by Sheila Tate
Here is my perspective on these events:
Donald Regan and Jim Baker swapped jobs in the second Reagan term. Don became chief of staff and Jim became Treasury secretary. At the same time, Nancy’s trusted friend Mike Deaver left government to start his own firm. Nancy assumed she could take her questions and concerns to the new chief of staff. Wrong assumption.
Don Regan, in advance of the November 1985 summit meeting between President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev, gave a strange interview to Donnie Radcliffe, Washington Post Style reporter, who asked him questions about the upcoming meeting of these two world leaders. Regan told her he doubted most women would understand the importance of topics such as “throw weights or what’s happening in Afghanistan or what is happening in human rights.”
Instead, the new chief of staff went on to say that most women would rather read about “the human-interest stuff of what happened,” alluding to social teas or lunches featuring Mrs. Reagan and Mrs. Gorbachev. Yikes!
Those patronizing comments from Donald Regan explain to me his reaction to Nancy’s calls to him. After Mike Deaver left the White House, she no longer had someone on staff to talk to about things that were worrying her. Instead of recognizing her legitimate concerns, Donald Regan tried to have her redirect her calls to one of his deputies. He couldn’t be bothered. He was sure the First Lady wouldn’t understand the complexities of the issue she may have called him about.
I vividly remember a lunch at the vice president’s residence when I was seated next to Mr. Regan about six months into his new position. He told me that Nancy’s calls annoyed him and he was thinking of hiring one of “her socialite friends” who could sit at a desk outside his office and take her calls. I bit my lip and did not respond, but that is when I knew he was going to run into troubled waters.
Donald Regan’s abrupt and graceless departure came within forty-eight hours of the news breaking on NBC that he had hung up the phone on the First Lady. I am fairly certain that, never in White House history, had a First Lady been treated so cavalierly. Mr. Regan really left himself defenseless once the media “feeding frenzy” began. How can you justify such rude behavior? By all accounts, once Ronald Reagan learned about it by watching Chris Wallace announce it on the evening newscast, he was appalled. He asked Nancy if it was true and she told him it was. As press speculation mounted about how long Mr. Regan could remain in the chief of staff position, the White House communications apparatus stayed ominously quiet. The chief of staff submitted his resignation to the president, it was accepted, and Donald Regan left immediately.
MUFFIE BRANDON
The year was 1981 and it was early in the Reagan administration. Muffie Brandon was notified at the last minute that Prince Charles was soon to enter the White House through the Diplomatic Reception Room facing the South Lawn. He was in Washington for a private visit and made plans to stop by to pay a quick visit with the Reagans. As Muffie recalls it was a Saturday. In her own words:
I was in rather casual clothes as I had planned to spend the day at my desk preparing for the next week’s events.
There were no fresh flowers in the Diplomatic Reception Room (called “The Dip Room” by staff) and the florist was out.
I raced over to the vice president’s office and asked his assistant if the vice president had any fresh flowers in his office. We knocked and there he was with a fine bouquet on a side table. I quickly explained the situation, lusting in my heart for those flowers, and asked if I could “borrow” them for a few hours until the prince left. VP Bush said, “Sure, take ’em but don’t forget to bring them back” with a twinkle in his eye. I was racing against time, and time was winning. We were on the final countdown.
Back to the Dip Room at full speed; pop the vase on the large table just as the limousine draws up to the door. The head usher was standing by to escort the prince to the private quarters upstairs.
Just as I was figuring how to make myself invisible, Julius comes walking into the reception room. Julius was Mrs. Reagan’s hairdresser. He’d obviously just come from the residence and was on his way out the same door the prince was about to enter. A definite no-no.
I grabbed Julius and pushed him into a broom closet across the hall among the brooms, vacuum cleaners, and mops. I jumped in right behind him and quietly closed the door. I stayed alert to the possibility that, at a moment’s notice, I might have to slap my hand across the mouth of the ebullient hairdresser.
While it seemed like forever, some minutes later, Chief Usher Rex Scouten knocked discreetly on the door and whispered that “the coast is clear.”
Flowers were promptly returned to the vice president’s office.
Mission complete.
Nancy would have been pleased by the attentiveness paid to make the prince’s visit go smoothly. If only she knew how close the prince came to meeting a social secretary dressed in jeans and the First Lady’s hairdresser who was perfectly capable of asking him for his autograph if the spirit moved him. These are the kinds of near misses Nancy seldom if ever learned about…at least if we could help it.
FRED RYAN, WHITE HOUSE—PRESIDENTIAL SCHEDULING, CHIEF OF STAFF, OFFICE OF THE FORMER PRESIDENT
Fred vividly remembers when President Reagan was thrown from a horse at a friend’s ranch in Mexico. One of the first things Nancy did when they needed to helicopter the former president to the hospital was to ask Fred to reach all four of the Reagan kids so they would not learn of this first from the news. Clearly, she was remembering how Melissa Brady heard an erroneous radio report announcing her dad’s death when Jim was shot on March 30. Melissa was a college student in Colorado and she flew to DC believing that her father was dead.
