Transcripts For CSPAN2 Karen Tumulty The Triumph Of Nancy Reagan 20220903

Recording as four years ago by Simon Schuster to write the prior gravy it is being published tomorrow on april 13, 2021. They call nancy reagan a luminous and exhausted biography which chronicles the private life of influence of nancy reagan, the book draws on interviews with cabinet members, friends and family members and she became one of the most influential first ladies of the century. We invite you to join our Virtual Program joined in conversation by Reagan Foundation Institute Board of trustees kathy busch. Good afternoon i am so pleased to welcome you today for the very special sneak peek at a muchanticipated biography on former first lady nancy reagan, the book, the tramp of nancy reagan written by Washington Post columnist karen to multiwould be officially released tomorrow and karen has graciously agreed to make the Reagan Library one of her first thoughts on the book tour. After devouring the book myself, i think readers will agree its a well researched balanced and insightful look into the life of one of the 20th centurys most fascinating consequential figures. In the interest of full disclosure, i thought i would mention that i was privileged to work for the reagans as a young woman. First in the white house and then in los angeles after the reagans left washington. There i was part of their small staff in their vibrant postpresident ial life, ultimately serving as a spokesperson and press secretary. It was an incredible adventure in one of the great gifts of my life, the journey over the six years open my eyes to the world to the importance of decency, kindness, character and leadership. I also felt the private side of the reagans during unguarded moments where i witnessed firsthand their boundless devotion to one another. I was not one of karens sources for the book so i read it with tremendous interest just like all of you will. I thought i knew just about all there was to know about nancy reagan and karens book prove me wrong. Karens book to hundreds of individuals over the course of four years drawing on archives, letters, nancys own memoirs, president reagans diaries, white house records and much more. Karen, welcome to the Ronald Reagan president ial library in this Webinar Series that is become so popular especially during this year of difficult separation. I really wish we couldve been together at the president ial library overlooking the majestic simi valley were perched in front of the colorful section of the berlin wall, that section symbolizes freedom over communism that president reagan envisioned and as we learned in your book that nancy reagan had a diplomatic hand into, instead we are relying on Technology Today to take us back in time and bring us together to better understand nancy davis reagan, the daughter, the actress, the partner, the mother, the first lady and caregiver. Before we launch into the meat of the book and tackle so many topics, can you share what inspired you to take this on, how did you go about it and why did you start the book with the soviet union. First of all, thank you so much for having me and i to look forward to when we can be sitting out there on the beautiful patio at the Reagan Library where i spent so many wonderful hours, mostly defrosting from the frigidity of the research at the library. I started, this book was not my idea, it was Simon Schuster my publishers and specifically my editor on the book who is one of my dearest friends in my editor at time magazine, she came to me in late summer early fall of 2016, a few months after mrs. Reagan died and said we would love to have a big biography of her and there was just something about this idea, i remember the day of her funeral i was driving around doing errands and listening to it on cspan radio while i was driving and thinking there are so many layers to this complex woman and there was just something about the project that really struck me as interesting and especially since they came to washington in the 1980s and my knowledge of nancy reagan pretty much everybody elses intended to run between one of two character chores, either she was acquitted social life or scheming power behind this, but really listening to the tributes to her at the funeral and watching the left decade of the president s life in her life beyond that, you begin to get a sense of the real depth of this relationship and i originally thought, this is going to be a book about a woman in a marriage and a love story but as i got deeper and deeper into the research, i realized it was so much more, it was really a whole new perspective on reagans presidency on his political ride and i think ultimately a new perspective on entire era of our history, why did i come in with the story that George Stoltz told me about the soviet union, i was really looking for something that would signal to the reader that this was not your typical first lady biography in the story that George Shultz told me that nancy reagan impromptu to the white house in the middle of a blizzard to have dinner, two couples upstairs in the white house it sounded like a social invitation George Shultz was new in his tenure he had only been secretary of state for ten months, he didnt really know the reagans all that well and he had just gotten back from a long trip overseas that included a stop in china and dinner progresses the reagans, both of them start peppering him with questions about the chinese leaders and do they have a bottom line and do they have a sense of humor and what makes them tick and beyond that they Start Talking about the soviet union and away from the hardliners in the Typical National Security Council meetings begins to realize something about Ronald Reagan which is that this man has never had a conversation with the bigtime communist leader that he is dying to have one and he has really thought about this a lot, hes very confident in his own abilities of the negotiator but then scholz realizes Something Else which is that this dinner invitation was not the social invitation that nancy reagan had wanted to get him alone with the president so he could begin to understand something about her