The Triumph of Nancy Reagan

by Karen Tumulty

  Lyn Nofziger, the Sacramento veteran who was running political affairs for the White House, recognized the warning signs. Four days before the birthday fete for Ronnie, Nofziger sent a memo to Deaver, with a copy to the first lady’s chief of staff, Peter McCoy. “It is generally agreed that Nancy, as First Lady, is going to be a target for some of the women who write about society and social figures in Washington, DC,” Nofziger wrote. “It seems to me that one way to minimize this is to begin to get her actively engaged in some charity-type activities. Thoughts include new activity in the Foster Grandparents organization, moving into the area of alcohol and drug abuse of [sic] whatever. But I do think that the quicker she is seen as a concerned and caring First Lady, the quicker we’ll be able to minimize the attacks on her that everybody is positive are coming.”

  Nofziger was right. Nancy should have been better prepared for the onslaught. At a time when her husband’s critics were too intimidated by his popularity among ordinary Americans to attack him personally, she was a ripe proxy, and the first lady spent her first year giving them plenty to work with. What should have been her season of triumph was turning into an almost-daily ordeal of brutal headlines and sniping commentary. In her personal papers is a typewritten letter from her father, sent shortly after the inauguration. “Don’t let the press upset you, dear,” Loyal wrote. “You know what you do right and correctly, and that’s what counts and is important.”

  Near the end of her husband’s presidency, Nancy reflected upon her difficult initiation. She acknowledged that she had brought many of her problems upon herself. This was not Old Hollywood, where the media lapped up whatever narrative a studio press agent dished out, or the relatively small fishbowl of Sacramento. “Looking back, I was terribly naive. I remember during the campaign telling Helen Thomas that there’d always be a part of my life that would be private. She said, ‘You have no idea what it’s like until you get there.’ And she was right,” Nancy recalled. “I was completely unprepared for the intense scrutiny—strange for someone who had been in public life as long as I had. I just didn’t expect it to be that concentrated.”

  Some of the fire, no surprise, came from her long-standing nemeses. Liberal feminists ramped up their criticism of the new first lady as a throwback; an ornamental presence who had no causes or endeavors beyond decorating and fashion. Notable was a scorching March 1981 essay by Gloria Steinem in Ms. magazine, in which Steinem concluded that Nancy had folded her own identity into her husband’s: “All signs point to Nancy Reagan as a future winner of best in her class. Queen Nancy. The Marzipan Wife. The rare woman who can perform the miracle of having no interests at all; of transplanting her considerable ego into a male body.”

  Nancy’s dilettante image was also worrying some of Ronnie’s staunchest supporters on the Right. A particularly blunt warning came in an open letter to her on the front page of the conservative Manchester Union Leader. “This newspaper is quite sure that you are merely attempting to present a picture of a well-dressed and gracious presidential wife who understands the responsibilities of her office. You mean well. But you and your super-rich friends, especially from the West Coast, are creating a picture of rich, nonsacrificial living, which is in such contrast to your husband’s call for economy that, believe it or not, your lifestyle is going to ruin his whole chance for success with his program,” publisher William Loeb wrote. “The shrieks of radical Democrats that your husband Ron’s program is favoring the rich and against the poor is at the moment not having any general success. But if you keep up this lifestyle, it will, because it gives the impression of a modern-day Marie Antoinette living very high on the hog regardless of how other people are having to get along on much less.” In a private missive sent on March 19 to Ronnie’s secretary Helene von Damm, Loeb enclosed a copy of the editorial and warned bluntly: “I am not exaggerating when I tell you that people who are essentially friendly to the Reagans, who support the president’s program, find this to be a subject which is causing a great deal of antagonism and alienation. It better be fixed now before it becomes even worse.”

