by Nancy Reagan
I felt that a majority of the voters were willing to forgive Ronnie’s performance in that first debate if he could reassure them that it had been nothing worse than an off night—which he did.
Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro did not wear well on me. They kept hammering on Ronnie’s “secret plan” to raise taxes after the election, and I resented that Ferraro criticized Ronnie’s religious beliefs.
As I saw it, the Democrats turned nasty at their 1984 convention, and that set the tone for the rest of the campaign. The night of the acceptance speeches, Ted Kennedy introduced Mondale with a string of cheap shots at Ronnie, fired off in a shout. If Ronnie had to go the hospital for an X ray, Kennedy said, “all he has to do to call his helicopter is push a little button. I just hope it’s the right button.”
I knew the Democrats had a problem, but that remark was inexcusable. Ted Kennedy has written both of us nice notes, thanking us for having his mother to the White House, and for allowing the South Lawn to be used for the Special Olympics—which I gather even his brother Jack would not allow. Even now, after all these years in politics, it still strikes me as strange when somebody bashes you in public and then expects your private contacts to be friendly.
Ron covered the Democratic convention for Playboy, and after listening to speaker after speaker bash his father, he wrote that the Democrats wanted the country “to believe that Ronald Reagan plans to put the elderly and the handicapped to work barbecuing minority children on the South Lawn, while he and his fat-cat country-club cronies sit back, licking their fingers.” Ron was exaggerating—but only a little.
As for Mondale’s acceptance speech, I had never heard the word “family” mentioned so often. It sounded so much like one of Ronnie’s speeches that when Mondale finished, Ronnie turned to me and said, “Didn’t I write that?”
Except for the debates, you rarely find yourself in the same room as your opponent during a presidential campaign. But on September 15, all four candidates were scheduled to appear at the Italian-American Federation dinner in Washington. After we entered the holding room with the Bushes, we were told that Geraldine Ferraro had decided to bring her husband, although she had previously said that she wasn’t going to. Then we were told that her dress hadn’t arrived, and that Mondale refused to go into the hall without her.
The protocol is that the president is the last one to appear, so we had to wait. But Ronnie, who gets very edgy about keeping people waiting, said, “I’m afraid the audience will blame me for this. Let’s forget about protocol and just go in.” So we did.
Four minutes later, Mondale and Ferraro came into the room. She certainly got her dress quickly! I could have understood a half-hour delay, but this attempt to be the last ones to enter the room struck me as childish. They shook hands as they went by, but they never apologized.
During the dinner, Ferraro stood up and started testing the microphone and measuring the platform she would stand on. Later, I noticed that she and her husband were down on the floor, working the crowd. I thought it was inappropriate in a presidential campaign, to say the least.
When it was Ronnie’s turn to speak, I noticed that Mondale didn’t applaud—not even once. And all through Ronnie’s speech, Ferraro talked to Joan Mondale. She didn’t even give Ronnie the courtesy of pretending to listen to him.
Ronnie and Mondale were scheduled to meet again the following month, at the annual Al Smith dinner in New York. The day before, we got word that Mondale had backed out because he wanted to prepare for the second debate. I was sure the audience would read into it that Mondale just didn’t want to be on the dais again with Ronnie—which is exactly what they thought.
Because of a freak accident, I almost missed election night.
We spent the final night of the campaign at the Red Lion Inn in Sacramento, where, for reasons I’ll never understand, the bed in our suite was mounted on a platform. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling cold, and I climbed out of bed to look for a blanket. Naturally, I forgot about the platform. I fell off, slid across the floor, and banged my head against a chair.
It hurt, and then it began to swell. Ronnie was fast asleep, and I didn’t think it was serious enough to wake him. In addition to being a sound sleeper, he’s also hard of hearing, so he didn’t know anything about it until the next morning.
I went into the bathroom and put some cold water on the lump that was now rising on my head. I managed to get a little more sleep, but all through the next day I was wobbly and off-balance, and my speech was slurred.
