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

The first lady remained silent, offering no explanation or rationale for the events that Regan laid out in his book. That would wait for her own memoir, for which Random House paid a reported $2 million. She had signed the deal in July 1986. My Turn was scheduled to be published in 1989, after Ronnie was out of office. Her coauthor was the accomplished William Novak, who had written a blockbuster autobiography in 1986 with Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca. They began working together while Nancy was still in the White House. Novak traveled in liberal circles and knew of her only by reputation, so he was unprepared for the soft-spoken and sensitive woman he met. He was even more surprised to discover he liked her. But this turned out to be the most difficult and frustrating project he ever undertook.

“It was a very hard book to write, because Nancy was not a talker. She would rather listen,” he said. Most of their early time together was unproductive. Nancy’s diary was filled with boring entries, and she would shut down when Novak pressed her for more interesting material. “I’d rather not talk about astrology,” she insisted. Nor did she find much joy in the whole endeavor, which would frequently bring her to tears. “I always had the sense that the reason she did the book was a fear about not having enough money; that in their circle, the Reagans considered themselves poor,” Novak said.

Her concern about finances was another indication of how Nancy’s deep-seated anxiety persisted. She and Ronnie had achieved success on a scale that few people in history would ever know. But she never lost her fear that there was a trap door around every turn; that everything they had could disappear in a heartbeat. As her friend and aide Robert Higdon put it, Nancy always had her eye out for the next place she might have to make a hard landing. The imperative to accumulate wealth—as quickly as they could—was one way to cushion against a fall. And while both Reagans were looking forward to returning to Los Angeles, there were practical things to consider. For one, they didn’t have enough money to purchase an upper-bracket home in the overpriced real estate market. Ronnie’s high-earning days on General Electric Theater and the lecture circuit were long behind him. Their tax returns for 1987 showed they were living mostly on his presidential salary of $201,526 a year. (Also noted in press reports: Nancy, who was still claiming to have been born in 1923, did not take a deduction available to those over sixty-five.)

So, Ronnie and Nancy made a housing arrangement reminiscent of what they had done in Sacramento, after Nancy found the shabby governor’s mansion unsuitable. Nearly twenty of their wealthy friends, including their longtime benefactors Holmes Tuttle and Earle Jorgensen, paid $2.5 million for an estate in LA’s exclusive Bel Air section. They leased the 7,200-square-foot home to the Reagans at market rates, under a deal that allowed the couple an option to buy. Soon after Ronnie left office, it was deeded over to a trust in their name. The address on St. Cloud Road was changed from 666 to 668 on city records, out of Nancy’s concern that the original number might be construed as a biblical reference to Satan.

All of this passed muster with the government ethics watchdogs. But Nancy’s love of freebies would bring one more spectacular embarrassment to the White House during her husband’s final months in office. In mid-October 1988 Time magazine reported that, despite Nancy’s public promise six years earlier that she would quit “borrowing” costly designer outfits, she had indeed continued the practice. The article cited gowns worth upward of $20,000 each, furs that included a $35,000 Russian sable, jewelry valued in the six figures. One designer alone, David Hayes of Los Angeles, said he had loaned her as many as eighty made-to-order outfits, only half of which had been returned, and which were worthless anyway once they had been worn. “She set her own little rule, and she broke her own little rule,” Nancy’s spokeswoman Elaine Crispen said. “I’m admitting for her that she basically broke her own promise.”

Except it was more than Nancy’s word that was at issue. The Reagans were also running afoul of the tax law. After Ronnie was out of office, the Internal Revenue Service would present them with a hefty bill for back taxes and interest on what its audit concluded were $3 million in unreported gifts of clothing and jewelry between 1983 and 1988.

The simmering tension between Nancy and the Bushes continued right up until the end of Ronnie’s presidency. George Bush nailed down his party’s presidential 1988 nomination fairly easily. But it was notable that he did not actually receive the president’s endorsement until the primary race was over, after his challengers had either dropped out or suspended their campaigns. Entries in Ronnie’s diary indicated that, privately, he was rooting for Bush. But his long-standing policy was not to intercede in battles within his own party. Nancy, meanwhile, was unenthusiastic about either of the Reagans getting deeply involved in the 1988 presidential race. She nixed the Bush campaign’s plan to roll out Ronnie’s endorsement at a big rally on the night of the May 3 Ohio primary, when the vice president clinched enough convention delegates to claim the nomination. Nancy said that having Ronnie play second banana at Bush’s victory celebration would be unpresidential.

The long-awaited embrace finally came a week later at a black-tie Republican fund-raiser known as the President’s Dinner. This gathering of GOP fat cats was not the setting that Bush’s team would have picked for their man’s big moment. Ronnie’s actual announcement of his endorsement came off as tepid, almost offhand. At the end of a twenty-minute address extolling his own record, Ronnie called Bush “my candidate” and said, “I’m going to work as hard as I can to make Vice President George