Kennedy and Reagan

by Scott Farris

  20the funeral on television or listened on the radio: Manchester, Death of a President, p. 530.

  21more than her husband, was at the center of it: Caro, Passage of Power, p. 342.

  21and deportment bordered on the obsessive: Manchester, Death of a President, p. 530.

  21the one thing they always lacked—majesty: Manchester, Death of a President, p. 580.

  21Jackie had become “America’s Queen”: Bradford, America’s Queen, p. ix.

  21a death in the American family: Manchester, Death of a President, p. 567.

  21caused them “physical discomfort”: Manchester, Death of a President, p. 189.

  21But we’ll never be young again: Manchester, Death of a President, p. 506.

  22White House became the center of the universe: Bradford, America’s Queen, p. 286.

  22his own election to the presidency in 1964: Manchester, Death of a President, p. 351.

  22The heart of the Kennedy legend is what might have been: Bugliosi, Reclaiming History, p xi.

  23believed Johnson was part of that conspiracy: Caro, Passage of Power, p. 450.

  23what the hell’s the presidency for: Caro, Passage of Power, p. 428.

  23the Kennedy aura around us through this election: Caro, Passage of Power, p. 395.

  23extremism had killed Kennedy: Perlstein, Before the Storm, p. 249.

  24Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law by July: Caro, Passage of Power, p. 430.

  24assassinations, Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra: Bugliosi, Reclaiming History, p. xi.

  24the same way people discuss The Iliad: Bugliosi, Reclaiming History, p. xliv.

  25Our destiny is not our fate. It is our choice: Wilber, Rawhide Down, p. 78.

  26to finance a life on the road: Wilber, Rawhide Down, p. 21.

  26a white supremacist and an “all-out anti-Semite”: Wilber, Rawhide Down, p. 37.

  26Secret Service agents and police tackled Hinckley: Wilber, Rawhide Down, p. 82.

  27when she heard that Kennedy had been shot: Wilber, Rawhide Down, p. 121.

  28if he was still cracking jokes: Reeves, President Reagan, p. 41.

  28this much attention in Hollywood I’d have stayed there: Wilber, Rawhide Down, pp. 208–9.

  28I’d be happy to hear that: Reeves, President Reagan, p. 44.

  28to entertain them some way: Wilber, Rawhide Down, p. 219.

  29tears streaming down his face: Wilber, Rawhide Down, p. 215.

  2964 percent even among Democrats: Reeves, President Reagan, p. 51.

  29“the American people that never dissolved,” his biographer Lou Cannon said: Wilber, Rawhide Down, p. 220.

  29the courage that old man had: Noonan, What I Saw at the Revolution, p. 156.

  30when to fight and when not to fight: Reeves, President Reagan, pp. 56–57.

  30a cruel or callous or heartless man: Wilber, Rawhide Down, p. 200.

  30introduced a negative mood into American life: Piereson, Camelot and the Cultural Revolution, p. xi.

  30and its leaders for nearly twenty years: Johnson, Sleepwalking Through History, p. 153.

  30and so very proud of our fellow citizens: Wilber, Rawhide Down, p. 216.

  31I’ll go out and get shot again: Reeves, President Reagan, p. 132.

  Chapter 3: The Most Irish of Presidents

  32often described as “Irish wit.”: Irish journalist Niall O’Dowd, writing at IrishCentral.com on February 5, 2011, the hundredth anniversary of Reagan’s birth, voted for Reagan as our “most Irish of presidents” because he possessed the “humor and wit” of the Irish, their supposed “gift of gab,” and he was “deeply sentimental.” While O’Dowd writes of Irish traits, Sean Murphy, writing for Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter, focuses on bloodlines. With all eight of his great-grandparents born in Ireland, Murphy concludes Kennedy was “the most ‘Irish’ of presidents—at least since Andrew Jackson.” In his book For the Love of Being Irish, author Conor Cunneen declares it a tie, saying “The two most ‘Irish’ of Presidents were Jack Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.” Cunneen notes that although Reagan has never been “embraced as warmly” by the Irish as Kennedy was—and is—Reagan still received a “rapturous reception when he visited his ancestral home at Ballyporeen.”

