by Nancy Reagan
February 22: This is going to be an eventful week. I just hope that the Don thing will be settled tomorrow, and that Ronnie stands firm. We are coming to a climax.
I’m not looking forward to the [annual White House] governors’ dinner tonight because the press will be swarming all over us. I almost wish Cuomo were going to be there to take some of the attention away. [At the time, there was a lot of speculation as to whether Mario Cuomo was going to run for president in 1988.]
February 23: Before the dinner, I couldn’t believe it when I saw Don Regan coming down the receiving line. I think it showed arrogance, and I wouldn’t have done that in his place. There are so many people at these dinners that many of the staff don’t even bother with the receiving line because they want to save your hand.
During the dinner I sat next to the governor of Arkansas, a Democrat, very nice and likable. Sarah Vaughan entertained and for a few minutes I could forget. She said, “I know Mrs. Reagan likes Gershwin, so I’m going to sing some.” And no one can sing it the way she does.
Lots of press. Ronnie refused to answer questions, saying he would have no comment until after the Tower report comes out.
Lots of phone calls regarding Don Regan. Sam Donaldson said I was masterminding his departure. I suspect that Don’s people have been very busy talking to the press.
Ronnie told Mermie last night that he would be taking care of the Regan problem today. He told me this morning, and I haven’t been able to think of anything else all day.
February 24: At the lunch for the governors’ wives, Jack Courtemanche told me he was there when the Koehler nomination came up. [John Koehler was Ronnie’s choice to replace Pat Buchanan as director of communications, until it came out that Koehler, who grew up in Germany, had briefly belonged to the Hitler Youth when he was ten years old.]
“I had nothing to do with that,” Don said. “Blame it on the East Wing.” [In other words, on Nancy Reagan.]
Jack said, “Don, are you sure that’s the way you want this story to go out?”
And Don said, “You’re goddamned right. That’s the way I want it to go out, and that’s the way it will go out.” That was uncalled for—and mean.
[Don said he preferred Stu Spencer for the job. Stu would have been a great choice, but knowing how he felt about Don, I knew he would never take the job. And Stu had always said that he would never live in Washington, although he’d be happy to come back and help us from time to time.]
All the press turned out for the lunch—Donaldson, Wallace, Plante, Thomas. Hardly a typical luncheon coverage.
After lunch, I came upstairs for a meeting with Ross Perot, who told me such amazing things that I couldn’t believe them. [Perot was convinced that American MIAs were still in Vietnam, and he wanted to organize a rescue mission.] He had given the materials to Don, but they never reached Ronnie. I said he would have to tell Ronnie, so he’s coming back tomorrow.
Ronnie came home at five. The deed is done, and Don is leaving next week. I can’t believe it—and I won’t, until it really happens.
[But it did happen. Ronnie pressed him, and Don agreed to leave the following week, on Monday, March 2. In fact, Don had written out a letter of resignation a few weeks earlier. He told Ronnie that he felt burned out, and wanted to spend some time in Florida. But he didn’t want to leave until the Tower Commission’s report came out because he thought if he left earlier, it would make him look guilty. And no matter what effect he was having on the presidency, Don Regan wanted to be vindicated. He was invariably more concerned with his own reputation than with Ronnie’s.]
February 26: The Tower report came out today. I was on my way to a local elementary school to see a skit about drugs, and fifty members of the press showed up, as well as live TV. Of course it was because they were so interested in drugs!
On the way back in the car, I heard the last part of the press conference. Tower was asked about Ronnie’s managerial style, and he replied, “Everyone has their own style, and this one had worked well for him for six years. What happened was an aberration. It is up to the staff to adapt to the president’s style. They clearly let him down.”
The report criticized Ronnie, but also came down heavily on Poindexter and North, as well as Shultz and Weinberger. The report blamed Don for the “chaos” and said: “More than almost any Chief of Staff in recent memory, he asserted control over the White House staff and sought to extend this control to the National Security Adviser. He was personally active in national security affairs, and attended almost all the relevant meetings regarding the Iran initiative. He, as much as anyone, should have insisted that an orderly process be observed.”