Our staff people wanted me to spend the day resting, but this was the final day of our last run for the presidency. That morning we went to the capitol, where Governor Deukmejian dedicated the Cabinet Room to Ronnie, and then we flew to San Diego for a rally. Then on to Los Angeles, and finally it was over—the end of campaigning forever. Talk about ending with a bang …
But there are parts of that day, and of election day, that I can’t recall. I remember standing on the stage at the hotel and holding Doria’s hand for support, but large chunks of that period are still a blank. I’m told that a doctor came to examine me, and that I had a small concussion, and that Ronnie was so concerned that he was going to call off his press conference, but I have no memory of these events, either.
The next night, as always, we went to the Jorgensens’ to wait for the election results. We expected a victory, but we weren’t prepared for a landslide: Ronnie won every state except Minnesota and the District of Columbia. And despite the presence of Geraldine Ferraro on the Democratic ticket, Ronnie won more than 55 percent of the female vote.
Ronnie’s second inauguration was a lot less difficult than the first one. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate. It was such a cold day that the medical people urged us to cancel the parade and move everything indoors. Ronnie and I felt very bad for all the kids in the bands who had saved up their money to come to Washington for the great event, but everyone would have ended up with frostbite, and the poor kids in the band wouldn’t have dared put a horn to their lips. It was hard to call it off, but we had to.
Like last time, the whole family was there for the inaugural. Patti came alone, because Paul said he had to work.
Ron and Doria got dressed for the photograph, but instead of going to the balls, they invited some friends in for a buffet in the Yellow Oval Room, and Doria cooked up a spaghetti dinner. They had gone through one round of inaugural balls and knew what they were like, so I couldn’t blame them for staying home. As in 1981, the balls were jammed with people, everyone very enthusiastic.
Because January 20 fell on a Sunday, there had to be two swearing-ins—a private one on Sunday, and then a public one on Monday. The private ceremony took place in the White House, at the bottom of the Grand Staircase, witnessed by a total of eighty-four people, mostly family and Cabinet officials. Ronnie and I stood on the first landing of the Grand Staircase, and there was such an intimacy to the ceremony that I wondered if this was what the inaugurations were like in the early 1800s.
A few days later, I learned that while we were at church on the day of the private swearing-in, a man had sneaked into the White House with the Marine Corps Band. Rex Scouten, who used to be in the Secret Service, thought this fellow looked a little strange and stopped him outside the Blue Room.
All I could think was: What if he had been carrying a gun? I prayed that this wasn’t a bad omen for the next four years.
Ronnie’s second term got off to a bumpy start, and for several weeks in the spring, just about the only topic of conversation in Washington was his plan to visit the Bitburg cemetery on his forthcoming trip to Germany. There was a feeling in the air that the administration was drifting, and I now realize that a lot of that had to do with staff changes in the West Wing, which I’ll discuss later.
The next big event came in July.
It was supposed to be a routine medical procedure. On July 12, 1985, a Friday, Ronnie was scheduled to have a small benign polyp remove
d from his colon. The doctors had discovered it in March. The plan was to have him stay overnight at Bethesda Naval Hospital, and from there we would continue up to Camp David on Saturday.
On Thursday, Ronnie started his preparation diet, which consisted of liquids for lunch and dinner. On Friday he had apple juice for breakfast, and then began drinking Go Lightly, a special formula that cleans out your system. It’s awful stuff, and he had to drink a glass of it every ten minutes until it was gone.
Removing the polyp was a relatively minor procedure which we had been through before. While it was being taken care of, I sat in the waiting room and talked with Larry Speakes. Ronnie was alert and fine afterwards, and making jokes as usual.
But I noticed that the doctors weren’t laughing. I also had the feeling they were looking at me a little funny—especially John Hutton, who seemed to be avoiding my eyes.