husband, something that had the potential to change history. He also realizes Something Else which he, George Shultz has found in an incredibly valuable ally in this first lady who is the only person in the world who Ronald Reagan is truly truly close and understand her husband like nobody else and it seemed to me as a perfect opening into a book about her very unique role as first lady, she was somebody who didnt step foot all that often but everybody there knew when she was displeased about something and in her favor tended not to last very long in the Reagan White House because to watch her husband back and he was someone who really didnt have much of an appetite in her interpersonal conflict or the international bottles and she had a sharper sense of people as james baker who was chief of staff and treasury secretary told me, she had this incredible radar that was better than her husband. Fascinating, there is so much here, i want to start at the beginning, you took an incredibly deep dive into nancy davis childhood and her larger mother who was absent during critical years, her father who had no role in her life and doctor loyal davis who ultimately gave her the stability and the love that she craved, tell us about beyond nancy davis. She was the product of a bad match between a very ambitious actress in a car salesman who very shortly after her birth would go there separately. And very shortly after that she leaves the little baby and francis in the care of relatives, and the next six years in her life she yearned with absent mother and as her sons mom told me and as other people pointed out to me, it casts a shadow on her spirit that never really leaves her, it is one of the reasons she was so complex. She believed that how successful they were, there was always a trapdoor in life, it any minute the bottom could all fall out and certainly that is underscored two months after they get to the white house where she almost loses her husband to an intestine bullet. She wasnt somebody who shared a lot about herself, her own children didnt know all of that much about her childhood or really the insecurity and the instability affects and the scar tissue, it really left her with, she would also bristle somebody suggested her mother abandoned her. But i did find, if you dont mind i tell one speech that she game enter gave in 1986 at boys town the famous orphanage near omaha, they were honoring her that day for her drug advocacy, she says to the 400 children of a foster care broken home and she said something to the remarkable in the speech in a moment of vulnerability and openness and candor that really struck me in the reason im here today is not because of the award, its because of you, a time when i didnt know where i belonged either, what i wish for more than anything else in the world was a normal family, you usually start closing your heart to people, thats how you her in the first place you open your heart and another thing that happened you start trusting people, somewhere along the way they probably didnt live up to your trust and there is another thing that happens when weve been hurt, you start to think, youre not worth much, how can i be worse if someone would treat me in this terrible way, i understand why you feel beatendown, i think when you look at that and when you look at the instability of Ronald Reagans childhood as the son of an alcoholic who took the family from one uncertain situation to another, you really realize what is the basis for this incredible love story and bond between the reagans and in each other they finally found the security and the validation and the love that the two of them had craved and somehow this explains the insecurity of nancy reagan and the complexity of nancy reagan, i think it also explains her fearlessness and how she was absolutely fearless when she detected anything that could possibly jeopardize the happiness in the wholeness that she and Ronald Reagan finally realized in each other. That leads perfectly into my next question which is that we already and heard so much about how the reagans met in the evolution of their love story and as you revealed in the book Ronald Reagan was not in a great place in his life or his career when they met, your book suggested that he was broken inside and his heart was in a deep praise but she was loving and patient and nancy moved into my heart and i had been trying to ignore for very long time. In the path of the marriage and love letters that he sent in their lifetime and all of which he saved, tell us more. In the fall of 1945 they have a blind date, nancy davis, young actress arrived on mgm and when she opened the door of her apartment that night there is simply no way that either she or Ronald Reagan could have begun to imagine the future that lays ahead for the two of them. He was an actor whose career was really starting to screen bottom to his shock and dismay had essentially gotten bored with him and walked out in her star was on the rise and in some ways was carrying the torch for jane and he did have the scars from his own childhood and he would quite literally a broken man as he stood there unto crutches on nancy davis doorstep, his thigh bone had been broken and a half dozen places in a Charity Baseball game needs but the last couple months in traction, he would later say if nancy davis hadnt come along when she did, i wouldve lost my soul but hes not somebody ready to settle down or open his heart. I think because of her incredible radar she senses shes going to have to wait this guy out. At one point, his mother even tells her that, she says to nancy she liked a lot better than she ever liked jane, she said i see youre in love with him but hes not in love with you yet, youre gonna have to wait and you will know when he loves you and but youre going to have to wait patiently it takes several years to come around and commit himself. I found the early years of the reagan marriage fascinating as well, you referenced fewer rolls in the arrival of children in the home life, Ronald Reagan begins traveling the country on behalf of General Electric speaking to audiences all over america, only his message and his speaking style, listening to issues that