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

times that the book painted a less-than-flattering portrait of them and that they were embarrassed and understandably just wanted it to go away. Patti continued to insist that her mother and father owed her their support in her endeavor. Finally, exasperated, I told her—rather tartly, I must admit—that she had turned her parents into cartoons, and it was crazy to expect them to get behind such a thing.” Patti left the party, her brother recalled, and the two of them did not speak for a long time afterward.

Nancy spent part of her thirty-fourth wedding anniversary on March 4, 1986, watching her daughter tout the book on Good Morning America and then in another appearance on the TV talk show Donahue.But Patti’s publicity tour was short lived. Nancy’s close friend Merv Griffin bumped Patti from his show, as did comedienne Joan Rivers, who was hosting the Tonight show. The snubs only ignited more news coverage. “Phil Donahue admitted publicly that he’d been pressured to take me off his show, which didn’t deter him from putting me on. He didn’t specify exactly who pressured him; he didn’t have to,” Patti recalled. “Reporters staked out the front of my house; I climbed down the back fence to avoid them. They chased down Joan Rivers, who said, ‘No comment.’ They chased down my parents. My mother said nothing. My father said, ‘Nancy had nothing to do with it.’ ”

In Nancy’s memoir, published in late 1989, she wrote at length about her continuing estrangement from her daughter, as well as her hopes that, someday, the two of them might get past their bitterness: “Parents are not always responsible for their children’s problems. When your child has a difficult time, it’s only natural to blame yourself and think, What did I do wrong? But some children are just born a certain way, and there’s very little you can do about it.

“And yet I remain optimistic. There is still time for us to improve our relationship, and now that our public years are over, I’m hoping Patti and I will be able to reach some kind of understanding.

“I also hope Patti doesn’t turn out to be an ‘if only’ child. I’ve known people who, years after their parents had died, were still saying, ‘If only I had told my mother that I loved her,’ or ‘If only I had made some peace with my father.’ What a terrible burden that must be to carry.

“One of the great blessings of my life is that I’ve never felt that way. I had occasional moments of tension with my parents, but they both knew that I loved them, and I always knew that they loved me.

“I hope and pray that before my own life is over, Patti and I will be able to put the past behind us and arrive at that same point. Nothing would make me happier than to work that out.”

There would be more years of pain and alienation ahead, but eventually Nancy and Patti did move toward that point. Nancy was right in what she had feared. It was loss that brought Patti to her side in the 1990s. Together they shared the slow, cruel loss of Ronnie, right before their eyes, to Alzheimer’s disease. “I think sometimes of how different my life would be if my parents hadn’t lived this long, or if I hadn’t listened to the echo of my own despair,” Patti wrote in September 1995. “The thought comes to me in small moments—walking with my father, my arm through his. What if he weren’t there to touch, and I had to live my life with only the remnants of my anger at my fingertips? It comes to me with the sound of my mother’s voice and the things I am learning from her now.”

At the midpoint of her own life, Patti had finally learned to count her blessings. One of them was that there was still a chance to make things right—or at least better—with her mother. She had been spared that regret. “I might have been too late,” she said. “I might have been left with only silence and distance.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Ronnie made his announcement that he would run for a second term in a four-minute, nationally televised address on January 29, 1984. He did it at the exceedingly odd time of 10:55 p.m. on a Sunday night, which was nearly an hour after the president generally liked to be in bed. His campaign offered no explanation why. The stars must have aligned favorably at that moment, but Nancy was far from reassured. It was an open secret in Washington that she had been opposed to another campaign. Ronnie wore her down with what she called “a steady drumbeat.” There were things on his agenda that he wanted to finish, and he was doubtful Vice President George H. W. Bush could hold the White House for Republicans if Ronnie’s name was not at the top of the ticket.

“For a while, we talked about it every night, until it became more and more obvious that this was something Ronnie just had to do. Finally, I said, ‘If you feel that strongly, go ahead. You know I’m not crazy about it, but okay,’ ” Nancy recalled. The public uncertainty over what he would do continued until just days before Ronnie formally made his declaration. Nancy appeared to have lost weight, which fueled speculation that she was having health problems. The previous Wednesday, rumors that he would not run had sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbling.

Nancy’s concerns were many. There was, of course, her unshakeable fear about the physical dangers to Ronnie. She missed her privacy and their old life in California. But Nancy was also worried about whether he would win. Republicans had lost twenty-six House seats in the 1982 midterm election. Ronnie’s approval rating had only recently recovered to a robust 57 percent after having spent twenty-two months below 50 percent during the depths of the recession.