The doctors suggested that Ronnie lie down, and that I come with them into the other room. Then one of them pulled up a chair and said, “We have some bad news for you.”
I felt as if I had been hit by a ten-ton truck.
“Tell me everything,” I said. And they did.
The doctors had found a large, suspicious mass, the size of a golf ball, on the lower right side of the colon where it goes into the intestines. Although they weren’t sure it was malignant, they thought it probably was. At best, they told me, it was “precancerous.” In any event, they would have to operate. The doctors were concerned about the surrounding areas, especially Ronnie’s liver. If there was any evidence of cancer in the liver, we were in very big trouble.
It was all so sudden that I had trouble believing it.
John Hutton explained that we had three choices: We could continue up to Camp David, as we had planned, and then return to Bethesda on Sunday for an operation Monday morning. Or we could stay where we were and have it taken care of the following morning. Or, if absolutely necessary, we could wait ten days and schedule the operation after the state visit by President Li of China.
John and I both wanted it done immediately. “He’s already here,” I said, “and he’s already done the bowel prep. He might as well stay.”
All I cared about was getting the operation over with as quickly as possible. Now that we knew about the polyp, I couldn’t stand the prospect of letting it stay inside Ronnie any longer than we had to.
But I wasn’t sure how Ronnie would react to the prospect of major surgery the next day. I felt that my best approach was to play on his feelings about Go Lightly, which he absolutely hates. Otherwise, he might have wanted to go right on up to Camp David. It was obvious—to me, anyway—that this had to be taken care of right away. But I didn’t want to get too specific with Ronnie, because it wasn’t absolutely definite that he had cancer.
“I want to be the one to tell him,” I said to the doctors. “And please, when we go in to see him, don’t mention cancer. We don’t know for sure that it is cancer, and there’s no point in using that word unless we’re positive.”
When we walked into Ronnie’s room, I sat down on the edge of the bed and put my arms around him. “Honey,” I said, “the doctors have found a polyp that is too large to be removed the way the other ones were. The only way they can get it out is surgically. As long as we’re here, why don’t we do it tomorrow and get it over with? Because if we come back next week, you’ll have to drink that Go Lightly all over again.” Somehow, Ronnie was able to smile. “Does this mean I won’t be getting dinner tonight, either?” he asked.
That broke the tension, and after the doctors explained the details of the operation, Ronnie said, “Let’s get it done.” Everything was put into motion for the next morning, and Larry Speakes went to inform the press.
If Ronnie guessed the truth, he didn’t say so, to me or to anyone else.
Later, he got annoyed when people said he’d had cancer. “No,” he would say, “I didn’t have cancer. I had something inside of me that had cancer in it, and it was removed.” That’s Ronnie, my beloved optimist.
As soon as I left Ronnie’s room, I leaned against the wall and started to cry. And once the tears started flowing, they just wouldn’t stop. For the next two hours I was in and out of Ronnie’s room, but every few minutes I’d make an excuse to leave. I didn’t want him to see me in tears.
I wanted to spend the night at the hospital, but as at the time of the shooting four years earlier, I didn’t want people to be alarmed. I stayed with Ronnie until six and then went back to the White House and started calling the family—Patti, Ron, Michael, and Ronnie’s brother, Neil, who, strangely enough, had undergone the very same operation only a few days earlier. (Maureen was traveling in Africa.) I told everybody there was no need to come to Washington.
That night, the doctors did a CAT scan. There were electrical storms in the Washington area, and the power went out twice, so they didn’t finish until midnight. When they finally called me at the White House, the news was good: There was nothing suspicious in his liver or his lungs.
Please, God, I prayed. Take care of this.
I wrote in my diary, echoing March 1981, “What would I ever do without him?”
That night, again echoing 1981, I slept on his side of the bed.
The next morning, the doctors came in again to explain the operation to both of us. They expected it to take three hours. I walked along with Ronnie, holding his hand as they wheeled him to the operating room. Naturally, I was more nervous than he. “After what they did to me yesterday,” he said, “this should be a breeze.”