Now we had to find a replacement for Don. Ronnie’s first choice was Drew Lewis, the former secretary of Transportation and the president of Union Pacific, Lewis was not available, but he suggested our old friend Paul Laxalt.
A day or two later, Paul came to tell Ronnie that he knew his name had been mentioned for chief of staff, but that he was seriously considering running for president. He offered to help in any way he could, and he recommended Howard Baker.
Ronnie liked that idea. Although he and Howard did not always agree on the issues, they had worked together very effectively when Howard was majority leader during Ronnie’s first term.
I myself thought Howard Baker was a wonderful choice. He was calm, easygoing, congenial, and self-effacing. He was politically astute. He had credibility with the media. And after serving three terms in the Senate, he had many friends on Capitol Hill. Howard was a complete change from what we had, and he gave us a chance to restore some morale to the office.
And because of his role in the Watergate hearings, Howard’s arrival at the White House was seen as a major signal of confidence in the integrity of Ronnie’s administration. Howard, after all, was the same senator who, back in 1974, had put principle ahead of party by asking that famous question: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”
On February 26, Ronnie called Howard to see if he would take the job. Howard was on vacation in Florida, and Joy, his wife, told Ronnie that her husband had taken their grandchildren to the zoo.
“Terrific,” Ronnie replied. “Wait until he sees the zoo I have in mind!”
Although Ronnie and Don had agreed that Don’s departure wasn’t supposed to be announced until Monday, March 2, when Howard Baker was scheduled to take over, somebody leaked it to CNN on Friday. Don heard about it from Frank Caducci, and he immediately sent a curt letter of resignation to Ronnie. “Dear Mr. President,” he wrote. “I hereby resign as Chief of Staff to the President of the United States.”
CNN called Elaine, asking for a comment from me. I made an innocuous statement, telling her to say that I wished Don good luck and that I welcomed Howard Baker. Then CNN announced that I had given out a statement before Ronnie did! Elaine was furious that they had used her, and I sent Don a note explaining that they had twisted my remark to make it seem that I was trying to push him out. I gather that Don still believes that I leaked the news to the press. I did not. And I never received an answer to my note.
Despite everything that had happened between us, I was sorry that Don Regan left the White House in such a disagreeable way. But the relief was palpable, and the change from Don to Howard was applauded by both Democrats and Republicans. Morale soared in the White House, and people felt as if a great weight had been removed. A lot of calls came in supporting the move, including one from Margaret Thatcher. I even had calls from Democrats, and from members of the press, thanking me.
That night, for the first time in weeks, I slept well.
But while Don Regan was gone, the debate and the attention over his departure wouldn’t go away. That same weekend, I addressed the American Camping Association, which was meeting in Washington. In my remarks, I said how much I loved my days at Camp Kechuwa in Michigami, Michigan, in spite of the fact that there were leeches in the lake. But we were taught how to get rid of leeches—you poured sa
lt on them, and they fell off.
The next morning I read in the paper that my remark about leeches was obviously a reference to Don Regan. Believe me, that was the furthest thing from my mind. I was talking about how much I loved camp. Again, I wrote a note to Don. Again, no answer. Yes, we were feuding, but this was a question of courtesy. I also didn’t hear from Don a few months later, during my cancer surgery, or when my mother died a few days after I left the hospital.
On Monday, March 2, William Safire wrote a scathing and cruel piece about me in the New York Times. By 1987 I had been attacked in the press many, many times, but Safire’s article was unbelievable. FIRST LADY STAGES A COUP, read the headline. “At a time he most needs to appear strong,” Safire began, “President Reagan is being weakened and made to appear wimpish and helpless by the political interference of his wife.” Later in the article, Safire referred to my “extraordinary vindictiveness,” called me “the power-hungry First Lady,” and “an incipient Edith Wilson, unelected and unaccountable, presuming to control the actions and appointments of the executive branch.”
