Ronnie and Nancy

by Bob Colacello

  On August 24, Sears moved to strengthen his position even more by forcing Nofziger to quit. The “dirty work,” as Nofziger called it, was done by Deaver, who informed his old colleague that he would be taking over the fund-raising operation. Turning down the consolation prize of running the campaign in California and Texas, Nofziger resigned on the spot.

  Reagan, who was spending most of that month vacationing at the ranch, called and told him, “I don’t want you to quit. . . . We’ve been together too long.” But, according to Nofziger, at a meeting held two days later at the Pacific Palisades house, Sears, Black, Lake, and Deaver voted to let him go, with only Meese and Reagan himself defending him. “I was an example of what could happen if you stood up to [Sears],” Nofziger said.61

  Nancy didn’t cast a vote on Nofziger’s fate, but one can trace her invisible hand working in other ways. Two weeks before Nofziger’s ouster, Sears and Deaver had been asked by the Reagans to meet with Charlie Wick to discuss fund-raising ideas. “We had rented a place out in Malibu that summer,” Wick explained. “We’re walking on the beach, Nancy and Mary Jane in front and Ronnie and I in back. We’re talking about the campaign and when and where he was going to announce. I said, ‘I think you ought to announce in New York. That is the citadel of the world’s media. I’m sure we could do a Ground Floor Committee dinner there and get at least 250 people. That would take care of the whole week’s expenses.’ Ronnie said, ‘Let me talk to Mike and John Sears.’ We had lunch at the Beverly 4 7 8

  Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House Wilshire Hotel, and they thought it was a fabulous idea. They said, ‘The only way it can be done is if you go to New York for a couple of months to put it together.’ I said, ‘Forget it.’ Deaver and Sears then called Mary Jane, and that did it.”62

  In September the Wicks took a suite at the Mayfair Regent on Park Avenue, the hotel that housed Le Cirque. “At eight o’clock in the morning it became the office,” said Mary Jane Wick. “It was just work, work, work all day long. We started by calling a number of the big CEOs in the city, and much to my surprise there weren’t too many of them who were interested in Reagan. Their feeling was that, even though he had been governor for eight years, he was still an actor, and they couldn’t quite see him as president. A lot of them preferred John Connally or George Bush.” Through Helene von Damm, who had been running the campaign’s fund-raising efforts in the Northeast, the Wicks found two prominent New York Republicans to co-chair the announcement dinner: William Casey, a Wall Street lawyer who had headed the Securities and Exchange Commission under Nixon, and Maxwell Rabb, who was also a lawyer and had served in Eisenhower’s cabinet.

  “We had to get a ballroom in a hotel for the dinner, but there always was the money problem,” Mary Jane Wick told me. “Fortunately, Charlie had a friend from college who was president of Hilton Hotels, and he let us have the New York Hilton ballroom without a down payment. When we were planning the dinner, I called a florist we all knew in L.A., and he had all these tablecloths from a benefit he had done in Palm Springs. Anyhow, Marion Jorgensen and Betty Wilson put them in their luggage and brought them to New York.”63

  “Little by little it looked like we could exceed 250,” said Charlie Wick.

  “On the night of the dinner there were 1,800 people in the ballroom, and in the balcony there were 250 of the world’s press.” Mary Jane Wick added,

  “Our daughter Cindy was going with this young man whose father was a political cartoonist for a well-known newspaper in Paris, so he came over to cover this. Of course, with his son going with our daughter, we knew he wouldn’t do anything that wouldn’t be acceptable. And our other daughter, Pam, is married to the son of Bob Michel—he was the minority leader in the House of Representatives. So Bob, who has a great voice, sang ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’”64

  The Bloomingdales, the Deutsches, the Darts, and the Tuttles flew in for the announcement dinner, which was held on November 13, and Jerry Reagan vs. Carter: 1977–1980

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  Zipkin was there with the Cowleses and the Buckleys. All four Reagan children attended, and Jimmy Stewart narrated the official campaign film, which introduced the new, supposedly improved Ronald Reagan. “I believe this country hungers for spiritual revival; hungers to once again see honor placed above political expediency; to see government once again the protector of our liberties, not the distributor of gifts and privilege,”

  Reagan intoned. In keeping with Sears’s cautious, above-the-fray approach, the speech recycled Reagan’s criticism of big government and support of a strong national defense, but without the hard-edged rhetoric that had thrilled conservative audiences but frightened almost everyone else.

