My Turn

by Nancy Reagan

  A few minutes before the debate was scheduled to begin, we still didn’t know exactly who was going to participate. I was with Ronnie and all the other candidates except Bush, as we stood in a small classroom in the school basement and tried to work out a compromise with the Bush team. They wanted a two-man debate, and they wouldn’t budge.

  Ronnie wanted to walk out if the other candidates were not allowed to participate, but his advisers saw this debate as his best chance to eliminate Bush as a serious rival, and they prevailed on him to stay. The last thing they wanted was for Ronnie to leave now and have it appear that he was afraid to debate Bush.

  As we were discussing our options, a messenger from the Telegraph came to the classroom where we had gathered. “Mr. Bush is already on the stage,” he said. “If Mr. Reagan does not appear within five minutes, the debate will be canceled and Mr. Bush will be declared the winner.”

  Finally, with time running out and nobody knowing what to do, I said, “Why don’t you all just go out?”

  That seemed to suit everybody. Ronnie led the way and the others followed—John Anderson, Bob Dole, Phil Crane, and Howard Baker. (John Connally was campaigning in South Carolina.) Ronnie took his seat at one end of the stage, across from Bush, and the other four candidates stood behind him as a loud roar of recognition went up from the crowd. I sat in the audience with Ronnie’s staff and supporters. Although the whole place was in chaos, George Bush just sat there and looked straight ahead as if no one else were there and none of this were really happening. Later, one of the New Hampshire newspapers wrote that George looked like a small boy who had been dropped off at the wrong birthday party.

  Jon Breen, the editor of the Telegraph, tried to get the audience to settle down. Then Ronnie spoke up and said he thought all the candidates should be allowed to participate.

  “Mr. Reagan is out of order,” said Breen. “Turn off his microphone.”

  Ronnie just looked at him, with an incredulous expression on his face. He couldn’t believe what he’d heard.

  “Turn off Mr. Reagan’s microphone,” Breen repeated.

  That did it. Ronnie banged his fist on the table and said, “I paid for this microphone, Mr. Green!”

  Ronnie was so mad that he got the man’s name wrong.

  But there was no mistaking the emotion in his voice. And with that, everybody started yelling, including me. Suddenly I was on my feet, shouting, “You tell him, honey, you tell him!” A moment later I caught myself and thought, Oh Lord, I hope the cameras weren’t on me.

  But the cameras were on my husband. When the audience finally calmed down, Ronnie explained why he thought the other candidates on the stage should be given a chance to speak.

  Not everybody in that gymnasium was a Reagan supporter, but you could see that most of them agreed with Ronnie. “Bring some chairs,” people shouted. But the organizers of the debate and the Bush people would not allow it, and the four other candidates angrily left the stage.

  I remember very little of the actual debate, but by then it was anticlimactic. Although it was televised only locally, the network crews had been there, and over the next few days the clip of Ronnie getting angry was shown again and again, not only in New Hampshire, but all over the country. With those seven words, “I paid for this microphone, Mr. Green!” Ronnie took control of his own campaign. Later, the news media called this the turning point of the entire race, and I think that’s true.

  After what had happened in 1976, Ronnie wouldn’t even consider leaving New Hampshire before the primary. Although the polls now showed him well ahead, and Dick Wirthlin called from California two days before the vote to predict that Ronnie would win by seventeen points, we stayed until the very end. On election day, Ronnie won with 51 percent of the vote. George Bush was a distant second, twenty-seven points behind. Howard Baker finished third.

  From New Hampshire we flew to Vermont, where Ronnie won the primary a week later. Then, on March 8, Ronnie finished first in South Carolina, which led John Connally to withdraw. Three days later, Ronnie won Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. One by one, all of Ronnie’s opponents dropped out, except for John Anderson, who decided to run as an independent. Throughout the primaries, George Bush provided the only real opposition, but it was never close. In the thirty-three races where both men were on the ballot, Ronnie finished first in twenty-nine. Bush eventually withdrew, and Ronnie coasted into the convention in Detroit, where the only topic of suspense was whom Ronnie would choose as his running mate.