  Meanwhile, an uncomfortable situation had arisen with some of those superrich West Coast friends. After the election, the Kitchen Cabinet had been key players on Ronnie’s Transition Appointments Committee. Their job, as they had seen it, was making sure that the top ranks of the new administration were filled with sufficiently conservative people. But with that done, Ronnie’s oldest and most loyal backers didn’t seem in any hurry to leave. They set up a base on the White House campus, just across the driveway from the West Wing, and reorganized themselves to push his agenda. Dubbing themselves the Coalition for a New Beginning, they instantly got into hot water as they used their supposed influence with the new administration to strongarm corporations into contributing $800,000 toward their campaign to promote Ronnie’s economic program.

  Having a group of well-heeled private citizens camping out on government property in close proximity to the president alarmed both Meese and the new White House counsel, Fred Fielding. “They wanted to set up office space in the Old Executive Office Building and just be around,” Fielding told me. He took his concerns to Nancy, fearing she might come to the defense of the Reagans’ old friends and financial supporters. Instead, she agreed that they must be evicted. For Fielding, this was an early insight into the fact that Nancy had but one priority: Ronnie’s success. “She knew that I had the president’s best interests because I fought for things to make sure that he was safe,” Fielding said. “That was something that was important to her too.” Chief of Staff Jim Baker, who had also been disturbed by the presence of Ronnie’s rich benefactors, remembers it the same way: “She was not in favor of them staying there, I’ll tell you, because it would get in the way of a smoothly functioning White House.”

  Kicking out the Kitchen Cabinet was a ruthlessly pragmatic move. Nancy effectively turned her back on the network she had done so much to build. As she would do so many times in Ronnie’s career, she set aside gratitude and sentimentality. Her focus was eliminating anything—or anyone—who might be an obstacle to Ronnie’s success. The Coalition for a New Beginning was shut down, and the funds it had collected were refunded. But the Californians did not go quietly. One member in particular went public with his anger. In an interview with Jack Nelson of the Los Angeles Times, industrialist Justin Dart complained that they had been treated shabbily after all their years of service to Ronnie, the victims of a “dirty, lousy lie” suggesting that they had done something improper. But he conceded: “The Kitchen Cabinet has served its useful purpose, and, unless the president calls on some of us, the Cabinet is finished. It hasn’t any reason to survive.”

  Their departure coincided with another awkward moment for Nancy. Ronnie’s informal advisers were finally sent packing in March, just as the first lady’s office revealed that her grand project to redecorate the White House had grown considerably. Nearly two hundred unnamed contributors had ponied up more than $375,000, far exceeding the original $200,000 goal. Congress customarily provided $50,000 in government funds for this purpose, which her Beverly Hills decorator Ted Graber said would not cover the cost of one room.

  Jackie Kennedy had been lionized for her sumptuous renovation of the White House, remaking a residence that she said “looked like it’s been furnished by discount stores.” As Nancy was doing, Jackie had launched the project within weeks of moving in and financed it with a staggering amount of money from private donors. In fact, some of those benefactors, such as Walter Annenberg, were the same people Nancy turned to twenty years later. When Jackie gave a guided tour of the results on Valentine’s Day 1962, an estimated eighty million rapturous TV viewers tuned in for the broadcast, which was carried live on CBS and NBC, and four days later by ABC. Jackie was given an honorary Emmy.

  Nancy no doubt expected similar acclaim. It was without question that the place could use some sprucing up. When she and Ronnie arrived at the White House, there were mousetraps poking out from und
er threadbare furniture. Decorator Graber moved into the official residence for nine months. He and Nancy spent many days scouring a government warehouse near Alexandria, Virginia, for items they could haul out of storage and restore. They scavenged 150 pieces of furniture and art, much of it deteriorated and in need of restoration. Also on the to-do list: badly needed repairs to wiring and plumbing, including some fixtures that had to be made by hand. Thirty-three mahogany doors were sanded and refinished; six dozen lamps got new shades; new draperies were hung on twenty-six windows; and fresh wall coverings went up in ten rooms, seven closets, and eight bathrooms. “The project was designed to reestablish the dwelling, the edifice,” her chief of staff, Peter McCoy, told reporters. “It’s not as if the Reagans will be taking the painted walls with them.”

