Last Act

by Craig Shirley

  Diane Disney Miller wrote a letter to Joanne Drake thanking her for being invited to the Simi Valley ceremony. “I was . . . so proud of the fact that my father was a personal friend of Ronald Reagan’s.”29 Reagan was one of three hosts chosen by Walt Disney for the opening of Disneyland in July 1955.

  Finally, Reagan was perhaps the most consistent and conscientious writer of the presidency—speeches, books, diary entries, notes, letters, and radio commentaries. These and so many other historical records refute the nonsense that he was “unknowable.”

  Reagan, the oldest president and oldest former president, was the first president to die in the twenty-first century. Yet he once said, “As you look to the future, always remember the treasures of our past.”30

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  “They wrote Truman off as a little haberdasher from Missouri and they wrote off Reagan as a B-grade actor . . .”

  While highlighting with a yellow magic marker each time the word Reagan appeared in research documents for my book about the 1980 campaign, Rendezvous with Destiny, our then nine-year-old son Mitchell looked up from his work and asked, “Dad, has anyone ever done a book on Reagan after he was president?” I thought for a moment and then said, “No.”

  That was the birth of Last Act.

  I did not proceed incautiously however. The reporting of any death and funeral must be handled delicately and the passing of a president ever more so, especially Ronald Reagan, about whom so much disinformation has been reported.

  I consulted books about the passing of Thomas Jefferson, the funeral of Abraham Lincoln, the last years of Woodrow Wilson, the last years of Richard Nixon, the last year of FDR, and the death of JFK and James Garfield in order to get perspective. Each author handled the topic respectfully but truthfully as well. There was little gloss. Gene Smith wrote When the Cheering Stopped about the last years of Woodrow Wilson, Monica Crowley penned the excellent Nixon in Winter, Jim Bishop wrote FDR’s Last Year, Alan Pell Crawford produced Twilight at Monticello, William Manchester labored over the exquisite TheDeath of a President, James L. Swanson put in writing the prized Manhunt about the death of Lincoln and the pursuit of John Wilkes Booth, and the well-regarded Candice Millard authored Destiny of the Republic, about the shooting and demise of James Garfield.

  Each of these scholars rescued their subjects from myth and half-truths, thus protecting the real history. But this is not typical in accounts of Ronald Reagan’s death and such is the case with his post-presidency. The shorthand is he left Washington, announced he had Alzheimer’s, and died, but in fact, there was a lot of living in those fifteen plus years he and Mrs. Reagan had together after the presidency.

  Part of the reason is that Reagan, like Eisenhower, did not obsess about his legacy for the rest of his life. He left a heritage of which he was very proud but the presidency alone did not define all of Reagan’s life to him, unlike say Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter. He saw himself through many prisms, which may have explained why he was particularly fond of the phrase by Thomas Paine, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again,”1 which was a quintessentially American conservative concept. Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and other Founders and Framers believed that man controlled his own destiny, and there were no forgone conclusions, and the dignity of the free and private individual was the essential expression of American conservatism.

  June 5 was an important day in American history. It was the day planned for the invasion of Europe in 1944, which was pushed back to June 6 because of weather. June 5 was the anniversary of the shooting of Robert F. Kennedy in California, just after winning the Democratic primary there. June was also the anniversary of the births of Adam Smith in 1723 and John Maynard Keynes in 1883. Even 160 years apart, these two economists would become synonymous with two competing economic theories: one championed by the Right, the other by the Left. That they were born in the same month did not do the word ironic justice.

  It was the anniversary of George Marshall’s speech in 1947 in which he outlined a strategy to prevent the Soviet Union from taking over or dominating more European countries that later became known as the “Marshall Plan.” It was also the anniversary of the birth of Pancho Villa in 1878, and in 1884 William Tecumseh Sherman told the Republican convention, “I will not accept if nominated, and will not serve if elected.”2 In 1981, five gay men in Los Angeles were diagnosed with what was thought to be pneumonia. Later, it was discovered they had a new and deadly virus, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, which shortly would become known as AIDS. In 1993, the great Conway Twitty died, again on June 5.