  32the right line for each occasion: Wills, Reagan’s America, p. 323.

  32phrase misstated, and the humor dies: Morris, Dutch, p. xxv.

  33popularly associated with Kennedy and Reagan: Dolan, The Irish-Americans, p. 307.

  33fifth of all Americans (as of 2013) claim Irish heritage: Dolan, The Irish-Americans, p. 303.

  33Given a choice, people pick Irish: Dolan, The Irish-Americans, pp. 306–7.

  33green emphasizes a politician’s American heritage: “St. Patrick’s Day Quiz: Quick, which US president was most Irish?” by Peter Grier, Christian Science Monitor, March 17, 2012, www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/Decoder-Wire/2012/0317/St.-Patrick-s-Day-Quick-which-US-president-was-most-Irish.

  35at the 1884 Democratic National Convention: Reeves, A Question of Character, pp. 18–19.

  35albeit in much smaller communities: Morris, American Catholic, pp. 50–51.

  35either Irish born or of Irish descent: Morris, American Catholic, p. 49.

  36the Kellys, or O’Briens, or Sullivans: Morris, American Catholic, p. 51.

  36(fn)going to break your heart eventually: Manchester, Death of a President, p. 527n.

  37no knowledge of that family history: Ronald Reagan: Remarks in New York, New York, at the 84th Annual Dinner of the Irish American Historical Society, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=43221#ixzz1lFvtOD1H.

  37settling as farmers in Illinois by 1860: Heritage Question Magazine, May/June 1991, Michael F. Pollock.

  37related to both Queen Elizabeth II—and John Kennedy: Reagan, An American Life, p. 373.

  38(fn)spent more than $30 million tracing their family history: Dolan, The Irish-Americans, p. 306.

  38sitting down to swap Irish stories: Schaller, Reckoning with Reagan, p. 53.

  38he was an intense Anglophile: Cannon, President Reagan, p. 407.

  38moderate her policies in Northern Ireland: Thompson, American Policy and Northern Ireland, p. 124

  38passed down to his children: Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment, p. 19.

  38in an Irish Catholic family of that size in that time: Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment, p. 65.

  38have to do to become an American: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 3.

  38expect his father to “talk mick”: Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment, p. 63.

  39with their weekends in the country: Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment, p. 74.

  39a European . . . more English than Irish: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 3.

  39only the place where he went to college: Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment, p. 62.

  39addressing at that particular time: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, pp. 3–4.

  39to his “personal reserve”: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 124.

  40and I say: ‘Why not?’: Tubridy, JFK In Ireland, p. 201.

  40when Thomas Jefferson dined alone: Clarke, Ask Not, p. 52.

  40city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm: Adler, The Kennedy Wit, p. 58.

  40a Harvard education and Yale degree: Adler, The Kennedy Wit, p. 66.

  41They sank my boat: Adler, The Kennedy Wit, p. 53.

  41I’ll be damned if I’ll pay for a landslide: Clarke, Ask Not, p. 53.

  41A. He didn’t brief me on that: Adler, The Kennedy Wit, p. 26.

  41and I have not mentioned him: Adler, The Kennedy Wit, p. 44.

  42did we inherit these or are these our own: Adler, The Kennedy Wit, p. 70.

  42wish I just had a summer job here: Adler, The Kenne
dy Wit, p. 96.

  42I assume it passed unanimously: Adler, The Kennedy Wit, p. 124.

  42including even a postal background: Adler, More Kennedy Wit, p. 124.

  42man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris: Reeves, President Kennedy, p. 154.

  42she looks better than we do when she does it: Adler, More Kennedy Wit, p. 114.

  42died of a Tuesday. I remember it well: Adler, More Kennedy Wit, p. 36.

  42they came by naturally and honestly: Ronald Reagan: Remarks in New York, New York, at the 84th Annual Dinner of the Irish American Historical Society, www.presidency.ucsb .edu/ws/index.php?pid=43221#ixzz1lFvtOD1H.

  43came to the smoking-car sort of stories: Reagan and Hubler, Where’s the Rest of Me?, p. 9.

  43tell a story better than he did: Reagan, An American Life, p. 21.