  But where Jackie had beautified the presidential residence in the idyllic glow of Camelot, Nancy’s makeover seemed frivolous during an economic downturn in which average Americans were struggling and her husband was making sharp cuts in social programs. Nor did all of the private donors who contributed to the restoration appear to be operating with the purest of motives. Oil executives, for instance, gave $300,000 toward renovating the White House right after Ronnie decontrolled the price of petroleum. By the time Nancy was finished with her project, the redecorating fund had grown to $822,641.

  There was also the fact that most of the improvements would never be seen or enjoyed by the public. Nearly 90 percent of the money was spent on the private living quarters on the White House’s second and third floors. Nancy acknowledged later that she had not understood what a controversy all of this would generate: “Looking back, I think my own naivete, and that of my staff, added to this and perhaps even prolonged it. Washington can be a tough town, and I didn’t know how to handle it. I suspect we all would do things differently if we had it to do over again.”

  So overheated did the narrative of Nancy’s extravagance become that almost anything seemed believable. There was a false report in the media that the new first lady intended to take down a wall of the Lincoln Bedroom. “They knew none of those things were true,” she complained to Newsweek in March, “but they went ahead and printed them anyway. It was pretty mean.”

  Meanwhile, people began asking when and whether Nancy would begin doing serious work on the charitable projects that she claimed to care about. “My family comes first,” she said. “I have to get Ronnie settled and know that he’s comfortable. It takes awhile to settle in, to develop your own living routines, like what chair he sits in and what chair you sit in in the family sitting room. I want to make the house as warm and comfortable and homey as possible.”

  “Comfortable and homey” were not the impressions most Americans got when they finally saw the results of Nancy’s big project. The newly refurbished White House was unveiled in the December 1981 issue of Architectural Digest magazine, a $4.95-a-copy chronicle of excess. The photographer chosen to shoot the photos was a British lord, and they were laid out over an eighteen-page spread. Nancy realized later that in giving the exclusive to such an elite magazine, she had made “a mistake that only added to the picture many Americans already had of me—that I was a fancy, rich woman who kept acquiring more and more expensive items.”

  Throughout that first year in the White House, Nancy and her staff struggled to come up with small ways to soften her image. To celebrate her birthday in July, eighteen wealthy donors chipped in $3,800 to repair a municipal swimming pool for the handicapped in a poorer part of Washington. After Nancy snipped the pink bow and pronounced it “the best birthday present I’ve gotten,” Mayor Marion Barry said: “If you have some friends who want to give some more, they’re certainly welcome to.”

  But most of her gestures were met with skepticism. Nancy had indicated during the presidential campaign that she would take on fighting drug abuse among the young as her signature cause. In late October she met with teenagers and their parents at Manhattan’s Phoenix House, the nation’s largest drug rehabilitation center. “If we don’t do something, it seems to me we’re just going to lose a whole generation,” she said. “Their brains are going to be mush. It’s the future of our country. I think it’s the most serious problem.”

  One account in the next day’s New York Daily News began: “Nancy Reagan got so involved in her tour of the Phoenix House drug treatment center yesterday morning that she was late for her hair dresser, Monsieur Marc.” The coverage also contrasted her comments about the seriousness of the drug scourge with the cuts that her husband was making in funding for treatment programs—including a sharp reduction in federal support for the one she visited. As the criticism mounted, Jackie Kennedy Onassis called with sympathy and some advice. All of this would pass, the former first lady told Nancy, but it might be a good idea to quit reading the newspapers until it did.

  The withering press coverage that first year was not confined to the US side of the Atlantic. In late July Nancy traveled to London for the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. She arrived with an enormous entourage, and the incredulous British media pounced. An article on the front page of the liberal-leaning Guardian began: “The one-time starlet of such B-films as ‘The Next Voice You Hear’ (1950) and ‘Hellcats of the Navy’ (1957) flew into Heathrow yesterday with 12 secret servicemen, five hat boxes, and six dresses.” The sober Times of London noted that Nancy had “squeezed more engagements into the week before the royal wedding than Alice’s white rabbit.”

