition, but from a lectern temporarily set up at floor level.70

  “Ronald Reagan does not enter history tentatively; he does so with certainty and panache.” He quoted from an Irish poet, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, and spoke in more personal terms than had Thatcher, speaking of Reagan as much as a lost friend as a world leader. But there was no doubt Mulroney recognized Reagan’s greatness and said so, quoting French president François Mitterrand, who in an aside to Mulroney said, “Il a vraiment la notion de l’état.” (“He really has a sense of the state about him.”)71

  Mulroney concluded that Reagan well understood the “difference between the job of president and the role of president.”72 As the Canadian spoke, Bill Clinton was spotted on television nodding off, and Hillary Clinton still looked sullen and morose, as if the funeral of Ronald Reagan was the last place on the face of the earth she wanted to be. The Carters looked respectful, as did the Fords, and the Cheneys, and certainly George and Barbara Bush. Through it all, Nancy Reagan was attentive, sometimes smiling, shaking her head sadly, often dabbing a handkerchief to her eyes. Patti sat close to Nancy doing the same, crying, laughing, and sad, and here all realized how much she looked like her mother.

  The elder Bush spoke for the forlorn, talking about the Gipper in the most personal terms. Playing off a death notice about FDR in 1945 he said,

  It will not take 100 years to thank God for Ronald Reagan. He was beloved, first, because of what he was . . . of what he believed. He believed in America so he made it his shining city on a hill. He believed in freedom . . . He believed in tomorrow . . . As his vice president for eight years, I learned more from Ronald Reagan than from anyone I encountered in all my years of public life.73

  His voice quavered for a moment.

  There wasn’t a dry eye in the Cathedral by the time the former president’s remarks concluded, even as he poked fun at himself over his age and told a couple of funny stories about Reagan, lightening the mood perfectly. Indeed, he had learned from Reagan. Bush was charming and presidential all at the same time.

  The elder Bush’s remarks had been handwritten. He spoke from the same lectern as Mulroney did. He spoke little of polity but mostly of personality and character. Not of nuclear arms but of nuclear families. Reagan and those darned squirrels. Reagan and the handwritten notes he’d left Bush in the White House. Reagan and Bishop Tutu. When Bush asked Reagan how a meeting had gone with the opinionated South African leader, Tutu, Reagan replied, “Tutu? . . . So-so.” Everyone laughed. He jokingly called the Reagan children “kids.”74 Several times he choked up and struggled to maintain his composure. Many were laughing through their own tears. It was a revelation for many who’d never seen him display much emotion in public. Up until this day, his Episcopalian upbringing had forbidden it.

  In a word, Bush was superb.

  President Bush the son spoke for the nation doing so well, saying, “Ronald Reagan belongs to the ages no
w, but we preferred it when he belonged to us.” His remarks were fittingly presidential, spoken from one president to another.

  When he saw evil camped across the horizon he called that evil by its name. There were no doubters in the prisons and gulags, where dissidents spread the news, tapping to each other in code what the American president had dared to say. There were no doubters in the shipyards and churches and secret labor meetings where brave men and women began to hear the creaking and rumbling of a collapsing empire.75

  He also made several kind references to Nancy Reagan and her stoicism. Bush reviewed the high points of the life and times of his predecessor, and all agreed he did very well.

  Bush also told of a delightful letter Reagan had written a young boy. The young author had written him asking for federal assistance to clean up his room after his mother had declared it a “disaster.” Reagan mirthfully replied that the federal budget was pretty well tapped out but he recommended the boy “launch another volunteer program,” and Bush had the crowd laughing.76

  It wasn’t a speech as in the case of a Pericles or a Roosevelt, but it was very thoughtful, and favorable comments rippled through the hall and across the networks.

  He often began his speeches by saying, “I’m going to talk about controversial things.” And then he spoke of communist rulers as slave masters, of a government in Washington that had far overstepped its proper limits, of a time for choosing that was drawing near. In the space of a few years, he took ideas and principles that were mainly found in journals and books and turned them into a broad, hopeful movement ready to govern . . .

  In his last years he saw through a glass darkly. Now he sees his Savior face to face. And we look for that fine day when we will see him again, all weariness gone, clear of mind, strong and sure and smiling again, and the sorrow of this parting gone forever.

  May God bless Ronald Reagan and the country he loved.77