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

These high-profile, postpresidency victory laps were as important to Nancy as they were to Ronnie. Of the two of them, she had always been the one more focused on his place in history. “He was the last guy who cared about this; about making sure that his legacy was known and remembered,” Fred Ryan said. “He was not one who was spending a lot of time worrying about his legacy. Even before he had a health problem, she was more involved in those conversations.”

Ronnie went to the office almost every weekday that he wasn’t traveling. Nancy preferred to work mostly from home. Getting his presidential library off the ground was a major endeavor for both of them. Both of them were determined that it would be the biggest and the best of any.

In their reentry to private life, the Reagans also made some controversial judgments, leading them into rough patches. The first misstep was Ronnie’s decision to accept $2 million from a Japanese media conglomerate for an eight-day speaking tour of that country in October 1989. Gerald Ford had paved the way for selling the prestige of the presidency, quietly lining his pockets with lucrative posts on corporate boards. Six-figure speaking fees for former presidents would later become common. But at the time, it was considered shocking for one to cash in so blatantly on the aura of the office. Ronnie’s immediate predecessor, Jimmy Carter, was keeping himself busy by building houses for the poor. Even disgraced Richard Nixon was coming to be regarded as a dignified elder statesman, writing heavyweight books about foreign policy, traveling internationally, and offering advice that his successors and other leaders were eager to hear, though they did not publicize it.

“Former Presidents haven’t always comported themselves with dignity after leaving the Oval Office,” the New York Times sniffed in an editorial about Ronnie’s lucrative Japanese speaking gig. “But none have plunged so blatantly into pure commercialism.” Oregon congressman Peter DeFazio, a Democrat, introduced legislation to eliminate an ex-president’s pension after any year in which he earns more than $400,000. “It’s unseemly, to say the least, when a former president cashes in on his prestige this way, and doubly so when he continues to receive his full presidential pension,” DeFazio said. Ronnie’s successor, George H. W. Bush, commented wryly: “Everybody’s got to make a living.”

The Reagans even had to endure humiliating gibes from the man who in the late 1980s was the walking embodiment of classless, undignified merchandising of a public image. In January 1990, a few months after the Reagans’ Japan trip, Donald Trump made an appearance at a charity event in Los Angeles and noted that Ronnie was present as a guest. “President Reagan is here, and I can tell this audience he did not get two million for coming here tonight,” Trump said. “You didn’t get $2 million for this, did you, Mr. President?” Nancy leaned over to someone sitting near her, and asked incredulously: “Did he really say what I think he said?”

The previous year, Trump had attended a fund-raiser for the Reagan Library that was held in New York Harbor aboard Malcolm Forbes’s yacht, the Highlander. Forbes and Reagan friend Walter Annenberg took the brash real estate tycoon below deck and made their pitch for a $1 million contribution. They were disappointed when Trump agreed to give only $25,000—and even more so when the money never showed up.

Ronnie was not the only Reagan who drew criticism in the months after the former first couple left Washington. Nancy had pledged to continue her crusade against drugs, and one of her most high-profile endeavors was the construction of a 210-bed treatment center that was to be named for her. The Reagans’ wealthy friends held a series of glittering, high-dollar fund-raisers to benefit the effort. However, the middle-class homeowners who lived near the proposed San Fernando Valley site did not want it there and threatened to picket the Reagans’ Bel Air home in retaliation. Abruptly, Nancy withdrew her support for the project. “The last thing I wanted to do was upset a community,” she said.

Her reversal in May 1989 left Phoenix House, the program that was to run the center, in the lurch. The group had collected only half of the $5 million that Nancy had raised in pledges, and dozens of the big donors asked for their money back. Appearances weren’t helped by the fact that, just days after abandoning the rehabilitation center, Nancy accepted a lucrative seat on the board of the cosmetics giant Revlon. Vanity Fair wrote a scathing account of the Phoenix House saga, which questioned the sincerity of Nancy’s commitment to the antidrug cause: “Although Mrs. Reagan has consented to the occasional photo opportunity since leaving office, for the most part she seems to be devoting her energies to making money.” Among the most blistering quotes in the article was one from powerful television executive Grant Tinker, a member of the Phoenix House board. “We were just about to cross the goal line, and she shot us down,” he said. “I think she thinks the ‘Just Say No’ thing is national and effective. It isn’t; it’s just a lapel button. It isn’t what Phoenix House does, which is constructive and effective.”

Nancy’s book My Turn: The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan also came out near the end of 1989, to withering reviews. First ladies before her had written anodyne and unrevealing accounts, aimed more at proving that they hadn’t overstepped their traditional roles than showing how they had. Nancy’s book was regarded as so vindictive that it quickly became known as “My Burn.” But she was unapologetic. “Well,” she said, “if I’d written a book like Lady Bird Johnson’s, why write it? Lord, eight years is a long time to sit there and not say anything.”

Its candor is striking. In My Turn, Nancy is defensive, both of her decisions and the