by Nancy Reagan
“Turn around and look up.”
Above me was a sheer three-thousand-foot cliff. I don’t understand how I ever did it, but I’m sure that Ron’s supportive words helped make it possible.
When it came time for Ron to start high school, we gave him a choice: He could go to school in Sacramento, but then he would have to leave in the middle when Ronnie’s second term was up and we moved back to Los Angeles. The alternative was a boarding school in Los Angeles. Ronnie and I flew back to Los Angeles every Friday, so if he chose that option—which he did—he could be with us on weekends.
We enrolled him at the Webb School in Claremont, where he slipped into some bad habits and found himself some less-than-terrific friends. When he broke one rule too many and left school one day without signing out, he was expelled. Needless to say, this came as quite a shock to us.
But that wasn’t the end of Ron’s rebellion. For several years he was romantically involved with a significantly older woman from a show business family who had a teenage daughter of her own. I was heartsick when I learned about it, because I believed she was robbing him of his wonderful teenage years. But there was nothing I could do about it. Their relationship ended while Ron was at Yale, when she dropped him.
Like Patti, Ron was a multitalented kid. He has always been good with words, and I thought he would become a writer. In high school, he was the only junior allowed to participate in the senior writing seminar, where he became motivated to write.
Which is why I was so surprised when he told us, out of the blue, that he had decided to become a dancer. Ronnie and I were spending Thanksgiving weekend with Bill and Pat Buckley in Connecticut, and Ron joined us from Yale, where he was a freshman. We were out for a walk when he turned to us and announced that he had decided to leave college to study ballet.
We urged him to at least finish his first semester at Yale. We had been so proud and excited when Yale had accepted him, and now, after only a few weeks, he wanted to leave. But Ron argued that he was eighteen, and that if he was going to be a dancer, it was already very late. He said he had always been interested in ballet, although I had never heard the word “ballet” cross his lips. And it was certainly a shock and a disappointment to have our son drop out of college during his first semester. (Ronnie and I have always regretted that none of our children graduated from college.)
But we also believe that you have to let your children find their own paths and live their own lives. We have tried to back our children in whatever they have chosen to do, and we could see that Ron was serious about ballet. Our friend Gene Kelly recommended the Stanley Holden Dance Center in Los Angeles, and Ron enrolled there and moved into his own apartment. And what a mess that was. You had to fight your way through, as everything he had was piled up on the floor. Today his apartment is so clean you could eat off the floor; it’s amazing what marriage can do for a man.
Ron did extremely well at Holden, in spite of the fact that he was much older than the other beginners. He also met Doria Palmieri, a lovely girl, whom he later married.
As I look back on that time, I think the press was surprised by our reaction to Ron’s new career. They thought we would be embarrassed about Ron’s decision to become a dancer, but we weren’t. Some people expected us to distance ourselves from Ron, but that never entered our minds. We were surprised at his choice, but we were proud of his dedication and his talent. He worked hard, and it was a wonderful discipline.
Ron was accepted by the Joffrey Dance Company in New York, which was quite an achievement—especially for a late starter. He then moved to New York, where he joined the Joffrey II, the touring company. Although I was very proud of Ron, I had mixed feelings about New York. I knew how exciting the city could be, especially when you’re young and artistic and your whole life is in front of you. But from a security standpoint it made me anxious that the president’s son was living in Greenwich Village. I too had once lived in New York, but that was a different New York.
I was even more nervous when Ron dropped his Secret Service detail in 1982. It drove him crazy to have them there all the time, and one Sunday he came to the White House and discussed it in the solarium with Ronnie and me. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I just can’t go through this anymore.”
We tried to dissuade him, but he held firm. There was a great deal of concern about terrorism and possible kidnappings that year, and Ronnie explained to Ron that this was a risk he had to consider. There had been a death threat; he was the only one of our children to receive one. But Ron wanted to lead his own life, and we let him.
Shortly after Ron moved to Manhattan, Doria came to live with him. Although I didn’t find this quite as shocking as I had in Patti’s case a few years earlier, it still wasn’t something I felt comfortable about—and I suspect Doria’s mother felt the same way. Frankly, I didn’t particularly like Doria then. I guess I was thinking back to Ron’s other relationship, and because Doria, too, was older, I was afraid this one would come to the same disastrous end and Ron would wind up being hurt.
After Ronnie was elected president, I began to think about Ron and Doria and the sleeping arrangements when the whole family would be staying at Blair House in the days before the inauguration. When they decided to get married, I was relieved because it helped solve this immediate problem—although there were personal problems that wouldn’t be resolved until later.
Ron and Doria went down to the federal courthouse to take out a marriage license, but when Ron learned there was a forty-eight-hour waiting period before they could actually marry, he realized that when they came back, there would be a media mob scene. He explained the problem to the judge, who understood, and they got married on the spot and then called us. Although Doria and I didn’t start out on the best of terms, I grew to love her as time went on, and I hope she feels the same way.
They’re very happy together, in spite of the periodic stories that they’re planning to get divorced, or that I don’t like Doria. In fact, I’ve saved a couple of letters she wrote me, saying how much she loves me and how much she’s learned from me. A mother-in-law can’t ask for more than that.