  43“competitive repertoire,” recalled biographer Edmund Morris: Morris, Dutch, pp. 685–86n.

  43marvel at their apparent spontaneity: Morris, Dutch, p. xxv.

  43Gorbachev could not suppress a chuckle: Stand-up Reagan.

  44‘don’t agree with a thing my parrot has to say’: Stand-up Reagan.

  44for the occasional snappy comeback: Morris, Dutch, p. xxv.

  44Hey! That’s why I’m changing jobs!: Holden, The Making of the Great Communicator, p. 179.

  45sent tingles down my spine: Stand-up Reagan.

  45‘We’ve been married for eight years, dear’: Holden, The Making of the Great Communicator, p. 162.

  45‘I was just going to say the same thing’: Holden, The Making of the Great Communicator, p. 190.

  45line between lusty vulgar humor and filth: Reagan and Hubler, Where’s the Rest of Me?, p. 9.

  45‘when the Lord was doing it by himself’: Stand-up Reagan.

  46there’s a pony in here someplace: Cannon, Governor Reagan, p. 13.

  Chapter 4: Different Incomes, Similar Families

  48If you can’t be the captain, don’t play: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 15.

  48$600 investment into a $10,000 profit: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 17.

  49but his dream was to own his own shoe store: Wills, Reagan’s American, p. 11.

  49never attended another and developed a rabid hatred of Harvard: Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment, p. 64.

  49the shit house or the castle—nothing in between: Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment, p. 66.

  49I suspect you of some great crime: Nasaw, The Patriarch, p. 23.

  50youngest bank president in Massachusetts and perhaps the country: Nasaw, The Patriarch, p. 38.

  50deposits made their way to Columbia Trust: Nasaw, The Patriarch, p. 39.

  50burning with ambition to succeed: Reagan and Hubler, Where’s the Rest of Me?, p. 9.

  50analyzing the bones of the foot: Reagan and Hubler, Where’s the Rest of Me?, p. 7.

  50methods of relief for all foot discomforts: Wills, Reagan’s America, p. 14.

  51netting Kennedy and his partners perhaps $15 million: Parmet, Jack, p. 11.

  51more than $100 million by 1930: Reeves, A Question of Character, p. 30.

  51Rose told Joe, “No more sex”: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 23.

  51his idea of manliness: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 24.

  51and you must honor it now: Goodwin, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, p. 307.

  52a tendency to prowl at night: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 47.

  52‘How embarrassing for Eunice’: Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment, p. 17.

  52Joe was sixty at the time: Nasaw, The Patriarch, p. 611.

  52something incestuous about the whole family: Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment, p. 21.

  52they were absolutely serious: Goodwin, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, p. 724.

  53a better actress than I was: Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment, p. 41.

  53“more fortunate people in the world,” Rose acknowledged in her memoir: Kennedy, Times to Remember, p. 1.

  53an aura of command: Kennedy, Times to Remember, pp. 47 and 57–62.

  53tell my dad . . . that I love him very much: Goodwin, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, p. 688.

  54She was sort of a non-person: Wills, The Kennedy Imprisonment, p. 43.

  54friction, and, on his part, resentment: Goodwin, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, p. 353.

  55preferred to pray that he would get a dog: Goodwin, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, p. 353.

  55History made him what he was: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 70.

  55would break into radiant smiles: Goodwin, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, pp. 351–52.

  55superior to Joe Junior in some way: Leaming, Jack Kennedy, p. 18.

  55(fn)then it should be in the book: Kennedy, Times to Remember, p. 127.

  56younger brother lay doubled up in pain: Goodwin, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, p. 354.

  56What I wouldn’t have given to be a sixth former: Leaming, Jack Kennedy, p. 19.

  56played golf or in fact done anything [with]: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 28.

  56“the younger ones watch him,” she said: Goodwin, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, p. 352.

  56his constant example than to any other factor: Kennedy, Times to Remember, p. 121.

  56going to be President of the United States: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 20.

  57“the shadow is always going to win,” Jack told Billings: Goodwin, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, p. 699.

  57“while Dutch was always Nelle’s boy”: Morris, Dutch, p. 12.