  Its most daring proposal was a call for a new economic and military partnership with Canada and Mexico, and no mention was made, for example, of the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran nine days earlier. A headline in the following morning’s New York Times said it all: the 1980

  model reagan: strident campaign tone is gone.65

  That morning Reagan flew to Washington for a news conference, at which he announced that he would not participate in debates or other public appearances with his rivals for the nomination. He was introduced by Representative Jack Kemp as the “oldest and the wisest candidate,” an unfortunate choice of words that annoyed Reagan’s handlers and led journalists to refer to him among themselves as “the O & W.”66 Sears had cut a deal with Kemp in October: in exchange for the congressman’s agreement to endorse Reagan instead of running himself, he would be made campaign chairman in place of Laxalt. When Laxalt got wind of the plot, however, he went directly to the Reagans, who overruled Sears. At the news conference in Washington, Reagan presented Kemp as the campaign’s “chief spokesman.”

  Arthur Laffer disclosed to me that Kemp’s real goal from the beginning was to be Reagan’s running mate. Laffer had therefore advised the young congressman not to give up his bargaining power by dropping out too early. “I had a little dinner party for Jack Kemp at my home in Rolling Hills Estates with the Reagans and the Tuttles and the Darts. I have a little guesthouse in the back. I told him, ‘Jack, what you’ve got to do is walk down to the guesthouse with Ron. I’ll set it all up, and you and Ron just sit down and have a little private chat for a while. And you tell him this:

  “Sir, you know I adore you. I think the world of you. I’ve worked for you, you’ve been my hero, my role model, all my life. What I’m going to do, sir, is I’m going to run, and every delegate I get, come convention time, I’m 4 8 0

  Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House going to instruct all those delegates to vote for you.” Jack, that’s what you’ve got to tell him.’ And they were down there for half an hour. My scheme was working. When they came back up, they were chatting away, all smiles. Then I finally got to Jack. ‘Jack, did you do it? Did you tell him that?’ He said, ‘Oh, no, Art, I couldn’t. I told him I’d never run against him. I’d give him all the support I could.’ I said, ‘Jack, you just lost the vice presidency. He’s not going to pick a wuss for a vice president. He’s going to pick someone who shows vote-getting ability. Why would he take someone who doesn’t run?’ And, of course, that’s Jack’s history. He’s made an ever greater reputation by not running for ever higher offices.”67

  On Thanksgiving, nine days after the announcement, Nancy called Mike Deaver and asked him to come up to San Onofre Drive. As he came into the foyer, he could see Ronnie in the living room with Sears, Black, and Lake, but Nancy surprised him by asking if he would mind waiting in their bedroom. After twenty minutes, Deaver later recalled, “I decided this was ridiculous. I walked into the living room and said, to no one in particular,

  ‘What’s going on?’ No one looked directly at me, almost always a bad sign.

  Then Reagan said, ‘Mike, the fellows here have been telling me about the way you’re running the fund-raising efforts, and we’re losing money. As a matter of fact, they tell me I have to pay thirty thousand dol
lars a month to lease my space in your office building.’ I was more stunned than angry.”