In 1984 Ron decided that he didn’t want to continue in the ballet. Although he was doing well and had recently been accepted into the main company of the Joffrey, he had started dancing far too late to ever become one of the greats. He had proved to himself that he could do it, and now he was free to pursue other interests. There were more practical reasons, too. As he wrote in Newsweek, “I left because I want to make a home with my wife and to one day have a child. The finances of ballet and the prospect of touring for months on end made these goals distantly attainable at best.”
Although Ron and Doria would now be three thousand miles away from Washington, I breathed a sigh of relief when they left New York and moved back to Los Angeles. Ron wanted to be a writer, and he started doing articles for Playboy, including one on the 1984 Democratic convention, one on the Soviet Union, and a third on the Geneva summit. Maureen, who believes Playboy is demeaning to women, did not let this go unnoticed. “Listen,” she teased him, “do you have any idea how embarrassing it was for me to buy that magazine at a newsstand, just so I could read your article?”
During the past few years, Ron has been working for ABC’s Good Morning America, and I watch the show every morning in the hope that I’ll see him. He has taken on a variety of assignments, including several I wish I hadn’t seen—like the time he went white-water rafting, or the time he jumped out of an airplane. But this is what he wants to do, and he obviously has a knack for it. He comes up with most of the ideas himself and does his own writing.
I guess I had better accept the fact that my son likes dangerous assignments. When Ron was nine, we sent him to summer camp for the first time, to a place in Colorado. I remember waiting nervously for his first letter. Finally a postcard arrived, with all of two sentences:
Dear Mom and Dad:
Today we took rubber rafts down the Colorado River. M
ine turned over and I almost drowned.
Love, Ron
He hasn’t changed very much.
One thing I have always admired about Ron is that he handles his father’s fame with a nice light touch. “You will have to deal with the press,” he wrote in the Washington Post, describing what it’s like when your father is president. “You have no choice. Lower-order types will rummage through your trash looking for that telltale God-knows-what. The more decent sorts will flatter you onto their talk shows, where you’ll have an opportunity to embarrass your parents. If you have a sense of humor, it’s kind of fun.”
Fortunately, Ron has a wonderful sense of humor. In 1986 he made a commercial for American Express, part of the “Do You Know Me?” series. As the commercial opens, we see Ron in the first-class section of a plane, being served an ice-cream sundae. “Do you know me?” he begins. “Every time I appear on a talk show, people ask me about my father. Every time I give an interview, people ask me about my father. Every time I pull out the American Express card, people treat me like my father. Come to think of it, that’s not so bad!”
Then a credit card with Ron’s name flashes across the screen. As the commercial ends, we see Ron standing in a phone booth at the airport. “Hello, Dad?” he says. Then he closes the door to carry on the conversation in private.
That commercial showed a lot about Ron, who has always been willing to acknowledge that there are real advantages to being the president’s son. Most of all, it showed that, like his father, Ron Reagan can laugh at himself.
He really is a lot like his father—more than he knows. He is single-minded when it comes to accomplishing his goals, and he has a great sense of humor. He loves to read, and has a tremendous warmth, which I think comes across on television. He’s also completely unpretentious. “I’m the least ambitious person you ever met,” he once said. “All I want is to be insanely happy.”
Like Ronnie, Ron is friendly but hard to get to know. Most people can only get so far with him in terms of intimacy. He and Doria are a self-contained unit, and they don’t need a lot of other people around—which is what people say about Ronnie and me.
One thing that bothers Ronnie is that Ron doesn’t go to church. It means a lot to Ronnie to attend church every Sunday, and since we left the White House he hasn’t missed a single one, even when I was sick and couldn’t go with him. But Ron has a broad view of religion, and his own faith is individualistic and private. It bothers him that his father doesn’t understand that he is religious in his own way.
Ron and I don’t always agree either. When he challenges me on issues, he makes me stretch, and that’s one reason I enjoy being around him. His views on a number of important issues are different from his father’s, although he has never said this in public, which I respect.
On the question of abortion, for example, he is decidedly pro-choice, and he wants me to be, too. I’m not exactly sure where I come down on that one, because I can’t get past the feeling that abortion means taking a life. But in cases of incest, rape, or the mother’s well-being, I accept it.
Like his father, Ron has always been there for me. In 1981, as I mentioned, when he heard that Ronnie had been shot, he chartered a plane from Nebraska in order to get to Washington as soon as possible. And when my mother died, Ron came to Phoenix immediately to be with me. When I’ve been down, he has tried to comfort me.
Ron and I had some rough moments while he was growing up, but we’ve now reached the point where, in addition to being mother and son, we’re also friends. I consider Maureen a friend too, and I think Michael and I have also reached that point. A reconciliation with Patti, before I’m old, would be a dream come true.
10
A Glorious Defeat
(The 1976 Campaign)
OF Ronnie’s five campaigns for public office, the one I remember most vividly is the only one he lost. That was in 1976, when he challenged President Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination.
That campaign was so exciting, so dramatic, and so emotional—especially at the convention—that in my mind it almost overshadows Ronnie’s four victories.