This was the most vicious and unbelievable article about me I had ever read—and I had read quite a few. Ronnie was also upset by the column; he felt it was a terrible thing for a man to do to another man’s wife.
Safire’s column was so one-sided that two days later, the lead editorial in the Times took exception to what he had written. Although the editorial didn’t mention Safire by name, it argued that “It’s unrealistic and unreasonable … to suggest that the First Lady should not advise her husband. Spousal advice is part of any marital relationship—and so is the right of the partner to ignore that advice.”
The editorial concluded by asking, “What advice is right for a First Lady—or anyone else—to give? Any advice a President wants.”
Safire had gone so far that even Judy Mann, a columnist in the Washington Post and normally a critic of mine, was moved to defend me. Describing Safire’s article as “vicious, below-the-belt commentary,” she wrote:
First Lady Nancy Reagan managed to do what nobody else was able to do—namely, rid the administration of someone who was literally crippling the presidency. White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan hung on and on in an unprecedented display of supreme arrogance, placing his own self-interest above that of President Reagan and, certainly, above the welfare of the country. Calls, pleas, messages through the media, and personal visits from Republican leaders could not move the president to replace him.
The gentlemen who could exercise the greatest influence on the president couldn’t do the job. Mrs. Reagan did the dirty work for them, and now they are out to get her.
The Republican and conservative power brokers ought to be sending her bouquets of long-stemmed red roses. Instead, she’s being depicted as a power-hungry dragon lady.…
The President didn’t look like a wimp. He had a wife who understood what had to be done and was willing to do the dirty work. That makes him a pretty lucky man.
But the criticism continued. A few days later, I watched the Saturday talk shows—Agronsky & Company and The McLaughlin Group—at Camp David, and they really tore me apart. She’s a dragon lady, they said. She was entitled to her opinions about Don Regan, they said, but she shouldn’t have made them public.
But I didn’t make them public. I didn’t speak to a single reporter about Don Regan. I spoke to Ronnie a number of times, but never to the press.
On March 20, Phil Donahue did a show about me, with Evans and Novak, the columnist William Raspberry, and a writer from Boston who seemed to hate both Ronnie and me. It was not pleasant. There was Phil, the great feminist, talking about the first lady and not even inviting a woman onto the panel.
But not all the reaction was negative. At a dinner for newly elected members of Congress, Barbara Mikulski, a Democratic senator from Maryland and a strong liberal, came up to thank me and to say that I had done what needed to be done with regard to Don Regan. A number of others said the same thing, which made me feel better, particularly after the Safire column.
On March 5, the day after Ronnie’s speech on the Tower report, Ken Bode was on the Today show to discuss the speech with David Broder and Jack Kilpatrick. “I’d like to say something about Mrs. Reagan,” said Bode. “I think she’s getting a bum rap. Let’s face it: what happened with Donald Regan was what everybody wanted to happen, and I think the people of the United States should give her their gratitude.”
I almost fell off the bed! Sometimes help comes from the press when you least expect it.
The comments and the controversy continued for weeks. When Vic Damone came to the White House to rehearse an “In Performance” show on Rodgers and Hart, he took me aside and said, “I don’t know how you feel about Lee Iacocca, but he was my house guest and when I told him I was coming here, he said, ‘Tell the president that any time he wants me to come, I’ll come. But I’ll be damned if I was going to set foot in that place while that son of a bitch Regan was there.’ ”
It was that widespread.
17
The Russians
ANYONE who followed Ronnie’s summit meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev might have concluded that there were two sets of issues: relations between the two superpowers, and relations between the two wives. Every nuance of my encounters with Raisa Gorbachev was scrutinized. Every meeting between us was treated like a test of wills. Every time we appeared together, we were seen as contestants in some international pageant. When you think about it, the whole business was ridiculous.
Did it really matter what dress each wife was wearing, or what kind of earrings? Did it make any real difference whether Raisa and I became close friends? Obviously not. Only one thing matters in a summit: what the two leaders decide, and how well they get along.