  I couldn’t believe it, but most of Ronnie’s advisers wanted him to pick Gerald Ford. They saw Reagan-Ford as a “dream ticket” which would unite the Republican party and would prove unbeatable in November. The polls supported this judgment, and Ronnie liked it too. During the convention, he and Ford had several meetings to discuss how it might work.

  1 and 2. My mother when she was a girl. I have this picture on my dressing table, along with this one of my father. (photo credit 11.1)

  3. Mother and me with my natural father, who doesn’t look too enchanted with me. (photo credit 11.2)

  4. Mother and me with her father, who died not long after this picture was taken. (photo credit 11.3)

  5. Mother and me in New York shortly after I was born. (photo credit 11.4)

  6. At the beach with Mother. The times when we could be together—when she had some time off—were few. (photo credit 11.5)

  7. With Charlotte and Loyal. I had lost my two front teeth. (photo credit 11.6)

  8. Serving tea to my doll in Bethesda. Little did I know this was preparing me for things to come. (photo credit 11.7)

  9. My first boyfriend, in Bethesda, who would come around in the morning before school and take me for a ride around the block in his red wagon. Even then I was a hand-holder. (photo credit 11.8)

  10. The house in Bethesda where I lived with Aunt Virgie, Uncle Audley (whom she called Mr. Galbraith until the day she died), and Charlotte. When I went back to see that house, I was amazed at how small it was. (photo credit 11.9)

  11. Aunt Virgie and Uncle Audley, who were so kind to me and treated me as their own. (photo credit 11.10)

  12. Me at age six. (photo credit 11.11)

  13. At Girls’ Latin in Chicago. Here I am in the senior class play, First Lady. I never dreamed what that title was going to mean to me. (photo credit 11.12)

  14. When my father was dying in the hospital, he asked me to bring him this photo of Mother. I put it on the wall at the end of his bed so he could lie in bed and look up and see her. (photo credit 11.13)

  15. Better than the first letter I got from Ron when he went to camp! My writing was better then than it is now. I see I forgot the comma after “Love” … (photo credit 11.14)

  16. Me with Clark Gable at the Stork Club during an unexpectedly exciting week. (photo credit 11.15)

  17. At MGM, I was trying so hard to get out of playing roles that required wearing the pregnancy pad that I had some photos taken to show a little different side of me. (photo credit 11.16)

  18. I don’t like people who don’t look at me when I’m talking, and I can’t not look at people when they’re talking to me! Me in a picture called Night into Morning. (photo credit 11.17)

  19. MGM sent me to New York to promote The Next Voice You Hear and I was so impressed with having my name on the marquee that I took pictures of it. I also pinned my first fan letter to my dress and wore it to the studio. (photo credit 11.18)

  20. After our wedding at the Little Brown Church in the Valley, we went back to the Holdens’. They had arranged to have a wedding cake and a photographer. I still have the bride and groom from the top of the cake. (photo credit 11.19)

  21. At the Stork Club, on my first trip to New York as Mrs. Ronald Reagan. I thought I had packed everything so carefully—and it turned out that I was so excited that I forgot to pack the skirts to all of my suits. (photo credit 11.20)

  22. The family together in Pacific Palisades—Ronnie, Ron, me, and Patti. (photo credit 11
.21)

  23. Ron and his father having fun in the treehouse Ron built with a friend. (photo credit 11.22)

  24. At Ron’s christening—Ronnie; me holding Ron; my mother; Patti with Ronnie’s mother, Nelle; my sister-in-law Bess and Ronnie’s brother, Moon; and my father. (photo credit 11.23)

  25. Look magazine, 1967: a nice article about me as “California’s Leading Lady.” Stories like this one from the sixties made it more difficult for me to understand the press that I later got in Washington. (photo credit 11.24)

