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

called him “my strong right arm.” But once Reagan was elected, Battaglia’s big ego took over. He sometimes acted as though he were governor. Battaglia made decisions without consulting anyone, was frequently absent without explanation, and committed the cardinal sin of seeming like he was trying to outshine the boss. So, when the rumors about him started, some of the governor’s aides and advisers seized upon them and undertook a slipshod, almost comedic investigation.

They tried and failed to bug Battaglia’s office, botched an attempt to break into the apartment of a supposed male paramour, and put a tail on him that came up with—well, with pretty much nothing. But as Nofziger described it: “We knew in our minds, though no place else for sure, that there was hanky panky.” The coup plotters put together a dossier, which was really just a compilation of gossip, and delivered it to the governor and his wife at San Diego’s Hotel del Coronado, where Ronnie was recuperating from a prostate operation.

“Eleven of us barged in unannounced. Nancy, who had just finished showering, at our insistence joined us wearing a terry cloth robe with a towel wrapped around her head. Naturally, the Reagans were curious,” Nofziger wrote later. “I handed each of them a copy of our report. We waited silently as they sat side by side on the sofa in the living room and read. Nancy finished first and gave us a quizzical look.”

It was decided that Battaglia would be quietly fired. Holmes Tuttle was tasked with delivering the news to the shocked aide, because everyone knew Ronnie was incapable of cutting anyone loose. They also agreed to put out a story that Battaglia’s departure was voluntary. In August 1967 he announced that he wanted to return to practicing law in Southern California and did not discourage speculation that he would also be laying the groundwork for a possible Reagan presidential run the following year. But Battaglia soon resurfaced in Sacramento, trading on his presumed closeness to the governor to build a high-profile lobbying business. “His continuing presence around the administration was an irritation to those of us who knew the whole story. Nancy was among them,” Nofziger wrote in his memoir. “One day in my presence, she asked in exasperation, ‘Why doesn’t someone do something about Phil?’ ”

Nofziger took on the job. He indiscreetly, and at times drunkenly, began informing reporters about the real reason behind Battaglia’s departure. The governor’s spokesman swore the journalists to secrecy and assumed none of them would write about such a taboo subject as homosexuality. But that did not mean they wouldn’t talk about it, and eventually the rumors started seeping into print. A blind item about an unnamed “top GOP presidential prospect” facing “a potentially sordid scandal” appeared in Newsweek in late October 1967. Shortly after that, Drew Pearson’s nationally syndicated column carried a claim that there had been an eight-man “sex orgy which had taken place at a cabin near Lake Tahoe leased by two members of Reagan’s staff.” At the conclusion of his irresponsibly reported claims regarding the unnamed “homo-ring,” Pearson remarked: “It will be very interesting to note what effect the incident has on the governor’s zooming chances to be president of the United States.”

When Ronnie held his next weekly news conference, he tried to deny everything and tossed the question to Nofziger: “This is just absolutely not true. Want to confirm it, Lyn?”

“Confirmed,” Nofziger piped up.

Ronnie piled on, huffily calling Pearson “a liar. He’s lying.”

The story that Nofziger had leaked, thinking no one would actually publish it, was suddenly all over the papers. Nancy was furious and wanted him fired. She didn’t speak to him for five months. Nofziger offered his resignation to the governor and cited the first lady as the reason.

“I’m tired of Nancy cutting me up,” he told Ronnie. “It isn’t doing me any good, and it isn’t doing you any good. It just isn’t worth it.”

Ronnie, typically, insisted his wife was doing no such thing and told Nofziger he wanted him to stay, which the spokesman did until departing to work on a Senate campaign in 1968. He later moved on to the Nixon White House. After Ronnie was elected president, Nofziger would be back to work for him, but his relationship with Nancy would always be touchy.

Battaglia’s ouster did produce one welcome result. The team around Ronnie was reconfigured and became far more cohesive and disciplined. Some of them would stay with him all the way to Washington. Cabinet Secretary William P. Clark, a soft-spoken thirty-five-year-old lawyer who shared Ronnie’s love of ranching, took over as chief of staff. His natural reserve was much like the boss’s, and he was a good manager. Clark soon discovered that the first lady had strong opinions about the major issues they were dealing with, and some of the minor ones as well. Many mornings, one of the first calls he took was from Nancy, who dialed her husband’s top staff member as soon as Ronnie climbed into the limousine to make the short trip from the residence to the basement garage in the Capitol. “She’d use that fifteen minutes to call me and say, ‘Bill, please talk to Ronnie about this or that,’ indicating to me that she had not necessarily gotten her position in his mind solidly enough,” Clark recalled later. “He’d come off the elevator with a smile at me, knowing darn well she had phoned to make her position very clear.”

When Ronnie appointed Clark to a longed-for judgeship in 1968, beginning his rise to the California Supreme Court, he was replaced by legal affairs secretary Edwin Meese III, who ran the staff for the remainder of Ronnie’s governorship. Meese was deeply loyal and masterful at translating Ronnie’s ideas into policy. He was also notoriously disorganized, the opposite of a boss who cleaned off his desk at the end of every day. But that didn’t matter, because Clark had left behind an operation that could practically run on its