by Nancy Reagan
“No,” he replied. “I don’t believe I did anything wrong. I realize there will be some unpleasant times coming up, but no, I’m not worried.”
I was so struck by his response that I wrote it down in my diary.
I knew he done nothing wrong, but I was miserable that so many people didn’t believe what Ronnie had been saying. And now that the hearings were about to begin, who knew what lay ahead?
Earlier that evening, as we were dressing to go out, Tom Brokaw said on the NBC Nightly News that Ronald Reagan was about to enter the most difficult week of his presidency. My heart sank when I heard that.
Ronnie recognized there was a problem, but he refused to let it get him down.
The presidency may be the most pressured job in the world, but Ronnie didn’t get grumpy or yell at his staff. It takes a lot to make him angry, although now and then he does lose his temper. When it happened in the Oval Office, he would take off his glasses and throw them down on his desk. I never actually witnessed this, but apparently that was a signal—when the glasses go down, stand back!
Frankly, it sometimes made me angry that Ronnie didn’t get angry more often—especially at some of his advisers who let him down. There were times when his optimism led to problems, and when a more suspicious person might have asked important and tough questions. Ronnie trusts people, often before they have earned that trust. And he was sometimes slow to realize that not everyone who worked in the White House shared his goals.
Some presidents have changed in office, but Ronnie hasn’t changed since the day I met him. One morning, during the 1980 campaign, Ronnie complained to an aide that the day was starting a little too early. “You better get used to it, Governor,” the aide replied. “If you become president, that fellow from the National Security Council is going to come in to brief you at seven-thirty each morning.”
“Oh yeah?” said Ronnie. “Then he’s going to have a hell of a long wait!”
As president, Ronnie never felt the need to arrive at the Oval Office at the crack of dawn, or to remain at his desk until late at night. He also never pretended to work longer than he actually did. Most nights, however, he would work in his study after dinner. And he always put in extra hours on weekends. I rarely saw him when he wasn’t carrying a pile of papers.
• • •
My husband loved being president. He enjoyed it, all of it—the decision-making, the responsibilities, the negotiating, as well as the ceremonies, the public appearances, and the meetings. As George Will has said, Ronald Reagan has a talent for happiness.
I believe one reason people have misunderstood Ronnie is that they look at his profession instead of at his character. This is a man who didn’t run for public office until he was fifty-five years old. And even when he went into politics, he never became a politician.
He has good political instincts and skills, but he lacks the cynicism that is so common in politics. When he held office, the worst thing his advisers could say to him was “This will be good for you politically.”
He never fully understood how most politicians’ minds worked. Shortly after he became governor of California, he came home one evening and said, “It’s so damn frustrating! I’ll make a statement, and an hour later, the press or the legislators will say, ‘Sure, that’s what he says. But what does he mean?’
“I don’t get it,” he said. “If they could only accept that what I say is what I mean, it would save so much time!”
Ronnie has never been one of the boys. I’ve heard people say that a basic rule of American politics is “To get along, go along,” but Ronnie has never operated that way. One of the first things I noticed about him when we met is that when the day’s shooting was over, he never stayed behind to have a drink with the fellows in the dressing room. He preferred to come home. Later, on the campaign trail, during the rare times when we had an early evening, he didn’t sit around and chat with the staff. He would smile, say good night, and come back to our room.
As governor, Ronnie came straight home after work rather than going out for a beer with the legislators or the press. They had never seen anyone like him in Sacramento, and some of the old pols didn’t like the fact that Ronnie didn’t behave like one of their own.
In Washington, socializing is regarded as part of the job, an extension of the business day, but that went against Ronnie’s grain. He believes that parties and dinners are for fun, not work, and in most social situations he prefers to tell stories. That would always put a gathering on a more informal plane, where political talk—or gossip, which Ronnie hates—seemed like an intrusion.
