by Nancy Reagan
Ed Meese had also been with us in Sacramento, where he was chief of staff during Ronnie’s second term. But Ed and I were never close. He was by far the most ideological member of the troika, a jump-off-the-cliff-with-the-flag-flying conservative. Some people are so rigid in their beliefs that they’d rather lose than win a partial victory, and I always felt that Meese was one of them.
It also made me squirm that he kept getting into trouble in his financial life. He made a series of mistakes which embarrassed the presidency, and some men in his situation would have stepped down. Eventually he did, but in my opinion he waited far too long and weakened both the Justice Department and the presidency.
I think Ed had been hurt that he wasn’t made chief of staff in 1980, but he wouldn’t have been good in that job. Among other things, he wasn’t well organized. He was famous for his bulging briefcase; if you wanted a document to disappear, you’d give it to Ed. And he made a serious mistake in August of 1981, when American Navy jets shot down two Libyan fighter planes off the coast of Libya, and Ed waited five and a half hours before calling Ronnie to wake him up and tell him about it.
But there was one major thing in Ed’s favor: He was very loyal to Ronnie.
Of the three members of Ronnie’s troika, I knew Jim Baker least of all. He managed George Bush’s 1980 campaign against Ronnie, and when George became vice president, Baker came along. It was Mike Deaver’s idea to make him White House chief of staff, because Jim was well connected in Washington. Ronnie had been leaning toward Ed Meese, but Mike prevailed.
I thought Jim Baker did a fine job. He knew a lot about politics and had many good contacts in Congress. He was more inclined than Ronnie to compromise and make deals, but he was loyal, and he was certainly effective in helping get Ronnie’s programs through Congress. He also cultivated the press assiduously—perhaps too much, because he leaked constantly.
Although Jim did a lot for Ronnie, I always felt that his main interest was Jim Baker. He was an ambitious man, and when he was worn out after four years as chief of staff, he made it clear to Ronnie that he wanted to be secretary of State. Ronnie stuck with George Shultz, but when Bush became president, Jim got his wish. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him run for higher office in the future.
The troika worked out well, but I can’t say the same for Al Haig, Ronnie’s first secretary of State. As far as I’m concerned, Haig represented Ronnie’s biggest mistake in the first term.
He was too power-hungry. He saw himself as the only person in the administration who should be making decisions on foreign policy. When Ronnie was shot, Haig alarmed Ronnie’s aides and much of the country with his famous statement “As of now, I am in control here.” At the time, I was too busy worrying about Ronnie to pay attention to Haig, but I always thought that comment was revealing.
Haig was obsessed with matters of status—with exactly where he stood on a receiving line, or where he was seated on a plane or helicopter. If he didn’t think his seat was important enough, he’d let you know. He had a prickly personality and was always complaining that he was being slighted.
He also struck me as eager for military action. In the first month of Ronnie’s administration, he apparently implied to Tip O’Neill that he wanted to invade Nicaragua. Tip, and many others in Washington, assumed that Haig spoke for Ronnie. But in reality, Haig alarmed Ronnie and his top advisers with his belligerent rhetoric. Once, talking about Cuba in a meeting of the National Security Council, he turned to Ronnie and said, “You just give me the word and I’ll turn that f— island into a parking lot.”
If Ronnie had given him the green light, Haig would have bombed everybody and everything.
Haig threatened to resign any number of times, and finally, in June 1982, Ronnie accepted his resignation. In this case I didn’t have to say anything to my husband; Ronnie just didn’t care for him, and we were both relieved when Haig finally left.
Bill Clark, who came in in 1981 as deputy secretary of State, was another bad choice, in my opinion. I didn’t think he was qualified for the job—or for his subsequent position as national security adviser. I wasn’t the only one who felt that way; he embarrassed himself in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when he couldn’t name the prime minister of Zimbabwe.
Clark had been in Ronnie’s administration in Sacramento, but even then I had never really gotten along with him. He struck me as a user—especially when he traveled around the country claiming he represented Ronnie, which usually wasn’t true. I spoke to Ronnie about him, but Ronnie liked him, so he stayed around longer than I would have liked.