matter to working americans and all led to the realization that it connected in a real intimate way with people and all took off, campaign, sacramento, more campaigns on the white house, tell us about those busy formative years that prepared the reagans were their life in public figures and of course nancys role in all of it. They are scraping bottom professionally, financially, at one point reagan agrees to the most humiliating professional endeavor in his life he becomes the mc of a floor show in las vegas, shortly after that this new opportunity to go into television is the host of General Electric theater and mind you this is something a few years before the Ronald Reagan would consider to write the book, why would anybody pay to see somebody in a theater that can pay them at home and television and how desperate they are in the show takes off. In part of the deal as he travels the country speaking to tens of thousands of General Electric employees doing promotional things for the company, that really is what he discovered his own gift as a politician, the meaning in the late 1950s are the exact same people who would later become the reagan democrat but this puts an incredible stress on his life to small children who is dealing with two stepchildren from the earlier marriage and its in the course of that that hes incredibly passionate letter become so important and if you dont mind some of these letters are hot. Please do. This is one that he writes her in 1963, at this point they have been married for over a decade and he writes her, do you know when you sleep in kroll your fist under your chin in the morning when its barely don i like facing you and looking at you until finally i can touch you ever so lightly that you wont wake up but touch you i must or i will burst. Probably this letter will reach you only a few hours before i arrived myself but not really because right now as i tried to say what is in my heart i think my thoughts must be reaching for you without waiting for paper and ink and stamps and such, if i ate its because we are apart and yet that cant be because you are inside in a part of me so we really are apart at all, yet i ate because i wouldnt be without the ache because that would mean being without you and that i cant be because i love you. Anyway there are dozens and dozens of the incredibly passionate letters, there are telegrams, she is saving everyone of them in a shopping bag in her closet, Ronald Reagan in many ways claims as he was in a speaker on his paper is even more so, there were enough of these beautiful letters for them to be compiled into a book, wasnt there. Thats right and it was lovely to go through them as well and the library because some are funny and hes doing live references to the characters in hollywood and theyre just absolutely wonderful, they really do speak to the devotion of the reagans to each other, and by the way they speak a little bit to the stress thats going on at home, he also keeps promising her that the wrong separation on them that this wont last forever and at one point he writes i just wish we could go to the farm, that would be the ranch that he had then and put barbed wire behind the whole thing and neither of us would ever leave without the other. Even though the reagans had been in public life for many years, and nothing prepared them for Washington Life in the media scrutiny that followed. You spend a lot of time in the book on Nancy Reagans relationship with the ups and downs of her Approval Rating and her frustration about be misunderstood, as you alluded to earlier, the portrait of a shadow socialite drawn by her critics and her husbands presidency would be replaced by a calculating power, imposing her will on matters of states both foreign and domestic, you concluded that one point america never quite figured out what to make of her, she was in a Public Relations tugofwar was that she, i find a conundrum is how this woman who was so incredibly shrewd and incredibly sensitive about protecting her husbands image and almost always dead on the mark and becomes clueless about her own, she brings a lot of her problems on herself, not a great idea, in the middle of the worst recession in Great Depression for her to go out and spend a lot the donated money but nonetheless redecorating the white house or spending it on a thousand dollar place setting china on which they announce on the very day that the reagan a Administration Announces that they will classify kat timpf as of vegetable for lunch menus which by the way they withdrew. You can see it takes her a while to understand number one, how she is bringing all of this upon herself but also number two this is a problem shes never fixed and at some point she will become a threat to her husband success. P. And i was struck by how in some cases some of the harshest stuff that was written about her was by other women, younger women who again, this was a mid century housewife. Its really interesting because the iran contra chapter in many ways is the heart of the book. Nancy reagan runs the rescue effort out of the white house as her husbands presidency is potentially im going to be up overturned by this scandal she engineers a shakeup of the white house staff that begins with the firing of the chief of staff and she also convinces her husband, her very stubborn husband that hes going to have to admit to the country and to himself that he traded arms for hostages and as she does this you see all of a sudden she is getting applauded by a lot of her feminist critics and suddenly the conservative guys are like wait this is in the nancy reagan we thought we were signing up for. Neither of those things were true. First and foremost she saw herself as the protector of her husbands physical wellbeing and very close to that was keeping an eye on the people around him and she had a very sharp sense of who was serving the president and who was in it for himself and who was actually helping the president and promoting agendas for haps that Ronald Reagan might not have shared. One of the defining moments of the presidency and of their lives occurred on march 30th, 1981 when a deranged gun man youd almost took the life of president