But the most striking difference between Ronnie and many other politicians is that he has never been interested in power for its own sake. When friends would ask, “How does it feel to be the most powerful man in the world?” Ronnie would always say, “Who, me?” It wasn’t false modesty. He just didn’t see himself in that way.
Before he was elected, Ronnie had always regarded the presidency with great respect, even with awe. But when he became president, he had trouble believing that other people could be in awe of him. Unlike, say, a Lyndon Johnson, he never looked at his position in terms of “I am president.” Instead, he would refer to the presidency as “the office I now hold,” or even “this job.” Some people saw this as an affectation, or even a calculated pose that allowed him to appear distant from government while he was still part of it. But it was genuine. For Ronnie, it would have been presumptuous to view his job in any other way.
Perhaps the fact that Ronnie never equated the presidency with himself helps to explain why he wasn’t worn down by the pressures and disappointments of the office. Even during difficult periods, he never saw the presidency as a burden, or as “the loneliest job in the world,” as it’s often described.
Two or three times during our White House years there were rumors on Wall Street that Ronnie had suffered a heart attack. Each time it happened, the stock market took a dive, but it always came as a surprise to Ronnie that rumors about his health could be that important.
And to the very end, whenever we left the White House to attend a dinner or a speaking engagement, Ronnie would turn around and shake his head: “I’ll never understand why we need so many cars for a five-minute drive.”
And yet he loved the ceremony of the office and the band playing “Hail to the Chief.” Ronnie and I always remembered what Frank Reynolds of ABC News had once said to us about President Carter. “People want to hear ‘Hail to the Chief.’ They want to look up to the president. They don’t like it when he goes on television wearing a sweater.” Ronnie agreed with that assessment, and so do I.
• • •
Ronnie didn’t seek the presidency in order to become somebody; he already was somebody. And he came into office with a clear idea of what he wanted to accomplish.
Maybe that’s why he didn’t seem to age in office. A president grows old when he’s constantly forced to react to events, without a broad plan or an overall philosophy. Whenever something happens, he has to ask himself: My God, what am I going to do about this? Where do I stand?
But if he already knows what his principles and values are, and where he stands on the issues, the job becomes easier.
Ronnie knew exactly what he wanted to achieve in the Oval Office. His goals had been honed over a twenty-year period, and people knew exactly where he stood. Economic recovery. Greater economic freedom. A stronger defense. Less government. Those were his top priorities, and other things had to wait. He understood that if you try to accomplish everything, you run the risk of achieving nothing.
Now that Ronnie is out of office, it’s easy to forget that when we first moved to Washington, most of the “experts” didn’t expect him to be an effective president. Many people thought he was bound to fail. Some overlooked the fact that for eight years he had been a successful governor of the most populous state in the nation—a state that is larger and more prosperous than many countries. Others were convinced that the presi
dency had grown so large and complicated that nobody could manage it. Even some of Ronnie’s supporters were skeptical. After all, it had been twenty years since any president had completed two successful terms in office. Why should Ronald Reagan be able to accomplish what other men could not?
But then, as long as he has been in politics, people have underestimated Ronnie. I remember the first time he ran for governor, and people said, “Ronald Reagan? He’s just a washed-up actor. He’ll never win.”
And when he ran for president, they said, “Here’s this actor. He may have been governor of California for eight years, but he really doesn’t know anything.”
In 1966, Governor Pat Brown was hoping that Ronnie would win the Republican primary because Ronald Reagan looked like an easy opponent. In 1980, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Tip O’Neill, and Ted Kennedy felt the same way.
After the 1984 election, when Ronnie was reelected by the largest electoral vote in history, most of that talk finally stopped. By then it had become difficult to explain Ronnie’s success in terms of good luck, his handsome face, his charm, his staff, or his sense of humor.
Why did so many people underestimate Ronnie for so long? Part of it, as I’ve said, was due to his personality. People find it hard to believe that such a nice man could be effective, and that he could also be tough when he had to be.