  June 5 was a big day in American and world history but with the passing of Reagan it was about to become even bigger.

  Reagan never planned on going into elective politics. He wrote this in his own autobiography An American Life and indeed, emphatically told a group of wealthy Southern California businessmen after the 1964 Goldwater campaign—the soon to be known “Kitchen Cabinet”—“no” repeatedly. To the point of seeming to be angry.3

  He affected lives big and small and some of these stories only came out in the years after he’d left Washington. A boy in Orlando had his life saved by Reagan when he intervened as president to help the one-year-old get a liver transplant in 1985. Nineteen years later the boy, Ryan Osterblom, was appreciative, as were his parents. “I owe my son’s life to him,” said Karen Osterblom.4

  “I admired him because he was genuine in showing respect to all people—whether it was a head of state or a White House butler,” said Pete Souza.5

  Reagan, while president, had established a pen-pal friendship with a young African American boy in Washington, DC.6 The Reagans—with no fanfare—went to his house for dinner, and the writing between the two continued into Reagan’s late years and only stopped when his life became enveloped and then darkened by Alzheimer’s.

  He touched so many and even years later many staff and friends tear up when they talk about Reagan. His young friend and aide Dennis LeBlanc, who knew the Reagans before, during, and after the White House years, can’t reminisce too long without getting emotional. The same held true for so many other Reaganites.

  Reagan changed conventions, especially in his own party, even in the face of great opposition from the established elites of the GOP in 1976 and 1980. The noted writer John Fund first met Reagan back in California during the gubernatorial days and was struck by how well he connected with young people. Until Reagan, young Americans had little use for the GOP and those who did were seen as nerds and losers by their peers in the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1980s, young conservatives were seen as hip and cool. Being pro-freedom and anti-communist was sophisticated. “In 1980, Democrats outnumbered Republicans among voters under 30 years old by a margin of 2 to 1. Now, the parties are virtually even,” wrote E. J. Dionne in October 1988.7

  He had an extraordinary political philosophy, one based on the Framers. His old aide Fred Ryan noted that “the only position the Constitution recognizes . . . being of greater importance than the presidency, that of private citizen.”8 Reagan believed fervently in the private, spiritual, but also joyous individual.

  Another old friend George Shultz said, “I think you have to realize—he was fun.”9

  No one calls themselves a Bush Republican or a Nixon Republican but many call themselves Reagan Republicans, including those who have no idea what Reagan was about. Phyllis Schlafly said at the time of her friend’s passing, “Conservative politicians will want to call themselves Reagan Republicans forever.”10

  If it hadn’t been for Reagan, would there have ever been a President George Bush elected in 1988, the Gingrich Revolution of 1994, or the Bush forty-third presidency of 2000? Would Bill Clinton have ever uttered the phrase, “The era of big government is over”?11 Would an evil empire have toppled?
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  By the time of his death, many of his so-called radical ideas in 1980 had become conventional thinking, including the resurrection and redefinition of American conservatism as being centered on the freedom and dignity of the private individual.

  Mara Liasson of NPR, no conservative herself, still saw this. “Back then, some of the smartest thinkers in America thought communism would be around forever and that Star Wars, Reagan’s plan for a missile shield around the U.S., was a nutty idea. But by 1989, the Soviet Union had collapsed, the Berlin Wall had fallen . . .”12

  The opening of the Reagan Library came at a point in time when there were five American presidents still alive, which was rare in American history even though presidents tended to live longer than the average American male. It was not the first presidential library in California—Richard Nixon had that honor—but it was the first to host all five.