  Deaver, who knew that Reagan’s monthly charges, including everything from secretaries to limousines, ran from only about $5,000 to $10,000, told him, “If these gentlemen have convinced you that I am ripping you off, after all these years, then I’m out. I’m leaving.” Reagan followed him out of the room, saying, “No, this is not what I want.” Deaver snapped, “I’m sorry, sir, but it’s what I want.”68

  Deaver’s departure shocked Reagan’s entourage. As one insider told The New York Times, “There’s a new Ronald Reagan who wants the Presidency so bad that he’s willing to dump old friends.”69 Nancy Reynolds told me,

  “John Sears got Mike fired. Boy, that was a tough one. I was furious and sick and hurt that he had that much influence. Mike was really hurt, and Nancy Reagan wasn’t happy either.”70

  The following Monday, Martin Anderson, who was close to both Deaver and Nancy, announced that he was leaving the campaign to return to his position as senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.71

  Anderson put all the blame on Sears. As he told me, “Sears was a brilliant Reagan vs. Carter: 1977–1980

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  strategist, but he developed what I’d call an incipient megalomania. He did not like any criticism. At policy meetings he would propose something as a political stroke. And I’d say that’s great but it wouldn’t work, and I’d tell him why, and he did not like that. So he took a couple of hundred thousand bucks of campaign money and set up a competing policy shop in Washington, without telling me. I found out about that and had a long talk with him. Anyways, I went on strike. I quit. I walked away. He spent about six hours trying to talk me out of it, but there was no way to deal with him.”72

  Perhaps Sears was aware of the nickname people were using with increasing frequency about him: Rasputin.73

  In his memoir, Revolution, Anderson attributes all this court intrigue partly to Reagan’s “highly unusual” and “unique” managerial style: He made no demands, and gave almost no instructions. Essentially, he just responded to whatever was brought to his attention and said yes or no, or I’ll think about it. At times he would just change the subject, maybe tell a funny story, and you would not find out what he thought about it, one way or the other. His style of managing was totally different from the model of the classic executive who exercised leadership by planning and scheming, and barking out orders to his subordinates.

  It was something that all those who had worked closely and intimately with Ronald Reagan knew. Ed Meese knew. Mike Deaver knew. And so did Dick Allen and Lyn Nofziger and Peter Hannaford and John Sears. . . . But we rarely talked about it among ourselves and never to outsiders.

  We kept it a secret.

  We just accepted Reagan as he was and adjusted ourselves to his manner. If that was the way he wanted to do things, fine. At the time it seemed like a small thing, an eccentricity that was dwarfed by his multiple, stunning qualities.

  So everyone overlooked and compensated for the fact that he made decisions like an ancient king or a Turkish pasha, passively letting his subjects serve him, selecting only those morsels of public policy that were especially tasty. Rarely did he ask searching questions and demand to know why someone had or had not done something. He just sat back in a supremely calm, relaxed manner and waited until important things were brought to him. And then he would act, quickly, decisively, and usually, very wisely. . . .

  This kind of behavior in a political candidate is unheard of. From the viewpoint of a jealous, competitive staff it is potentially chaotic.74

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  Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House How did Nancy perceive her role in this competitive cast of characters?

  “I was always conscious of people who were trying to end-run Ronnie, who were trying to use him for their own agendas,” she told me. “And all my little antennae would go up. It never occurred to him, because he didn’t work that way. He wouldn’t think anybody would work that way.

  But they do. So I’d point things out to him.”75

  Now the only Californian left at the top of Reagan’s campaign was Ed Meese, and he was extremely upset over the departures of Nofziger, Deaver, and Anderson. In early December, Morgan Mason, the handsome young son of the actor James Mason and a favorite of Betsy Bloomingdale’s and Nancy Reagan’s, applied for a job at campaign headquarters in Los Angeles.

  Among the restricted personal papers at the Reagan Library is a record of his interview with Mike Wallace, a staffer close to Sears. The handwritten notes make clear the extent to which Sears sought control of access to the Reagans: Mike Wallace said:

  New team in ctrl here

  Sears, Wallace, Black, Lake

  “Meese if he comes out of his pout”

  Conc. re allegiance to MKD [Deaver] & your relationship to NR

  [Nancy Reagan]

  JPS [Sears] wary of peo in contact w. Reagans That was MKD’s problem. Instead of fighting it out down here, he would just call the Reagans.