reagan. Its hard to believe that its been 40 years since that day. That crisis changed everything especially for nancy. Nothing can ever happen to my ronnie, she wrote. My life would be over. While the world didnt know at the time how close he came to death, Ronald Reagan was spared and believed there was a premise to his life. Nancy on the other hand was haunted by the horror of all of it plagued with fear Something Like that could happen again. Tell us about that moment and how she learned the news and carry that afterward. In that chapter i did try to take the reader at some point minute by minute of what that today reflects for her. The head of her secret Service Detail hears over the command center in the oval office that theres been a shooting and at that point they are told hes fine. He hasnt been hit. But he knows nancy reagan has got to get this news from him, she doesnt want to hear it any other way so he sprints up to the residence, doesnt even wait for the elevator. He gets there and as soon he senses that theres been a shooting, she starts heading for the elevator and says ive got to get to him. He says hes at the hospital. If he isnt hurt, why is he at the hospital. I dont know. To check on the wounded or something but please, stay here. We dont know whats going on. She doesnt listen to him. She says i will walk into that hospital if i have to. At that point they bring a car and by the time she gets there, michael meets them outside and the president has been shot. She goes in and sees her husband lying naked under a sheet with a bunch of doctors around him and shes the daughter of a neurosurgeon. She immediately knows how serious this is. Her husband says honey i forgot to duck. Hes trying to calm her down but she immediately understands what happened. It really does for sort of for the rest of her life actually shes never sure whenever he steps outside the white house or the home that there isnt some other treachery waiting for him and its important to understand what that left her with because she didnt have the same kind of religious grounding that the president did and so will when you come to the most sensational chapter of her time, when it is revealed that she has been relying on an astrologer that shes barely met in person to help determine the president s schedule it doesnt make sense that you understand this is a woman that is desperate, grasping on to anything she can find she can give any kind of feeling of control. By the way she becomes a very good friend to the secret service from there out. They want the people to be out there touching people and making people connect with their president. Whenever we were concerned about something, all we had to do is go to missus reagan. First ladies have done, nancy reagan chooses to embrace and for her it was the antidrug cost she knew she had a platform as first lady and became central to her life. She knew the simple phrase, just say no wasnt the solution. It was easy for people to remember and it caught on but it was complicated and she often felt left out that she could tackle such an issue. Tell us what you learned about the effort and receptiveness of the countrys message and how she in the end reflected by saying those years provided me with the most fulfilling years of my life. The slogan just say no was a doubleedged sword. If you look at the hundreds and hundreds of appearances she made while she was first lady you really cannot doubt her own demotion to the cause that i think goes back to the 60s. Its a fact that really was. But i looked at the evidence and theres a project called monitoring the future which is the longest and best longterm tracking of peoples attitudes towards drugs. If you follow the data it changes in the 80s and then it starts to shift back a little more once nancy reagan is at the scene so i think there is evidence that it was effective. Joe califano was the hhs secretary under jimmy carter who runs the project at columbia university, so i interviewed him and he agreed with me as well he put nancy reagan on his board but also would do things that caused no small amount of heartburn within her Husbands Administration. One of the things she does near the end of his presidency, and George Schultz tells me about this, she gives a speech at the United Nations where at that point the Reagan Administration was trying to talk about the people overseas supplying drugs to this country. Nancy reagan gets up there and against the wishes of many in the bureaucracy of her own Husbands Administration says wait a minute, thats only part of it. If we are going to be cracking down on the casino in the field in south america, we also have to look at the investment banker that goes out on his lunch hour and scores cocaine. Scholz told me that afterwards a lot of people from other countries came up and thanked her for delivering a message that some people even in her own Husbands Administration didnt want to hear. Part of the blame here is the demand. Its not just a Law Enforcement issue that we need to change social attitudes towards drug use. You mentioned when you talk about George Schultz, but i would love to just go back for one more minute before we move on. Of all of the things nancy wanted to see her husband achieve you also write in proving the relations became the special cause reagan as we know despised everything that communism and poised to do business with a new leader and gorbachev. Youve spoken about the role of George Schultz and could you touch a little bit on how both men, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev were the right man for the moment and how nancy reagan worked behind the scenes to pave the way for peace . I dont think that it was any strategic sense on her part that she felt this. There were a number of things. She also made a political sense that even people that liked Ronald Reagan were afraid that perhaps he was a little too close on the trigger which she also understood as something is somethingthat many people dit Ronald Reagan which sent along with his harsh cold war anticommunist rhetoric that there was a real idealism that he was a believer in the biblical prophecy and he was enough of an idealist to envision