He said Nancy was the head cheerleader for the Reagan Library in later years. She raised huge amounts of money for the library endowment; she came to every meeting, to every event, and prodded staff to keep raising money. She kept a list of everyone she wanted contacted and she followed up on those prospects. Both Reagans tried to keep current connections in Hollywood with folks like Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, Warren Beatty, Sally Field, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, for instance, inviting them to events at the library, having lunch. The TV program Veep was filmed at the Reagan Library.
All this exposure creates buzz and enhances the reputation of the library.
Fred remembers that “Nancy was overwhelmed by the public outpouring of support after President Reagan released his letter telling the country about his Alzheimer’s. Bags and bags of mail poured in; at least a hundred letters were from people who wanted to offer ideas about possible cures.”
The reaction inspired her to make the disease her main cause. She spoke often about Alzheimer’s on television and in appearances with people like Michael J. Fox and Larry King. She worked with several different Alzheimer’s groups, lending her name to help with fund-raising, especially her own Nancy Reagan Research Institute. In helping her husband, she helped so many others.
MARLIN FITZWATER, PRESS SECRETARY
Marlin Fitzwater is one of the top press secretaries who ever graced the White House. His job never went to his head, saving him from the “Potomac Fever” many acquire. And he knew how to walk the tightrope involved in working for the president and serving the needs of the press.
Marlin had been the deputy press secretary between 1983 and 1984. He moved up into the position of the press secretary to Vice President Bush until 1987 when Don Regan talked him into returning as White House press secretary.
Marlin was only a few months into his new position when the Washington Post ran a story insinuating that the First Family wanted Donald Regan to step down from the post of chief of staff. Nancy called Marlin and told him not to involve himself in the story at all, just to “leave it alone.” Within weeks, Donald Regan resigned abruptly with a one-sentence resignation letter that he handed to Marlin and told him to issue
. Marlin was stunned but did as instructed without anyone giving him any guidance on what the backstory was. This all happened after Regan hung up the phone on Nancy.
Marlin told me a story he’d never told before. It was 1987 and the Gorbachevs were arriving for a visit, coming up the circular driveway on the South Grounds. Normally the president and Mrs. Reagan would greet their guests outside as their car pulled up. Because of extreme cold, they were waiting for them inside the Diplomatic Reception Room along with a crowd of people who were part of the welcoming ceremony. When the Gorbachevs walked in, Nancy noticed immediately that Raisa’s panty hose were collapsing around her ankles. She walked over to Raisa quickly, stood close as they shook hands, and whispered, “Come with me,” escorting her around the corner into the ladies’ room. They emerged a few minutes later and no one ever noticed their disappearance. Marlin said, “I thought at the time that Nancy had done more for US-Russian relations with that one gesture than had been accomplished since the creation of the Soviet Union.”
Marlin also told me about the day Nancy called him to tell him she was scheduled to undergo breast cancer surgery and she wanted him to make the announcement in a matter-of-fact manner. Marlin said those were the days when no one even said the word breast on television, let alone discussed the details of one’s surgery. He did his homework on the disease and handled the announcement. Afterward, Nancy thanked him for the dignified way he had handled it. She asked him if there were any lingering questions. He explained that some of the press were asking why she had a mastectomy instead of a lumpectomy. The doctor’s daughter looked Marlin in the eye and said, “You tell them this: I want to live.” No reporter ever followed up with him on this question so he never delivered this answer. He said to me that her death of heart failure at age ninety-four “proved she made the right decision for her own health.”
When the president had a basal cell carcinoma on his face removed, the procedure called a rhomboid flap was used. President Reagan was, according to Marlin, very self-conscious about how it looked. Marlin told him that he’d had one when he was young with a graft from behind his ear and that you couldn’t even tell he’d had surgery a month later.
But, he told the president, “It improved my sex life by 45 percent.”
Later when the president’s operation had healed, he was talking with someone in the Oval Office and he expressed his satisfaction with the surgery. He then looked over at Marlin and said, “And I hope I have the same results as Marlin.” They both laughed.
LANDON PARVIN
Former White House speechwriter Landon Parvin took a call from the president’s personal secretary, Kathy Osborne, telling him that the president would like to begin the process of preparing a speech to the nation as soon as the Tower Commission released its report on the Iran-Contra affair. That report would be released on February 26, 1987. The president wanted Landon to be the writer.
The mood in the White House and in Washington had been one of crisis as the arms-for-hostages deal, which included a diversion of Iranian funds to support the Nicaraguan Contras, had become known. The president’s poll numbers had dropped, and scandal was in the air with White House officials under investigation. Admiral John Poindexter, the president’s national security adviser, and an NSC aide, Colonel Oliver North, had either resigned or been fired. Questions were raised about the role of the president’s chief of staff, Don Regan. What did the secretary of state and the secretary of defense know of the plan?
With visions of Watergate in his head, Landon immediately called Nancy to ask her a very simple question. He said, “Who can I trust?”