  57like the comics character Moon Mullins: Cannon, Governor Reagan, p. 19.

  57in their allegiances or antipathies: Wills, Reagan’s America, p. 27.

  58then reassembled on the roof of the school: Cannon, Governor Reagan, pp. 19–21.

  58with his needling—even well into adulthood: Reagan, My Father at 100, pp. 92–95.

  58some mutual disdain even as adults: Reagan, My Father at 100, p. 92.

  58he might treat Eureka the same way: Reagan and Hubler, Where’s the Rest of Me?, pp. 31–32.

  59It’s about time he reciprocated: Wills, Reagan’s America, p 28.

  59worked on Reagan’s 1966 California gubernatorial race: Holden, The Making of the Great Communicator, p. 139.

  59No, there isn’t to be any ‘Moonie beer’: New York Times, December 13, 1996.

  59believe I could make them come true: Reagan, An American Life, p. 22.

  59could not be heard in the entire house: Morris, Dutch, p. 19.

  60self-authored morality plays for the congregation: Wills, Reagan’s America, p. 17.

  60except when you have that old bottle: Wills, Reagan’s America, p. 25.

  60“some pretty fiery arguments,” Reagan said: Morris, Dutch, p. 38.

  60father’s drinking was tied to his Catholic faith: Wills, Reagan’s America, p. 33.

  61‘for a couple of years without a drop’: Reagan, My Father at 100, p. 99.

  61“much harder than it needed to be for the long-suffering Nelle”: Reagan, My Father at 100, p. 98.

  61talk that the Reagans might divorce: Morris, Dutch, p. 79.

  61“effectively come to end,” Ron Reagan claims: Reagan, My Father at 100, p. 100.

  61finance chairman at St. Mary’s Parish, and a Knight of Columbus: Morris, Dutch, p. 13.

  62“formed few friendships,” biographer Lou Cannon noted: Cannon, Governor Reagan, p. 12.

  62“no boyhood home,” a judgment with which Neil Reagan agreed: Wills, Reagan’s America, p. 15.

  62Which room do I have this time: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 32.

  62the surfaces as if he hadn’t seen them before: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 69.

  63and fin
d whatever room was available: Reeves, A Question of Character, p. 41.

  Chapter 5: Boys Who Loved Books

  64when American “optimism ran rampant”: Cooper, Pivotal Decades, p. 5.

  64whatever Americans wished to make happen, would happen: Morris, A Time of Passion, p. 3.

  65Jack had this hero idea of history: Bradford, America’s Queen, pp. 285–86.

  65without one physical affliction or another: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 33.

  65“mother never hugged me . . . never!” Jack later complained: Perret, Jack, p. 19.

  65he and they somehow shared a special bond: Goodwin, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, p. 311.

  66projecting himself into other people’s shoes: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, p. 72.

  66lack of ability to relate, emotionally, to anyone: Reeves, A Question of Character, p. 40.

  66stories about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table: Goodwin, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, p. 354.

  66massive history of the First World War, The World Crisis: Reeves, A Question of Character, p. 39.

  66and somehow just didn’t fit any pattern: Kennedy, Times to Remember, p. 94.

  67We loved the unexpected vacations but were mystified by them: Reagan, An American Life, pp. 24–25.

  67“dreams,” and that they have trouble developing intimate relationships: Noonan, What I Saw at the Revolution, pp. 158–59.

  67the handiwork of God that never left me: Reagan, An American Life, p. 24.

  68forever solving crimes and righting wrongs: Noonan, When Character Was King, p. 30.

  68labeled him “an amiable dunce”: Safire, Safire’s Political Dictionary, p. 19.

  68a particular passion for American history: Holden, The Making of the Great Communicator, p. 10.

  69dragged him into the house, and helped him to bed: Reagan and Hubler, Where’s the Rest of Me?, pp. 7–8.

  69long enough to help him into the home: Reagan, My Father at 100, p. 97.

  69will approve of this attitude: Wills, Reagan’s America, p. 35.

  70baptized into Nelle’s church, the Disciples of Christ, which he was on June 21, 1922: Morris, Dutch, p. 42.

  70a man people would admire for all the right reasons: Reagan, My Father at 100, p. 12.