  Anything said to Reagans must be cleared w. Wallace or Sears76

  Morgan Mason did not get the job. A month later, however, he was hired as a consultant by the newly formed Reagan Executive Advisory Committee, which was comprised mainly of Kitchen Cabinet members who had decided that the time had come for them to get more involved. “The original group was Holmes Tuttle, Jack Wrather, Bill French Smith, Bill Wilson, Ted Cummings, Charles Wick, and me,” said Arthur Laffer, who was named the EAC’s secretary and kept minutes of its meetings, some of which can be found in the Reagans’ restricted papers. “The first meeting was in Justin Dart’s office, with all the eagles flying—Jus had big wooden eagles everywhere. All those guys just loved eagles.” According to Laffer, Dart was the driving force of the group, and he chose Bill Simon as the chairman. They Reagan vs. Carter: 1977–1980

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  decided to keep the membership to about two dozen and to bring in prominent business leaders from other parts of the country, including David Packard of Hewlett-Packard, Bill Boeing of Boeing Aircraft, Don Kendall of Pepsico, and Joe Coors, the Colorado beer king who had been a major contributor to Reagan’s 1976 effort. “We had the word come down that Alfred Bloomingdale was also to be in the group,” recalled Laffer. “Betsy had asked Nancy, and Nancy asked Ronnie, and Ronnie said, ‘Yes, sir.’”77

  The EAC’s mission, spelled out in notes from a meeting on February 5, 1980, was “to advise and assist RR on all aspects of the campaign, with particular attention to policy and issue positions and to recommending qualified individuals who might serve as advisors and consultants to RR and the campaign. The EAC will be organizationally responsible directly to RR.”

  Among the illustrious figures the EAC would enlist as advisers were the economists Milton Friedman and George Shultz, former ambassador to South Vietnam Robert Ellsworth, and retired admiral Elmo Zumwalt.78

  Michael Deaver wrote that, except for infrequent phone conversations with Nancy, he was out of touch with the Reagans for five months after he quit. But the February 5 notes say, “Michael K. Deaver has been appointed as his personal liaison to the E.A.C. by RR.” While Dart went on about the

  “need to combat Soviets in Middle East by any means necessary,” the notes indicate that Deaver was suggesting “2 things this group can do—broad strategy priorities; get management into campaign.”79 Ed Meese was also involved with the EAC from the beginning, and as early as January 14 he was making sure that copies of his memos to Bill Simon went to Deaver.80

  Around the same time, Nancy, who talked regularly with Justin Dart, asked him to look into the campaign’s hemorrhaging finances. Dart turned to William Casey, who had co-chaired the announcement dinner in New York and had recently joined the EAC.81 Casey undertook an audit of Sears’s costly operation, which included eighteen regional offices with more than two hundred employees, and was said to be paying $50,000-a-year consulting fees to scholars for pos
ition papers. According to his biographer Joseph E. Persico, after Casey finished his “management audit,” he met with the Kitchen Cabinet at Tuttle’s house and told them, “Ronald Reagan hasn’t got a campaign organization. He’s got a civil war. There’s Ed Meese and the California guys in one camp. There’s John Sears and his technocrats on the other side. Between the two, the campaign’s paralyzed. I also looked at the books. You’re going broke.”82

  Meanwhile, a few days after Reagan suffered a wholly unexpected early 4 8 4

  Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House defeat to George Bush in Iowa, Casey sat down and wrote a six-page letter to the candidate urging him to rethink his entire campaign strategy. The letter ended with a call for “a sharp assertive stance.”83

  The Iowa caucuses on January 21 were the first contest of the primary season, and Reagan had been expected to win handily in a state where he was still remembered fondly as the Des Moines sports announcer who had made it big in Hollywood. Following Sears’s above-it-all strategy, Reagan spent only six days in the state and refused to join six other candidates in a televised debate, which Iowans saw as a snub. Despite a precipitous drop in local polls within days of the debate, and a second-place finish six points behind Bush, Reagan refused to blame his campaign manager, telling reporters, “If I had to do it over I’d do it the same way again.”84 But even Sears conceded, “The public’s perception of the campaign has changed. People now think there’s a race where they didn’t think there was one before. In some ways, that’s sort of a relief for us. We won’t have a motivational problem anymore.”85