Yesterday, at Ronnie’s request, the small polyp had been removed without an anesthetic. He has a very high pain threshold.
The operation began at eleven o’clock that Saturday morning. Half an hour earlier, Ronnie had signed the papers authorizing George Bush to be acting president for the next eight hours. This was the first time the provisions of the Twenty-fifth Amendment had ever been put into effect. It had been passed in 1967, after Lyndon Johnson had been without a vice president during the fourteen months between Kennedy’s death and the 1965 inauguration. Fred Fielding, the White House counsel, came in with the documents, which were then delivered to Speaker Tip O’Neill, and to Strom Thurmond, president pro tempore of the Senate.
The operation went well, more smoothly than expected. They removed the large polyp, which measured five centimeters, and two smaller polyps. They also took out close to two feet of Ronnie’s large intestine. I hadn’t expected that.
“It’s almost certainly cancer,” they told me. “But we won’t know for sure until we do a biopsy.”
A word here about the timing of Ronnie’s operation: On Friday afternoon, as soon as Ronnie agreed to have the operation, I called Don Regan at the White House to tell him what had happened, as he had asked me to do. Because we didn’t know for sure whether the polyp was malignant, and because cancer is not a word you toss around casually, I spoke carefully.
41. At the White House, after Ronnie became president. He asked all of the former presidents to go to Sadat’s funeral. I don’t think there’s ever been a time when there have been so many living former presidents. (photo credit 14.1)
42. The private swearing-in, in 1985, at the White House on Sunday. The next day, Monday, we planned to have the public ceremony outdoors, but it was so cold that the doctors said we’d have to move it inside. (photo credit 14.2)
43 The 1985 public swearing-in ceremony. (photo credit 14.3)
44. Trying to comfort the families of the Challenger’s crew. There seemed to be so many of these sad times. (photo credit 14.4)
45. Going to Camp David with Lucky, who would immediately get on the plane and sit in Ronnie’s seat. I told him when he started to wave to the crowds we were in trouble. The time had come for him to go to the ranch with the other dogs. By then, he was so big I could have ridden him to the helicopter. (photo credit 14.5)
46. Ronnie loves to doodle and I think he’s very good. His inscription obviously made me very happy, an
d it was signed with our usual “I.T.W.W.W.” (I love you more than anything “in the whole wide world”). (photo credit 14.6)
47. Father and son in the Oval Office. (photo credit 14.7)
48. I don’t remember what Queen Elizabeth said in her toast, but obviously it broke Ronnie up. (photo credit 14.8)
49. Toasting Prince Charles at the Winston Churchill dinner in Texas, where I represented Ronnie. (photo credit 14.9)
50. I went alone to the Vatican to talk with the pope about the drug problem. Imagine holding hands with the pope! (photo credit 14.10)
51. I got dressed up that day for Nakasone. Usually at Camp David I was in blue jeans. (photo credit 14.11)
52. It was unusual for guests to come to Camp David. We really used it as a retreat. But Margaret Thatcher was a close friend. And Ronnie loved driving the golf cart—maybe because the golf cart at Camp David and the jeep at the ranch were the only vehicles he got a chance to drive. (photo credit 14.12)
53. Dancing with Mikhail Baryshnikov at Ford’s Theater was one of my biggest thrills, and we became good friends. I was praying I wouldn’t step on his feet! (photo credit 14.13)
54. With Princess Grace for Prince Charles’s wedding in London. We had been at MGM together, and she gave up her career after about the same amount of time as I did, and for the same reason—to be a wife and mother. (photo credit 14.14)
55. The things a first lady is asked to do! Here I am christening a ship. How do you like my perfect coiffure? (photo credit 14.15)
56. We had Ashley up to the ranch for her birthday. After the cake, Mike told us of the experiences at the day camp that had so greatly affected his life. (photo credit 14.16)