  Like Nixon, whose library was turned away by Duke, Reagan saw Stanford turn up its nose at his presidential library. Plus, he didn’t see the point to having his library so far away from his homes in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. So land was donated by Donald E. Swartz and Gerald W. Blakeley just a little over an hour north of Los Angeles.13

  Even years after his passing, his presidential library continues to host thousands more guests every year than does those of his contemporaries. Even JFK fares poorly when compared to Reagan. In 2014, the Reagan Library drew 383,000 while the Kennedy Library drew 296,000. The Nixon Library drew 85,000 and the Carter Center drew 52,000.14

  In the days after his passing, many newspapers ran timelines of Reagan’s life, but when they got to the end they simply said he announced he had Alzheimer’s in 1994 and died in 2004. But in fact, there was a lot of living and a lot of action in those years between leaving the presidency and passing away. This book does not cover all of it down to the smallest details, but it does try to give the reader a better understanding of Reagan’s life out of the glare of the international spotlight.

  He’d gone far—farther than anyone else—from the soybean and cornfields of the flat Midwest. It was his good looks that got the young man in many a door, but his charm and voice and intelligence are what got him invited for a second cup of coffee. It was said of his voice that it “recedes at the right moments, turning mellow at points of intensity. When it wishes to be most persuasive, it hovers barely above a whisper so as to win you over by intimacy, if not by substance . . . He likes his voice, treats it like a guest . . . it was that voice that carried him out of Dixon and away from the Depression.”15

  Reagan wasn’t “discovered” in Hollywood. He wanted to be an actor and worked to get an appointment with a talent agent. Serendipitously Louella Parsons, the famed and feared gossip columnist, was also from Dixon and she bent over backward to promote Ronnie and his career. Reagan was a good actor who may have become a great actor if fate had worked differently. His wholesome good looks probably worked against him a bit. Many of the big actors of the era—Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Orson Welles, John Wayne, Clark Gable, and Henry Fonda—had some sort of distinguishing characteristic—even a nervous tic or odd way of talking or walking—that made them them. Reagan was just as wholesome as fresh milk. And, of course, the dark film noir of the 1950s was not his style at all. Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift and Robert Mitchum, yes, but never Reagan.

  But in fan polls, he always rated high, and in 1941 Warner Bros. said he along with Errol Flynn received more fan mail than anyone else on the studio lot.16 And he was popular with his leading ladies, including Barbara Stanwyck, Olivia de Havilland, and Doris Day. He signed a contract with Warner Bros. for two hundred dollars per week in 1937 but at the peak he was pulling down around thirty-five hundred dollars per week. He was actually pretty good at light comedy and some of his films like Brother Rat became classics. He also had some good dramatic moments in Desperate Journey and Storm Warning. “Reagan was set to play opposite Ann Sheridan in a World War II melodrama called ’Everybody Goes to Rick’s.’ But when Ingrid Bergman suddenly was signed for the female lead, the film moved from ’B’ status to a definite ’A’ list position and was recast, with Reagan losing out to Bogart and the project given a new title: ’Casablanca.’ ”17

  His favorite role wasn’t just Drake McHugh in King’s Row but also George Gipp in Knute Rockne, All American. He knew the story cold having recounted it many times as a radio broadcaster in the Midwest. When he signed with Warner in 1937, Max Arnow of the studio said Reagan would be the “next Robert Taylor.”18

  Film historian Leonard Maltin defended Reagan’s film career saying, yes he began in B pictures but ended up in A movies, even if he wasn’t the leading man. “Nobody sneered at him as an actor until he became a politician.”19

  When he and Jane Wyman were divorced, she complained of “extreme mental cruelty” because of his growing passion for politics and leading the Screen Actors Guild.20 After the divorce, alone and lonely in London making a movie and complaining about the lousy British food, he made a half-hearted pass at his co-star Patricia Neal.21

  But it was friend Jimmy Stewart who summed it up nicely as far as Nancy Reagan and her devotion to her husband—and Reagan’s developing talent. “If Nancy Reagan instead of Jane Wyman had been Ronald Reagan’s first wife, he never would have gone into politics. Instead, she would have seen to it that he got all the best parts, he would have won three or four Oscars and been a real star.”22