One man Ronnie and I both respected and admired was George Shultz, who came in to replace Haig in 1982 and remained as secretary of State throughout the rest of Ronnie’s presidency. George reminded me of a big teddy bear, but underneath that soft exterior was a tough negotiator with enormous energy. I still don’t know how he made all those trips. He would arrive back in Washington from a long trip and would fly off again the next day for another mission, accompanied by his wife, Obie.
I trusted George completely; if he said it was raining, I didn’t have to look out the window. I believe that Eduard Shevardnadze, his Soviet counterpart, also trusted him; one reason that Ronnie and Gorbachev were able to accomplish so much is that Shultz and Shevardnadze worked so well together.
George loves to dance, so when Ginger Rogers came to a state dinner, I seated them together and asked one of the White House photographers to take as many pictures as she could of George and Ginger dancing. A few days later, I sent George a whole pile of photographs—enough to paper his entire office.
It soon became a joke: Whenever we had a dinner, I would seat George next to a glamor girl, until Obie finally came up to me and said, “Well, Nancy, what are you going to do for me?”
13
How We Lived
PEOPLE often ask me what it was like to live in the White House, and what routines we followed there. Our day normally began at seven-thirty, when a White House operator called on the telephone on my side of the bed and said, “Good morning, it’s seven-thirty.” Sometimes I was still sleeping, but Ronnie was usually awake. I would push a button by the side of the bed, which rang a buzzer in the second-floor kitchen, and a minute later a White House butler would come into our room, pull open the curtains, and bring us the morning papers, which we read in bed.
Ronnie would start with the Washington Post, followed by the New York Times, and as for that persistent rumor that he turned first to the comics—it’s true. Might as well begin the day on a light note. Later, at the office, he’d look through the Wall Street Journal. I usually began with U.S.A. Today and the Washington Times while waiting for Ronnie to finish the Post and the New York Times. Sometimes the butler would also bring the New York Post and the Daily News, and on Monday mornings they’d bring us Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News, all hot off the press.
While we read the papers, the television would be tuned to Good Morning America, in case Ron was on. All the morning news shows were taped by the White House, and if there was anything Ronnie’s staff thought he should see, they’d show it to him at the office. The same was true with the print media: We both received a daily packet of press clips so we wouldn’t miss an important story.
By the time the papers arrived we’d be sharing the bed with Rex, our brown-and-white King Charles spaniel, who was given to us by Bill and Pat Buckley. Rex slept just across the hall from our bedroom, in a basket in the kitchen. A few minutes later another butler would come in with the breakfast tray and lay it on the bed. The butlers worked in shifts, so it wasn’t the same man every morning. But everybody who served us was from the White House staff. Apparently, we were one of the very few presidential families to arrive without any personal servants.
Breakfast was always the same: orange or grapefruit juice, cold bran cereal with milk (and sometimes cut fruit), and decaffeinated coffee. Ronnie would also have bran toast with honey, and once a week we’d each have a
n egg.
About a month after we came to the White House, I was surprised when the usher’s office sent up a bill for our food. Nobody had told us that the president and his wife are charged for every meal, as well as for such incidentals as dry cleaning, toothpaste, and other toiletries. We paid for our guests’ meals, too, unless they came on official business. Fortunately, state dinners were paid for by the State Department. I suspect people think everything is paid for by the White House, but that’s not true.
At around eight forty-five, Ronnie would lean over the bed, kiss me goodbye, and leave for the office. On his way out, he took Rex back to the kitchen so that Dale Haney, one of the White House gardeners, could take him out for his morning walk. Then Ronnie went downstairs in the elevator, where he was met by Jim Kuhn, his personal assistant, and a Secret Service agent, who walked with him across the colonnade along the Rose Garden, and into the West Wing. He would pass the doctor’s office, and John Hutton was always in the hallway to say hello. (Sometimes, on his way home, Ronnie would stop in for his allergy shot.) His first appointment of the morning was usually a nine o’clock meeting with his chief of staff and the vice president.