The morning after Ronnie’s first victory, when he was elected governor in 1966, the press was already asking whether he was planning to run for president as a favorite-son candidate in 1968. I guess that’s the first time I remember thinking that the White House might be a possibility.
Ronnie wasn’t interested, but eventually the Republican party leaders in California persuaded him to change his mind, to prevent a bitter split in the state delegation between the supporters of Nelson Rockefeller and those who favored Richard Nixon. Before long, conservative Republicans across the country were talking about Ronnie as a possible candidate, and the discussion continued throughout the Nixon years.
It’s often said that I was the one who pushed Ronnie into politics—that he was reluctant to seek office, but that I was ambitious enough for both of us. I suspect this myth got started because Ronnie really was reluctant. This is unusual in a politician, and so I suppose some people have have concluded that if he wasn’t ambitious, she must have been.
But in fact I was more ambivalent than Ronnie. After eight years in Sacramento, I was dying to return to Los Angeles and a normal, private life.
Ronnie had already decided to go out on what he calls the mashed-potatoes circuit; he would travel around the country giving speeches. Mike Deaver and Peter Hannaford from Ronnie’s staff in Sacramento opened a small public-relations firm in Los Angeles, and they scheduled Ronnie’s bookings and arranged for him to do a syndicated newspaper column and a series of radio commentaries. For Ronnie, this was the perfect job: He could earn a good living by doing what he enjoyed—communicating his beliefs about the direction in which the country ought to move. And best of all, his schedule left him time to enjoy our new ranch near Santa Barbara.
The 1974 midterm elections, which were held only three months after President Nixon resigned, had been a disaster for the Republicans. In Ronnie, the party saw a fresh face, a popular and nationally known figure with no ties to Washington and a reputation for integrity. The conservative wing of the party was dying for him to challenge President Ford. Over and over, Ronnie heard the same message: “You must run. You owe it to the people who believe in you, who care about the same things you do.”
Looking back, I realize it was inevitable that Ronnie would run. And certainly it was inevitable that I would go along with whatever he decided. I’ve always believed that if Ronnie feels strongly about something, I’d be foolish to go against him.
When Ronnie and his advisers first started talking about the 1976 campaign, they all assumed a wide-open race, and that Ronnie’s most likely opponents would be Charles Percy, John Connally, and Nelson Rockefeller. Even after Watergate, almost nobody imagined that Richard Nixon would be forced to resign—or that Gerald Ford would be a candidate, much less the incumbent president.
Ronnie hated the idea of challenging a sitting president from his own party. He also realized that it would be enormously difficult. Everywhere Ford went, he brought with him the excitement of the presidency, including Air Force One, the podium with the presidential seal, and the band playing “Hail to the Chief.” His press conferences received major coverage. He also controlled the party structure, so any Republican challenger would be battling the establishment in every state.
Still, Ronnie thought Ford was vulnerable. He was the only American president not elected by the people, or even nominated by his own party. Ronnie believed that under the circumstances, Republicans deserved a chance to choose, and given that choice, that a majority would vote for Reagan over Ford.
Ronnie’s advisers and supporters began meeting in 1974 to discuss the possibility of a presidential run in 1976. I knew most of these men, but there was a new face—a thirty-four-year-old Washington lawyer with prematurely gray hair named John Sears. Sears had helped the Nixon campaign in 1968, and many people considered him a genius at political strategy. He
also had excellent contacts with the Washington press corps, which would be very important if Ronnie entered the race.
John Sears was urbane and articulate, and he knew as much about politics as anyone I had ever met. I loved having lunch with him because he was bright, knowledgeable, and fascinating to listen to. John was not a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, and some of Ronnie’s supporters didn’t trust him. His mission was to bring home a winner, and he would do everything possible to make that happen.
John wasn’t an easy man to know, and he was sometimes difficult to work with. Some people thought he had a private disdain for Ronnie, and there were times—especially later, in the 1980 campaign—when that seemed to be true. He was inscrutable and rarely showed emotion. “John doesn’t look you in the eye,” Ronnie once said. “He looks you in the tie. Why won’t he look at me?”
“Ford is vulnerable,” John would say. “The only thing he has going for him is that he’s the incumbent. He’s a weak leader with no national support. If we can beat him in the first two or three primaries, he’s dead.”
But with the New Hampshire primary only a few months away, Ronnie still hadn’t decided whether to enter the race.
This was frustrating for his friends and supporters, who were dying for him to declare. But whenever Ronnie is faced with a major decision he moves deliberately. I had found that out for myself more than twenty years earlier, when it took him forever to consider running for another office—the husband of Nancy Davis. When he finally decided to enter that campaign, he won in a landslide. (Then again, he was unopposed!)
Finally, Ronnie decided to run. I asked the children to come to our house on Halloween so we could tell them ourselves. Maureen arrived first. Mike and Colleen had to drive in from Orange County and were held up in traffic. Patti was estranged from us during this period and didn’t come. Ron was still living at home, at seventeen. Ronnie had been given an oversized pair of blue jeans as a joke, and while we waited for Mike and Colleen, I was stuffing them with pillows for Ron to wear to a Halloween party later that evening.