a World Without nuclear weapons. That is something she understood about him that not a lot of people did at that time. And again, this is truly a marriage. The two of them would have the arguments where they would want to tone down his rhetoric and especially disturbed when he referred to the Century Union as an evil empire. I have a pretty hilarious scene of the two of them arguing about it over dinner. But she does understand that with gorbachev he potentially has a partner who could work with him on this and was absolutely relentless and pushing for this cabinet. Over the reservations with these hardliners and her husbands own administration as Caspar Weinberger says one of the world histories she really had a lot more willingness to trust the soviets and a lot more because she had a lot of faith in her husbands ability as a negotiator. Revealing the diagnosis with alzheimers you talk about nancy and barking on the final chapter of their story and write even her harshest critics would acknowledge the grace and determination she would show when her devotion was put to its greatest test. She would gain a new appreciation never again would anyone doubt that she had fixed on her ronnie for all those years was anything but genuine. She would become one of the most admired women in the country. I think a lot of us watched the way she cared for him as the sort of ultimate expression of their marriage vows and devotion. Share a little bit more about that chapter and how difficult it was for her. It is the cruelest disease you could imagine. Both of them assumed he leaves Office Closing in on a vigorous fit he is the only living president to complete two terms in office and leave office with high Approval Ratings. It looks like their golden years is going to be reminiscing on all the things that they have done together and shortly afterwards, he becomes incapacitated or begins to become incapacitated. First shes in a little bit of denial. She doesnt realize that shes going down a long road that shes not going to be able to follow him on. But ultimately she comes to accept it and it becomes as a physical caretaker she becomes concerned because she has had breast cancer. She becomes concerned about finances. Shes afraid hes going to outlive her and she wants to make sure the resources are there for him to be taken care of and his dignity maintained in the way that it must be. A. What is also interesting, and this is why this library becomes so important to her she becomes the caretaker of the legacy. Other president s survived decades after they are out of office. They have the chance to see what history is going to think of them. Ronald reagan is denying that so it is it becomes Nancy Reagans job. Its important to her in doing that. She wants to make sure that it has the resources that it needs and she also finds other ways to make sure history remembers Ronald Reagan in a way that is true to Ronald Reagan. She does something that i found fascinating which is while on the one hand, conservatives Ronald Reagan becomes this icon. But she also knows that there is still this perception among the liberal scholars and historians that he was just an actor reading lines other people wrote for him. His value and belief in his own handwriting so you see he begins to publish his diaries, something very few president s have ever done in keeping realtime diaries so people can see in his own hand at the crucial juncture. He publishes his letters and all the speeches that he was writing as he was getting ready to run for president and you can see in his own hand that these were his thoughts and values she didnt want it to be a monument just to the past but also to point to the future which is why you see that its become a site for so many important events where george w. Bush comes to lay out his vision and afford policy. I cant even count how Many Republican president ial debates have been held at the library and the kind of programs it puts out. Thank you for saying that. I hope that you will indulge me for a moment if i read some of their words that were so poignant. My parents were two halves of the circle closed tight around the world in which their love for each other is the only substance they needed. While they might venture out and include others and their orbit, no one crossed the boundary into the space that they held as theirs. And then ron spoke and followed with this. If our mother had one great talent i think it is that she knew how to love and she loved one man more than the world. They would watch the sun dropped over the hills in the west. The moon and stars turn overhead and here they will stay as they always wished it to be. Resting in each others arms, only each others arms till the end of time. Her legacy and love for her husband and fascinating life. Please do. I would really encourage to read the book and come to it to the way that i came into it when i was researching it and writing it which is to sort of set aside what you think you know about later nancy davis and later nancy reagan. Hers is a complicated and often very painful story but i think that Ronald Reagan shows well and the country owes him a debt for that. What do you say about someone who gives your life meaning and support and understanding, someone who makes sacrifices so that your life will be easier and more successful but what you say is you love that person and treasure her i simply cant imagine the last eight years without nancy. The presidency wouldnt have been the joy without her there beside me and that second floor living quarters in the white house would have seemed a lonely spot without her waiting for me every day. They had all kinds of advisors and experts who look after his interests when it comes to Foreign Policy or the economy but no one looks after their needs for a human being nancy has done that for me through recuperations and crisis. Every president should be so lucky. [applause] i think it is all too common in marriages that no matter how much partners love each other they dont think each other enough. So, nancy in front of all of your friends here today let me say thank you for all you do. Thank you for your love and for just being you. [applause]