But Ronnie’s easygoing manner is deceiving. Although he isn’t as driven or as intense as some of his predecessors in the White House, underneath that calm exterior is a tenacious, stubborn, and very competitive man. Just look at the record: Ronnie rarely loses.
Another key to Ronald Reagan is that he’s a team player who has always been more comfortable as an ally than as an adversary. After the 1980 election, he was eager to meet with the local power establishment in Washington. Among other things, Ronnie wanted to let them know who we really were—that despite our images in the Eastern media, the president-elect wasn’t a shoot-’em-up cowboy, and his wife wasn’t a fluffhead.
And so, just two weeks after the election, Nancy Reynolds and Bob Gray, two of Ronnie’s old friends and supporters, put together a dinner for fifty people at the F Street Club. They invited a diverse and unusual group that included the mayor, several businessmen, religious leaders, university presidents, cultural leaders, philanthropists, and so on. Just about the only thing these people had in common was that most of them were Democrats.
Because time was short, Nancy and Bob sent the invitations by telegram. To their surprise, about half of the people they invited didn’t even respond. When the guests were called, most of them said, “Were you serious? I thought this was a joke.”
These people were used to a very different style of politics. They were shocked but also delighted that the Republican president-elect wanted to meet them.
After dinner, everybody gathered around the fireplace as Ronnie told some of his favorite stories about Hollywood. But first he welcomed the guests. “You know,” he said, “there’s only one letter’s difference between ‘president’ and ‘resident.’ And Nancy and I hope that you’ll come to think of us as residents.”
A few weeks later, we were invited to a dinner party at Katharine Graham’s house in Georgetown. We had both known Kay for years, and when we drove up to her house, she was there to greet us. Ronnie was especially glad to see her, and he gave her a kiss. Kay’s longtime housekeeper was watching all this from the second-floor window. When Ronnie kissed Kay, she turned to the woman beside her and said, “Well, I hope Mrs. Graham enjoyed it, because I can promise you, that’s the last time that will happen.”
But it wasn’t. Although Kay owns the Washington Post, Ronnie and I never allowed politics to stand in the way of our friendship with her.
We felt the same way about Tip O’Neill. When Ronnie and Tip first met, the Speaker of the House told him, “You’re playing in the big leagues now.” Tip was Ronnie’s toughest critic, and some of his bitter attacks on the administration’s economic policies made Ronnie wince. But Ronnie and Tip remained friends until Tip’s retirement in 1987. No matter what was going on in their political lives, they were always able to swap Irish stories or talk about baseball.
I liked Tip, and also Millie, his wife, who was always friendly and easy to talk to. I remember hosting a luncheon in 1981, when I was getting a daily dose of bad press. Tip looked at me across the table in the State Dining Room and said, “Don’t let it get you down.” Coming from my husband’s chief political opponent, it meant a lot.
One of the hardest things for a political wife—or for any wife—to take is criticism of her husband. Anyone in politics is bound to be criticized, and I don’t mind fair and honest disagreement. But when the criticism is unfair, dishonest, or simply wrong, it can hurt terribly. Ronnie has always been fairly thick-skinned about criticism, whereas I have often been vulnerable. I’m tougher than I used to be, but not tough enough.
To this day I am annoyed by a handful of misconceptions about Ronnie which have been repeated incessantly over the years.
For example, despite everything you’ve heard or read, Ronnie does not take naps. On a long flight on Air Force One, it was a struggle just to get him to stretch out on the couch. And despite all the jokes, including his own, Ronnie never came back to the residence to take a nap after lunch. I could never understand where this idea came from, because the press received a copy of his schedule every day, and they knew he didn’t come back for a nap. Kennedy and Johnson did, but not Ronnie.
Ronnie is usually asleep by eleven, and he sleeps soundly. On the rare occasion when he wakes up at night, instead of counting sheep, he gets himself back to sleep by silently reciting “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” by the Canadian poet Robert Service.