I almost never saw Ronnie during the day, and never for lunch. Sometimes he ate alone in the Oval Office study (which had been Mike Deaver’s office during the first term), where a typical lunch consisted of a bowl of soup followed by half a grapefruit. Staying at the office, he could get more work done and continue to make calls. Every Thursday, Ronnie had lunch with George Bush.
When Ronnie left for work, I went into my dressing room, a soft, romantic room just behind the bedroom. I loved that room, with its peach-colored carpet and the peach-and-white floral draperies and upholstery. In there I had hung a wonderful nineteenth-century painting of a woman with her dog, a scene so peaceful it sometimes made me feel that I was born in the wrong century.
Outside the window was a magnolia tree that had been planted by Andrew Jackson. You could see the Rose Garden from that window, and if Ronnie was participating in an outdoor ceremony, I’d often perch up on the radiator and watch. Sometimes he’d wave to me, and the photographers would turn around and take my picture, too.
In addition to Pat Nixon’s small beauty parlor, the first lady also has her own bathroom, a small one by today’s standards. On the side of the washbasin I kept an inspirational text that a friend had sent me years ago, and I looked at it often during our years in the White House. It’s called “One Night I Had a Dream,” and the author is unknown:
I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord, and across the sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand; one belonged to me, and the other to the Lord. When the last scene of my life flashed before us, I looked back at the footprints in the sand. I noticed that many times along the path of my life there was only one set of footprints. I also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and the saddest times of my life.
I questioned the Lord about it. “Lord, you said that once I decided to follow You, You would walk with me all the way. But I’ve noticed that during the most troublesome times of my life, there is only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why, in times when I needed You most, You would leave.”
The Lord replied, “My precious child, I would never leave you during your times of trial and suffering. When you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”
I love that reading, and I’ve sent copies to many of my friends as they were going through difficult periods in their lives.
• • •
My first stop of the day was down the hall in the exercise room, which had been an empty bedroom until we converted it after the shooting. Amy Carter used to sleep here, and before that, Tricia Nixon, Luci Johnson, and Caroline Kennedy. Now it served as a mini gym, with a treadmill, and a central unit with different stations for various exercises. I used to watch Cable News Network as I went through my morning routine.
Depending on my schedule, I might spend the rest of the morning working in my office, which was next to the exercise room and was once Lynda Bird Johnson’s bedroom. I had a private line in my office, and my visitors were always amused by how often it rang with wrong numbers. Between these two rooms were closets, where I kept my clothes.
When I didn’t go out to lunch, I usually had a light meal alone in the West Hall. Or, in nice weather, I sometimes ate on the Truman Balcony. In either case I sat by the phone, because by lunchtime in Washington I could start calling friends in California. To warm up the West Hall, I had moved in our two red floral-print couches from California, along with some lamps and tables, and two little needlepoint chairs that Colleen Moore had made for Patti and Ron. As Patti’s godmother, Colleen had made her a chair showing a girl standing next to a grandfather clock. There was a mouse at the bottom of the clock (as in the nursery rhyme), and the hands of the clock showed 1:58, the exact time of Patti’s birth. Six years later, when Ron was born, Colleen said, “His sister has one, so I’m going to make one for him, too.” Ron’s chair shows a little boy with his dog, sitting on a fence at a ranch. I’m sentimentally attached to these little chairs, because they remind me not only of my children but also of my mother and her friend Colleen.
The private living quarters are on the second and third floors of the original White House (that is, the original building, minus the West Wing, which was built in 1902, and the East Wing, which was completed in 1942). They’re much smaller than you would expect. Ronnie and I certainly didn’t need more room for ourselves, but there were times when extra bedrooms would have been useful, such as the two inaugurations, Christmas, and right after the shooting. Although the White House is a state home, its scale is nothing like that of Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle.
