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

Being associated with the Reagans gave Sinatra a legitimacy he craved. He had never gotten over the humiliation he felt when the Kennedys threw him out of JFK’s circle in the early 1960s, apparently because of his well-known friendships with crime bosses. Those unsavory associations were worrisome to Ronnie’s advisers as well. At one point, White House counsel Fred Fielding got wind that Nancy and Sinatra were discussing the possibility of giving the entertainer a formal role in the Reagan administration, perhaps overseeing the arts.

“Deaver gave me the heads-up. He said Sinatra was over there for dinner with them, and Nancy had said something to him, and then to Mike, that he should come into the government in some way, shape, or form,” Fielding recalled. “So I said, ‘Well, bring him over, Mike,’ and he came walking in, and we chatted for a while. I said, ‘Listen, I think this is so great that you’re willing to serve, and I’ll tell you what, I’m going to get you the forms, and I’ll walk you through them, and I’ll help expedite the FBI investigation of you.’ ” At Fielding’s mention of a Federal Bureau of Investigation background check, Deaver found it hard to stop himself from breaking out in laughter. That was the last they heard of Sinatra’s interest in joining the administration.

Though Nancy, through her various projects, seemed to be gaining favor with the American public, Deaver and her East Wing team were constantly on the lookout for land mines. By now, they all were familiar with Nancy’s tendencies to self-sabotage. The files at the Reagan Library include a memo sent to Deaver and Rosebush by staff secretary Richard Darman. It was dated March 3, 1982, a time when preparations for Ronnie’s first big overseas trip were under way. Darman wrote:

My dinner partner last night was Lady Mary Henderson, whom you know. She describes herself as a friend of Nancy Reagan’s who likes her very much. She thinks, however, that it is particularly important that, in the coming European trip, Mrs. Reagan have the benefit of:

—sophisticated press advice; and

—a strong and effective person to deal with the press on the trip.

She implied as clearly and politely as one could that Mrs. Reagan lacked both in her previous visit to England [for the royal wedding]. And she suggested that Mrs. Reagan needed to have someone like Tish Baldrige (or an unleashed Muffie Brandon) along on the trip.

Social secretary Brandon was dispatched to Europe a week early to nail down the first lady’s itinerary and scout for potential problems. A party planned for Nancy at the home of a countess in Paris was scotched because it was deemed too fancy. Aides made sure Nancy’s social activities would be interspersed with visits to drug rehabilitation centers in Rome and Bonn and a state-run facility for blind children in Paris. Nancy also made a pilgrimage to Normandy for the thirty-eighth anniversary of D-day and had a quiet visit with the widow of an American who had been murdered by terrorists in Paris earlier in the year. Her reviews on the trip were glowing—with the exception, perhaps, of the puzzlement she generated when she showed up at a dinner in Paris wearing a pair of Galanos-designed black satin knickers with rhinestones. A fashion-forward choice, no doubt, but a quirkier one than people were used to seeing on the first lady. “What the hell is she wearing?” reporter Helen Thomas asked Nancy’s press secretary a little too loudly for Sheila Tate’s comfort. The New York Times called Nancy’s knee-length pants a “fashion bombshell” detonated in the worldwide center of haute couture. Nancy appeared to have gotten the message. No one ever saw those knickers again.

As the midway point of Ronnie’s first term in office approached, Nancy’s poll numbers had turned in a positive direction, along with her press coverage. There seemed to be a new peace in Nancy; a sense that she had finally figured out her role and was settling into it with more ease. As the Washington Post noted: “Lately, Nancy Reagan has been calling the White House, not California, ‘home.’ ”

If so, she knew it was but a temporary home. Nancy also kept up her old ties and was on the phone with her friends on the West Coast constantly. In August 1982 Alfred Bloomingdale died amidst a raging tabloid scandal involving a twenty-nine-year-old mistress who sued for “lifetime support” and revealed a secret life in which she claimed he had regularly bound and beat prostitutes. It might have made political sense for Nancy to distance herself from such a lurid story. But she stood by his widow, her friend Betsy, consoling her with two or three calls a day. Nancy also let it be known that if any in their social circle did not stay loyal to Betsy as well, the first lady would not have anything to do with them again.

That same year, Nancy was dealing with another sorrow, one more private and personal. The health of both her parents had declined precipitously. Loyal, who had been hospitalized three times for heart problems since a 1978 cardiac arrest episode, was lonely and overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for Edie, as Nancy’s mother slid deeper and deeper into dementia. There were days when Edie was alert and almost her old self. But there were others, more and more of them, when the once-effervescent woman who had animated Loyal’s life was incapable of expressing herself. Edie was beset by physical problems as well. In a February 19, 1982, letter to a friend named Evelyn, Loyal wrote: “Edith has trouble getting around with her walker, and her most difficult handicap is her severe loss of hearing, which aids do not help a great deal. We have tried out four different kinds with as many so-called hearing specialists, doctors, and nondoctors. You can [imagine] that handicap for her and the telephone. I have to do all