Who could he trust to help him navigate the various currents that were swirling? Who had no ax to grind, no interests to protect, and wasn’t looking to save himself at the expense of the president? She didn’t hesitate. She said, “David Abshire.”
Dr. Abshire, the former ambassador to NATO, had been named special counselor to the president with cabinet rank. He had been tapped to lead the Reagan administration response to the crisis. He insisted on complete transparency.
Landon told Nancy he would immediately go see Dr. Abshire and would begin talking to others but that he would also need to talk to the president at some point after the report was released. Nancy said, “Tell me when.”
The report was released on a Thursday and Landon left a message for Nancy that he needed to see the president. On Friday, Landon’s phone rang and the White House operator said, “I have Mrs. Reagan on the line.” He gave her a rundown on what he had been hearing from people on what the president needed to say. He was especially concerned that the White House legal counsel wanted the president to take a narrow, specific approach to what had happened. Just a few weeks before, Nancy had gotten into an argument with Don Regan on the very same thing. Regan had wanted the president to do a news conference after the report was released where he would have been peppered with specific questions, the substance of which the president was not well versed on. She knew a legalistic approach was not the answer. She told Landon, “There will be a meeting this evening at five thirty in the residence—you, two other men, and Ronnie. No one knows about it.”
Driving to the White House that evening, Landon heard on the radio that the former senator from Tennessee, Howard Baker, was to be the new chief of staff and that an enraged Don Regan had fired off a one-sentence letter of resignation.
Landon, alone, was cleared into the White House through the East Gate. He went directly to the private residence.
It was not Howard Baker at the meeting, however, but the report’s chairman, John Tower, and Stu Spencer, the president’s longtime political adviser. Landon wondered who had arranged this. When President Reagan thanked former senator Tower for taking on this difficult assignment, which proved to be critical of the president, Tower choked up.
Landon said, “Contrary to some reports about this meeting, Senator Tower showed no signs of having been drinking. I thought this was one of the nicer moments I had seen in Washington—when the man who had just issued a report critical of the president was thanked by the president himself for his work. I understood Senator Tower’s emotional reaction.”
Nancy was present for some of the discussion, but she slipped in and out to watch how the evening news was covering the Regan/Baker story. She listened intently when she was there. Standing up to leave, the group lamented the recent suicide attempt of the president’s previous national security adviser, Bud McFarlane, who felt he had let the country down. Everyone, including the president, agreed he was a decent and conscientious man.
Landon recalls what a painful time it was in the Reagan administration. He credits the thoughtful guidance of Dr. Abshire and President Reagan’s desire to take full responsibility as the reason the ship of state was righted. I think Landon’s expert speechcraft provided ballast as well.
Landon credits the quiet influence of Nancy Reagan with having been an important element in the final resolution. He believes she was an expert judge of people, including her own husband, at a time when that is exactly what the White House and the Reagan presidency needed.
MARK WEINBERG
Mark was a two-termer, with the Reagans from start to finish and then in California after they left Washington, DC. Here are several of his favorite moments with Nancy:
“Mrs. Reagan loved her husband for who he was, but his good looks were not lost on her. He was, after all, handsome. She especially liked his full head of hair. I remember two different stories about that. Once, during the White House years, she and Larry Speakes were looking at the president’s schedule, and trying to find time for an event she wanted him to do. Larry suggested that the president’s haircut could be moved to make room but Mrs. Reagan quickly shot him down. ‘Larry,’ she said firmly, ‘Ronnie cannot look scruffy.’
“In 1989, former president Reagan was operated on for a subdural hematoma
caused when he was thrown by a wild horse he was riding a few months earlier. Doctors shaved his head to access the injury site. Shortly after the surgery began, I remember seeing Mrs. Reagan in a waiting room holding a plastic bag filled with hair, and I asked her what it was. She said, ‘It’s Ronnie’s. I told them to give it to me. I want to be able to prove that he does not dye it.’ Or, I wondered, if maybe she was worrying about someone selling it! Stranger things have happened. A few days later, when he was about to be discharged from the hospital, President Reagan was given a baseball cap to conceal his very short haircut. At first he did not want to wear it—he saw nothing wrong with how he looked—but Mrs. Reagan insisted. She did not like how it looked. He gave in. Until, that is, he boarded the small private plane that would take us back to Los Angeles. Just before he entered the cabin, President Reagan took off his hat and gave a big wave to the assembled press. Mrs. Reagan was horrified and tried to cover up his head with her hand, but to no avail.”
BARBARA COOK FABIANI, DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY TO THE FIRST LADY
Barbara worked on the George H.W. Bush 1980 campaign against Ronald Reagan. When she applied for a job in the first Reagan administration, she had a lot of competition from women who had worked for Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, Lyn Nofziger. In the end I decided to hire Barbara because I could tell she knew what she was doing and would help me the most. I never regretted that decision. Another lifelong friend.
In April 1983, President Reagan’s Interior secretary, James Watt, announced that “rock bands attract the wrong element” and banned the Beach Boys from playing on the National Mall on the Fourth of July. The press went wild.