  Part of the Reagan legacy is not only what he did but also what he didn’t do. Three times in the nation’s history between 1929 and 2006 the economy went into a tailspin created by Wall Street. In 1929, Herbert Hoover panicked and created new bureaucracies, issued new regulations, and generally did everything possible to make the situation even worse. In 2006, when again the felonious knights of Wall Street drove the American economy into a ditch, George Bush allowed Henry Paulson, secretary of Goldman Sachs, to cover the markers of his buddies on Wall Street to the tune of billions of dollars, sticking Middle America with the bill. Wall Street, via its enablers in the Bush administration, was bailed out for their own lawlessness and yet not one investigation by the New York attorney general’s office or any of the investigatory or law enforcement agencies of Washington showed even the most minor interest. No one jumped from a building, disappointing many.

  But Reagan, in 1987, was faced with his own “Black Monday” when the market lost 22 percent of its value in one afternoon. The Chicken Littles were out in force, squawking, crying, chirping, and whining that Reagan needed to do this and Reagan needed to do that and Reagan needed to panic like the rest of them. Reagan simply said, “No.”

  Within days, the markets calmed down and in less than a year, nearly all investors recovered their temporary losses. By not panicking like Hoover and Bush, the wiser Reagan left well enough alone and everything became well again. Bush during his panicky moments told the American people that the marketplace no longer worked. Reagan never would have said such a thing. Politicians fail and policies fail but freedom and free markets are quite another matter.

  He wasn’t just a successful president. When he left the California governorship, the Field Poll, famous in the Golden State’s politics, showed that 71 percent of Californians thought he’d done a “fair” or “good” job.23 And that was in 1974 when the Republican brand was about as popular as botulism. Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg said, “Ronald Reagan confounded the Democrats, not just because he won. Because the way he won.”24 The origin of the phrase “Reagan Democrat” is credited to writer Peter Goldman.

  Reagan never intended on going into politics nor did anyone ever think of “grooming” him for elected office. As far as he was concerned, grooming was a part of personal hygiene.

  What has been often overlooked about the Reagan campaigns in high school and colle
ge, for president of the Screen Actors Guild, for governor of California in 1966 and 1970, and then for president in 1968, 1976, 1980, and 1984 is that there was no hint or odor or suggestion of wrongdoing or deceit or cheating. In the hundreds of political contests in which he’d been involved, not one was ever anything but an honest effort by an honest man who was surrounded by honest people.

  The American people always seemed to sense this in the man. In 1967, his first year as governor, he went to Orange County, California, to dedicate the new airport there and one hundred thousand people showed up. He launched his reelection campaign there in 1984 at a large outdoor park, Mile Square Regional Park, and nearly sixty thousand people squeezed in. According to the Orange County Register, “20,000 people were turned away.” Some had shown up as early as 5:00 a.m. to attend the launch of Reagan’s last campaign. A local party official had warned Mike Deaver that they could never fill it. Deaver never worried about Reagan’s drawing power.25

  It was in Orange County in 1962 where, at an event, he was challenged by a woman as to why he was still a Democrat, so he called the woman up on stage, who was a Republican Party registrar. “I’d like to change that,” she told Reagan. In front of the cheering crowd, he signed the papers and switched his registration right there, according to Maureen Reagan.26

  When the Reagans arrived in Washington, they were not welcomed with open arms, to say the least. Generally, the women of the press corps despised Mrs. Reagan for unreasoned reasons of politics and culture. They were from California, they were conservative, they preferred California wines to French wines, and though both looked great in formal wear, they could move easily between the worlds of the well-to-do and the downtrodden; but the sophisticates of Georgetown looked down their noses at the Reagans. And while Nancy Reagan went to the socially acceptable school of Smith College, Reagan had gone to some little religious college in the Midwest called Eureka. Plus, he’d once made a living as an actor. So much for celebrating diversity.