For years, Ronnie has enjoyed reciting another Robert Service poem, “The Shooting of Dan McGrew.” One scene I’ll never forget is of Ronnie at a state dinner in England, where he was seated between Queen Elizabeth and the queen mother. Apparently, “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” is also a favorite of the queen mother’s. I don’t remember how it began, but before I knew it the two of them were reciting that poem together—all eleven stanzas—back and forth at the table!
It is true that Ronnie nodded off during a public meeting with the pope in 1982. We had left for Paris on June 3, arriving for the economic summit on June 4. That day, Ronnie met with Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterrand. On June 5, he was in Versailles for talks with the leaders of Japan, Canada, Italy, and West Germany, as well as Thatcher and Mitterrand. On June 6, we attended a banquet at Versailles that ended after midnight. When it was finally over, Ronnie went directly into a meeting with his advisers to discuss the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which had occurred a few hours earlier. He got almost no sleep that night, and early the next morning we flew to Rome, where we drove straight to the Vatican for the meeting with the pope.
It was held in the papal library, and Ronnie was seated next to the pope. The room was very warm. As the pope started speaking in his soothing voice, I saw Ronnie’s eyes begin to droop. I started coughing and shuffling my feet as loudly as I could, but no luck. It’s funny, looking back on it, but it was agonizing at the time—and in front of the pope, of all people. I kept hoping he would lean over and nudge Ronnie with his elbow, and say, “You know what I mean, Ron!”
Naturally, the press made a big deal about it, and that photograph of Ronnie with his eyes closed was shown everywhere. Mike Deaver normally did a terrific job, but he certainly overscheduled Ronnie on that trip. And it didn’t help when Mike tried to explain it by telling Chris Wallace of NBC that Ronnie occasionally nodded off during Cabinet meetings! Actually, everyone at one time or another had a hard time keeping his eyes open at Cabinet meetings.
Then there’s that old myth that Ronnie dyes his hair. Lord, I got sick of hearing that one! Once, in California, two reporters actually followed Ronnie into the barbershop, picked up some of his hair from the floor, and had it analyzed for traces of dye. They didn’t find any.<
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In fact I’ve never known anyone who was as happy to get a few gray hairs as Ronnie was. He said, “Now, maybe they’ll stop saying that I dye my hair.” But the stories continued.
I still come across references to the “fact” that Ronnie never reads. He reads constantly. In Sacramento, and also in Washington, he would bring home a big pile of documents to read at night; his aides and advisers had to be reminded not to give him anything that wasn’t important, because Ronnie’s tendency is to read everything. He concentrates so hard that sometimes, when I talk to him, he doesn’t hear me.
Ronnie remembers that at night, when he was young, Nelle would sit on the bed between the two boys—they shared a bed—and read to them. She used to move her finger under the words, and one evening, he recalls, all those funny little black marks clicked into place. This was a year or two before he started school.
When Ronnie was five, Jack came home one day and found his son sitting on the floor, reading the newspaper.
“What are you doing?” said his father.
“Reading,” answered the boy.
“Oh yeah? Then read me something.”
And Ronnie did. As he tells it, Jack went running out of the house, yelling, “My son can read! My son can read!”
When we lived in the White House, there were always magazines and books piled on his night table, and at night we’d both read in bed until it was time to fall asleep. Ronnie especially enjoys history, biography, and the novels of Louis L’Amour and Tom Clancy. During his final year in office, he was engrossed in a two-volume work called The President’s House, and it inspired him to explore the White House, room by room, seeing it all through new eyes.
Ronnie is also a pretty good writer, and until he became president he wrote his own speeches. Anyone who has ever traveled with Ronnie on a campaign plane knows how much time he would spend on each one. He would start by writing the speech on a yellow legal-size pad. Then he would transfer it to note cards, using his own form of shorthand, which nobody else could understand. He would print the key words in dark ink and bold block letters so they would be easy to read.