Fortunately, Ronnie and Gorbachev got along remarkably well. As for the wives—well, Raisa and I did have some rough moments. We were thrust together although we had little in common, and had completely different outlooks on the world. Once it became clear that we weren’t getting along, the media’s curiosity only increased.
Ronnie hadn’t intended to wait almost five years before he started meeting with his Soviet counterpart. But the Soviet leaders kept dying—Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko—until we began to wonder if anyone was going to stay around long enough so we could get something constructive started.
With the world so dangerous, I felt it was ridiculous for these two heavily armed superpowers to be sitting there and not talking to each other. I encouraged Ronnie to meet with Gorbachev as soon as possible, especially when I realized that some people in the administration did not favor any real talks. So yes, I did push Ronnie a little. But he would never have met Gorbachev if he hadn’t wanted to.
In all, they met four times: Geneva in 1985, Reykjavik in 1986, Washington in 1987, and Moscow in 1988. I was with Ronnie for three of them, and each time, Raisa and I became a major story. In part, this was because the negotiations were closed to the press, which left thousands of reporters with very little to write about. So we were the best they could do. The truth is that Raisa and I were only a minor footnote to great events. But she did play a big role in my experience of the summits, and I guess I’m one of the ranking experts on the Russian first lady.
The first time we met was in Geneva, when I invited her to tea at the house where we were staying. I was surprised by her appearance: She was shorter than I expected, and her hair was more reddish than it appeared on television. (It became less red over the years.) But other than the pictures I had seen, I knew almost nothing about her.
That in itself was unusual. Normally, whenever I met my counterpart from another country, I prepared by reading about her. But Mikhail Gorbachev had suddenly come to power in 1985, and Raisa was a mystery. She had never given an interview. Nobody knew her age. It was thought that she had a daughter and two grandchildren, but nobody seemed sure. Practically the only thing that was known about her was that she had taught school, and had le
ctured on Marxist philosophy at Moscow State University.
As I tried to learn a little about Raisa Gorbachev, I wondered what would happen if she wanted to learn something about me. I imagined a huge truck pulling up in front of the Gorbachevs’ apartment in Moscow, with stacks of books, articles, profiles, interviews. It would take her weeks to plough through it all.
That’s one of the basic differences between our societies, and why communication between us was never easy. There isn’t even a Russian word for “first lady.” Until Gorbachev came to power, the wives of Soviet leaders were virtually unknown, both at home and abroad. Almost nobody knew that Yuri Andropov even had a wife until she appeared at his funeral.
I have already said that I was unprepared for life in the White House, but at least I had some experience with fame and flashbulbs. Raisa, however, made the leap from obscurity to international prominence overnight. But while she was becoming an object of great interest in the West, she was still unknown at home. Until the Geneva summit, I don’t believe her name had ever been mentioned on Soviet television.
If I was nervous about my first meeting with Raisa Gorbachev—and I was—she was probably even more nervous about meeting me. I didn’t know what I would talk about with her, but I soon discovered that I needn’t have worried. From the moment we met, she talked and talked and talked—so much that I could barely get a word in, edgewise or otherwise. Perhaps it was insecurity on her part, but during about a dozen encounters in three different countries, my fundamental impression of Raisa Gorbachev was that she never stopped talking.
Or lecturing, to be more accurate. Sometimes the subject was the Soviet Union and the glories of the Communist system. Sometimes it was Soviet art. More often than not, it was Marxism and Leninism. Once or twice, she even lectured me on the failings of the American political system.
I wasn’t prepared for this, and I didn’t like it. I had assumed we would talk about personal matters: our husbands, our children, being in the limelight, or perhaps our hopes for the future. I was prepared to tell Raisa about our drug program, because the first ladies of many other countries had found it relevant to their own societies. But when I brought it up, she promptly dismissed the subject by assuring me that there was no drug problem in the Soviet Union. Oh, really?