  26. On the campaign plane I’m always cold, and Ronnie’s usually in his shirt-sleeves. (photo credit 11.25)

  27. Ronnie taking the oath of office in 1981. (photo credit 11.26)

  28. Just before the inauguration in 1981, at the White House with the Carters for coffee. (photo credit 11.27)

  29. Watching the inaugural parade. Jerry Parr, seated behind me, is the Secret Service man who pushed Ronnie into the car after the shooting. (photo credit 11.28)

  30. At the last of the inaugural balls we attended in 1981, when Ronnie said, “I haven’t had a chance to dance with my lady yet, so do you mind if we take a few steps up here on the stand?” (photo credit 11.29)

  31. At Versailles, with the Mitterrands, for dinner in the beautiful Hall of Mirrors. (photo credit 11.30)

  32. Leaving the hospital after the shooting, with an obviously concerned George Opfer, head of my Secret Service detail. (photo credit 11.31)

  33. At the hospital after the shooting, when Ronnie and I were making one of our walks down the hall. (photo credit 11.32)

  34. You wouldn’t think, looking at this picture, that my heart was in my throat as I was getting ready to go on stage to sing, “Second-Hand Clothes” at the 1982 Gridiron Dinner. (photo credit 11.33)

  35. Heaven! An evening at home. Dinner in Ronnie’s study. (photo credit 11.34)

  36. With Patti at the ranch in 1983 at the time of my birthday party. (photo credit 11.35)

  37. A last few special moments with Patti, before she got dressed for her wedding ceremony. (photo credit 11.36)

  38. With Paul Grilley and Patti on their wedding day in 1984. I was a happy mother and mother-in-law. (photo credit 11.37)

  39. Christmas at the White House, 1983. Patti, Paul, Doria, and Ron. (photo credit 11.38)

  40. Thanksgiving at the ranch, 1985. Bess, Patti, Paul, me, Ronnie, Colleen, Mike, Moon; Cameron in front of me; Ron, Doria, and Ashley. (photo credit 11.39)

  I thought the whole idea was ridiculous. I didn’t see how a former president—any president—could come back to the White House in the number-two spot. It would be awkward for both men, and impractical, and I couldn’t understand why that wasn’t obvious to everybody. “It can’t be done,” I told Ronnie. “It would be a dual presidency. It just won’t work.”

  But he didn’t see it that way. So much for my famous “influence” over Ronald Reagan.

  When Ronnie’s advisers asked me to call Betty Ford, to see what she had to say about the idea, I went along for my husband’s sake. But I was relieved to find that Betty felt pretty much as I did. “No,” she said, “as much as we’d like to help, I don’t think it’s a good idea.” I didn’t press the point. She also made it clear that now that the Fords were back in private life, she wasn’t eager to return to politics.

  But our husbands continued to pursue the idea, and so did their staffs. On the third day of the convention, Ford met with Ronnie and told him he would want a voice in the selection of the Cabinet, and that he preferred Henry Kissinger as secretary of State and Alan Greenspan as secretary of the Treasury. Ronnie listened but didn’t commit himself.

  A few hours later, Ronnie and I were in our suite at the Detroit Plaza, watching the CBS Evening News, when Ford suddenly came on for a live interview with Walter Cronkite. The rumors had been flying around all day about the “dream ticket,” and about an arrangement that would give Ford, as vice president, enhanced powers and responsibilities. There had even been talk that Ford would be a “deputy president.”

  So far, neither man had said a word to the press. But as Ronnie and I watched in astonishment, Ford laid out his conditions on national television. “I would not go to Washington and be a figurehead vice president,” he said. “I have to have special assurances. I have to go there with the belief that I will play a meaningful role across the board in the basic and the crucial and the important decisions that have to be made.”

  When Cronkite asked if he had in mind a kind of “copresidency,” Ford didn’t argue with that term. “The point you raise is a very legitimate one,” he said.

  As far as Ronnie was concerned, that did it. Later that evening, he and Ford had a brief final meeting in our suite. But the Ford option was now over.