  Reporters also noted that Nancy arrived at Prince Charles’s polo match in a six-car motorcade. The queen, on the other hand, drove herself there in a station wagon and was followed by her daughter, Princess Anne, steering a Range Rover. Crowds outside the Royal Opera House booed the American first lady, and one British newspaper claimed, falsely, that she had demanded a front-row seat at the wedding. So huge were the diamond earrings that Nancy wore to the queen’s ball at Buckingham Palace that one reporter blurted out, “Are they real?” Nancy replied, “I’ll never tell.” They were, and on loan from the Bulgari jewelry family, whose spokesman said they were Nancy’s “to wear as long as she wants to wear them.”

  Nancy exhibited a blind spot—and a stubborn streak—when it came to the matter of accepting freebies. In early 1981 White House counsel Fielding, accompanied by Baker and Meese, spent a painful half hour with her in the residence explaining in detail how the law worked in that regard. The 1978 Ethics in Government Act required high-ranking government officials and their spouses to report any gifts they received worth more than $35. If one came from a foreign government, and they wanted to keep it, they had to pay for it. Nancy was incensed. Why, she wanted to know, would things that she received from her personal friends be anyone else’s business? It was an argument that she and Fielding would have over and over again. An especially heated dispute involved a $400 set of inscribed silver picture frames from Frank Sinatra. So obstinate was the first lady that Fielding made a practice of sending lawyers from his office to the presidential living quarters once a year on a reconnaissance mission to check for items that Nancy was trying to slip past the rules.

  At the same time, the White House counsel discovered he could rely on Nancy to be his ally when other sensitive matters arose. She had supported him when he kicked the Kitchen Cabinet out of the Old Executive Office Building, and she was always ready to help with even more delicate matters—such as when he received reports that one of the freewheeling Reagan children was getting close to the legal and ethical boundaries that Fielding called “the shock line.” Nancy was also proactive in sharing her concerns when she picked up signals of a potential problem that might embarrass the president. In one instance, she learned that US Information Agency director Charles Z. Wick had installed a $32,000 security system in his rented home and charged it to the government. “She didn’t hesitate to let me know that Charlie was doing something wrong,” Fielding said. “I thought it was interesting, because Mary Jane Wick was one of her closest friends.”


  Occasionally, Nancy would summon the White House counsel to the residence, but more often, he would hear from her by telephone. Fielding could decipher the first lady’s mood from the moment he picked up the line. “Fred…” she would say slowly. One Fred signaled it would be a friendly chat. “Fred… Fred…” meant something was bothering her. If Nancy said his name three times, he knew she was in a state of high alarm. There were many three-Fred conversations over the course of Fielding’s five years as White House counsel, and even a few four-Fred ones.

  “These calls became the source of some amusement in my office, especially in the first two years, since I was trying to stop smoking, and often I would relapse during or after a call from the East Wing,” Fielding said. “But, in fairness to Nancy, she was usually right in her assessment of a situation and often had seen the problem before anyone else. She could be very harsh in her candid assessments of people, but her motive was never a petty or personal one—it was always to protect the president.”

  In the fall of 1981 came another controversy, one that would dwarf even the furor over Nancy’s decorating project. As she would ruefully recall: “If the renovations made people angry, the new White House china drove them crazy!” Earlier first ladies could have told her that buying expensive formal dinnerware was a bad move during times when Americans were worried about keeping food on their own humble plates. When Eleanor Roosevelt ordered a new set of china in 1934, during the depths of the Great Depression, the outcry was so great that she had to hold a news conference to defend herself against charges of extravagance. Eleanor explained that the cost of ordering 1,722 pieces for $9,301.20—at government expense, unlike the Reagan china, which was paid for by a private foundation—was actually lower than trying to replace existing pieces. Besides, it would put Americans to work.