The Triumph of Nancy Reagan by Karen Tumulty (short books for teens txt) 📕

The White House Press Office let it be known that Nancy had personally called Watt to let him know that she was a Beach Boys fan. The secretary of the interior emerged from his next meeting with Ronnie carrying a plaster of paris foot with a hole in it. And indeed, he had shot himself in the foot. To deepen his mortification, Nancy invited the band to headline an event at the White House for the Special Olympics on June 12. The Beach Boys dedicated their opening song, “California Girls,” to the first lady. Ronnie joked that they had shown up early for Independence Day and told them: “If you didn’t believe that our whole family had been fans of yours for a long time, just look at Nancy.”

Not such a laughing matter was Watt’s comment at a September 21 US Chamber of Commerce breakfast, where he proclaimed the administration’s coal advisory commission had “every kind of mix you can have. I have a black, I have a woman, two Jews, and a cripple. And we have talent.” Senator Paul Laxalt, who had been a sponsor and defender of Watt, was soon on the phone with Nancy to discuss who might replace him. With internal polling showing that the interior secretary had become a drag on Ronnie’s reelection chances, Watt was gone by mid-October.

Bill Clark stepped into the job, which meant that Nancy saw two problems solved at once. Watt was gone entirely, and, at least as importantly to her, Clark was out of the White House. “In Reagan’s mind, he was Cabinet, he was still part of the team,” Kuhn said, “and as far as Nancy’s concerned, he can’t do too much harm, hopefully.” She also knew that Clark would soon get antsy again. By early 1985, he decided he’d had enough of Washington. He told Ronnie that he wanted to return to his barley and cattle ranch in California rather than stick around for the second term.

There were others. What was right, in Nancy’s view, was less important than what was necessary. Labor Secretary Raymond J. Donovan stepped down in March 1985 as he was being investigated for fraud and grand larceny. Nancy was glad to see him go. “In politics, even the appearance of wrongdoing can be enormously damaging. I could see that this was going to be a long, drawn-out ordeal which would severely limit Donovan’s effectiveness in the Cabinet,” Nancy wrote. “The Donovan affair, which dragged on for months, was draining both to Ronnie personally and to the office of the president. Donovan resigned when the indictment was handed down, but as I told Ronnie on any number of occasions, it would have been better for everyone if he’d stepped down earlier.” Two years later, Donovan would be acquitted and ask the plaintive question: “Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?” While Nancy felt sorry for him, she did not regret pushing for his removal. “When a political appointee turns out to be more of a problem than an asset, even if it’s not his fault, he should step aside,” she contended.

Getting rid of Secretary of State Al Haig had been another project on Nancy’s to-do list. The retired four-star army general and former NATO commander had a reputation as a self-promoting leaker, prone to saying disparaging things about Ronnie to make himself look good. No doubt Nancy was also put off by the fact that Haig did not bother to hide his own presidential ambitions. The first lady would write later that the appointment of power-hungry Haig was “Ronnie’s biggest mistake in the first term.”

In her memoir, Nancy delivered a long bill of particulars: “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.”

She was far from the only one in the White House who wanted Haig out. He had gotten the job in part on a memo of recommendation from Richard Nixon. Ronnie’s diaries show that the secretary of state was an irritant from the start, constantly testing the president’s patience. After one of his early phone calls with Haig, Ronnie wrote in his diary: “He talked of resigning. Frankly I think he’s seeing things that aren’t there. He’s Sec. of St. and no one is intruding on his turf—foreign policy is his, but he has half the Cabinet teed off.”

Eventually Haig threatened to quit one too many times. Ronnie finally took him up on it in June 1982. The president noted wryly and with relief in his diary: “Up to Camp David where we were in time to see Al read his letter of resignation on TV. I’m told it was his 4th rewrite. Apparently his 1st letter was pretty strong—then he thought better of it. I must say it was O.K. He gave only one reason and did say there was a disagreement on foreign policy. Actually the only disagreement was over whether I made policy or the Sec. of State did.”

George Shultz, who replaced Haig, was a man of accomplishments deep and broad: PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; former dean of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business;