  I’m not exactly sure what I would have done if Gerald Ford hadn’t taken himself out of the race. (To this day, I don’t know whether he did so intentionally.) But I think I would have done almost anything to prevent Ronnie from picking a former president as his running mate.

  The delegates, however, were infatuated with the idea. They must have assumed Ford would never have said these things publicly unless Ronnie had already agreed to them. Shortly after the Cronkite interview, the networks started talking of a Reagan-Ford ticket as though it had already been decided. On CBS, Dan Rather even announced that Reagan and Ford were preparing to make a joint appearance before the convention later that evening.

  As soon as Ford left our suite, Ronnie called George Bush to offer him a place on the ticket. By this time, George and Barbara Bush had already gone to bed. Like everyone else, they had assumed from the news reports that Ronnie and Ford had it all arranged. But when Ronnie called, George was up like a shot.

  Later, George told us that shortly before Ronnie called, he and Barbara had been sitting around talking about what they were going to do with the rest of their lives. Politics is a funny business, and for all the planning and the meetings, you can never predict what’s going to happen. In a way, George Bush became the forty-first president of the United States because the thirty-eighth president had said too much during a television interview eight years earlier!

  At the time, I didn’t like George Bush. The bitter campaigns of Iowa and New Hampshire were still fresh in my memory, and George’s use of the phrase “voodoo economics” to describe Ronnie’s proposed tax cuts still rankled. That’s why I’ve always hated primaries—you’re forced to go on the attack against candidates from your own party.

  I soon came to realize, however, that George was a good choice. He was experienced in government and he knew his way around Washington. He had served in Congress. He had been ambassador to the United Nations. He had been director of the CIA. More recently, he had stayed in the race the longest, and had run energetically in the primaries. He was a fine campaigner, and both geographically and philosophically, he broadened the ticket.

  He also turned out to be a good vice president.

  Still, I think Ronnie would have preferred Paul Laxalt. That night, as he went out on the platform to announce his choice, he said to Paul, “Why the hell do you have to live in Nevada?” Geographically, a Reagan-Laxalt ticket just didn’t make sense.

  The following night, Ronnie returned to the convention hall to give his acceptance speech. Referring to the Carter years, he asked, “Can anyone look at the record of this administration and say, ‘Well done’? Can anyone compare the state of our economy when the Carter administration took office with where we are today and say, ‘Keep up the good work’? Can anyone look at our reduced standing in the world today and say, ‘Let’s have four more years of this’?”

  Ronnie ended on a note of inspiration, and when he was finished, the crowd was completely still. Then he looked out on the convention floor and surprised everyone—including me—by saying, “I’ll confess that I’ve been a little afraid to suggest what I’m going to suggest, what I’m going to say. I’m more afraid not to. Can we begin our crusade joined together in a moment of silent pr
ayer?”

  The entire convention rose up and bowed their heads. After a few seconds, Ronnie looked out on that great hall and said, “God bless America.”

  Now that Ronnie was the nominee, we had to start all over and run a national campaign against an incumbent president. Although Jimmy Carter was not especially popular, in the 1976 race against Gerald Ford he had shown himself to be a very competitive campaigner. Ronnie expected a mean and tough race, and that’s what we got.

  Although Ronnie would have liked to maintain our campaign headquarters in California, once we got past the primaries that was no longer practical. In addition to the enormous amount of additional travel, the three-hour time difference was a problem when we tried to keep in touch with key people on the East Coast.

  And so, shortly after the convention, we rented a country house known as Wexford in the Virginia hunt-country, near Middleburg, about an hour from Washington and only thirty minutes from Dulles Airport. Wexford had been built by the Kennedys during the early 1960s and was named after the Kennedys’ ancestral county in Ireland. Mrs. Kennedy had designed it as a weekend retreat when she and her husband lived in the White House, but by the time it was finished they were able to spend only one weekend there before the assassination. A few years later, Wexford was bought by Bill Clements, the former governor of Texas, who made it available to us. It was the perfect place to come home to and relax.