Mostly it was just Ronnie and I, with frequent visits from Maureen. Like the Carters and the Fords, Ronnie and I slept in what is sometimes called the First Lady’s Bedroom, and I loved its beautiful airy shape and high ceilings. To warm it up, I covered the walls with wallpaper in an eighteenth-century Chinese print, with hand-painted yellow, green, and blue birds. The carpet was salmon-colored.
Maureen generally stayed down the hall in the Lincoln Bedroom, partly because Dennis, her husband, is very tall, and the bed in Lincoln’s room is the longest one in the White House. Lincoln never actually slept in that room, although he did hold Cabinet meetings there. He slept in the same room we did.
But apparently his presence remains. Neither Ronnie nor I ever saw the legendary ghost of Lincoln, but one night Dennis woke up and saw a shadowy figure by the fireplace. Maureen just laughed at him when he told her about it—until she woke up one night and saw a man who seemed to be wearing a red coat. At first she thought it was Ronnie in his red bathrobe, but when she looked again she noticed that the figure was transparent! Maureen says he was staring out the window and then turned around to look at her before he vanished.
When Ronnie heard these stories, he just laughed them off. “If you see him again,” he told Maureen, “why don’t you send him down the hall? I’ve got a few questions I’d like to ask him.”
But even Ronnie had second thoughts one night when Rex started barking and running toward the Lincoln Bedroom. Nobody was sleeping there at the time, but Rex wouldn’t stop. Ronnie went in, looked around, and saw nothing, but Rex absolutely refused to enter that room.
I was in the Lincoln Bedroom one afternoon, and when I leaned over to straighten one of the pictures, the maid, who had come in to dust, said, “Oh, he’s been here again.” And when I asked one of the butlers if he had ever seen Lincoln’s ghost, he told me that once, from the kitchen, he had heard the piano playing in the hall. When he walked out to see who was there, the music suddenly stopped.
Most of the White House staff seemed to believe in Lincoln’s ghost, and they told stories of Eisenhower and Churchill both seeing him. Who’s to say? But if he is there, I wish I could have seen him before we left.
Of
f the Lincoln Bedroom is the Lincoln Sitting Room, which Lincoln used as his office. The furniture there dates from Lincoln’s period, and the room includes a number of historical artifacts, including a signed holograph of the Gettysburg Address, and a dance card from Lincoln’s inaugural ball.
President Nixon used this room as his study and spent many hours here. When Ronnie and I first moved in, I noticed a dark, smoky pattern on the walls and ceiling of the Lincoln Sitting Room. Then I remembered a famous story: Nixon used to come in here, turn the air conditioner up high, and then light a fire in the corner fireplace. This was one of the rooms I did over. I painted over the smoke stains, slipcovered the couch, and collected more Lincoln memorabilia.
Across the hall from the Lincoln Suite is the Queens Bedroom, so named because five different queens have stayed there: Queen Elizabeth (now the Queen Mother), Queen Wilhelmina and Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, Queen Frederika of Greece, and Queen Elizabeth II. Winston Churchill used to sleep in this room when he came to see President Roosevelt during World War II. More recently, the Queens Bedroom was used by my brother, Dick, and his wife.
The Queens Bedroom is decorated in shades of rose and white and furnished with antiques from the federal period. But what most visitors remember is the queens bathroom, where the toilet is disguised as an elegant wicker chair. (The same is true in the Lincoln bathroom.)
On a typical day, Ronnie came back to the residence in the late afternoon and went right into his study—a room that is often called the President’s Bedroom, from the days when the president and first lady had separate rooms. Ronnie’s study was one of my favorite places, partly because the carpeting, upholstery, and drapes were a rich red. Practically every surface was covered with photographs of family, friends, and members of the British royal family—Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, the Queen Mother, Prince Charles, Princess Diana, Princess Anne and Mark Phillips, Princess Alexandra and Angus Ogilvy, and Princess Margaret. Our relationship with the British royal family began when Ronnie and I met Charles in Palm Springs when Ronnie was governor, and it continued when I attended Charles’s wedding in 1981.