Maybe Michael was overcompensating for his insecurities, or perhaps he was simply greedy. Either way, White House aides learned to keep their distance. “He was a wheeler-dealer,” said Jim Kuhn, who was Ronnie’s executive assistant. “Mike would call all the time for this and that, and you knew not to… You wanted to be respectful of Mike, but if you got on his side and got too cozy with him, you would’ve been out. I mean, you just had to know that.”
Michael, who was well into his thirties, was still racing speedboats. The month after Ronnie was elected, he also took a job as vice president of sales for a small company in Burbank, California, that made parts for aircraft and missiles. In May 1981 five letters surfaced in which Michael had invoked his father’s name as he sought contracts with military bases. In one, he wrote: “I know that with my father’s leadership at the White House this countries [sic] armed services are going to be rebuilt and strengthened. We at Dana Ingalls Profile want to be involved in that process.” Asked about it at a news conference, Ronnie called the letter “a mistake.” Privately, he told his son not to write any more of them.
Michael quit that job but was also under investigation for alleged complicity in a stock fraud scheme involving a company that claimed to own a gold mine in Arizona, and for improperly funding his living expenses with $17,500 of the money he raised for an abortive venture to produce gasohol. Two search warrants of his house in Sherman Oaks, California, were executed. The matter was ultimately dropped, though not before Michael had run up $50,000 in legal bills.
It got even dicier. In 1983 the Secret Service informed Michael that one of its agents had spotted him sneaking a T-shirt from a children’s store under his jacket. Later, he was accused of lifting other things: a minibottle of bourbon from an American Airlines flight; a bottle of Binaca breath spray from a drugstore in Century City; an “I Ski Heavenly Valley” pin from a ski shop; a candy bar from the gift store of the InterContinental Hotel in London.
Michael denied stealing any of these small items and had an explanation for each: A friend had paid for the T-shirt, and Michael had tucked it in his clothes because it was raining outside. The minibottle had been a gift from a flight attendant. He had paid for the breath spray while he was purchasing cigarettes and picked it up on his way out of the store. The Heavenly Valley pin was a token from the lodge owner, who was thrilled to have the president’s son as a guest. As for chocolate, he didn’t even eat the stuff. His sister, Maureen, and his father told Michael they didn’t believe him, not with all the trouble he had caused in the past. They suggested he get psychiatric help.
In the summer of 1983 the growing tension within the family boiled over in public. Michael told Redbook magazine that he had not been invited to the White House since the inauguration. He revealed that the president who had wrapped himself in family values had virtually no relationship with his only grandchildren, Michael’s five-year-old son, Cameron, and infant daughter, Ashley.
Michael also took aim at the first lady: “Of course, Nancy does have her Foster Grandparents program.” That comment, he admitted later, was a carefully aimed shot, using the only ammunition that he knew would pierce his father’s indifference. “I felt attacked on the matter of my supposed kleptomania, so I had struck back,” he wrote. “It’s hard to go up against the president of the United States. On the other hand, I did know his Achilles’ heel: Nancy.”
A little over a year later, shortly after Ronnie’s landslide 1984 reelection victory, Nancy returned the fire. In an interview with social columnist Betty Beale of the Washington Times, the first lady was asked whether Michael would be joining the family for Thanksgiving. She said no, but she didn’t leave it there. “The president and Michael don’t seem to be very close,” Nancy said. “There is an estrangement and has been for three years. And I think really we should now say this and get it all done with so we can put these questions behind us. There is an estrangement. We are sorry about it. We hope that someday it will be solved. We do not believe and have never believed in discussing family problems in public. And that’s it.”
That was not it, of course. Nancy had laid the table for a sumptuous holiday feast—for the media. When reporters showed up in Nebraska, where Michael was spending Thanksgiving with his wife Colleen’s family, the president’s older son declared that he had been stunned by Nancy’s comments and demanded an apology. “Colleen and I were talking about it. All we can think of is maybe it’s Nancy’s way of justifying why she and Dad haven’t ever seen our daughter Ashley. She’s nineteen months old, and they’ve never laid eyes on her,” he said. Michael also joked that a recent late-night fall that Nancy had taken, which had put a nasty bump on her head, might have been “more serious than we thought.”
Unnamed “close friends” of Nancy and Ronnie were soon quoted in the press as saying that Michael needed “guidance.” Maureen jumped in, accusing her brother of conducting a “vendetta against Mrs. Reagan,” and adding: “He thinks he can keep dumping on us. Now we’re fighting back.” She also said that Michael had ridiculed Ron for dancing ballet and made hurtful cracks about her own divorces. Ronnie finally ordered everyone to just shut up. In a December 10, 1984, letter to Elizabeth “Nackey” Loeb, who’d succeeded her late husband as publisher of the Manchester Union Leader, Ronnie wrote of his frustration: “We’ve tried to keep a little fuss private and are well on our way to resolving it as all families do from time to time.”
All of it came to a head a few days after Christmas. Michael and his family were summoned to the $3,000-a-night penthouse suite at the Century Plaza Hotel, where Nancy and Ronnie stayed when they were in Los Angeles. Word got out. Awaiting the arrival of the president’s son and his family were camera crews from all the networks and local television stations, as well as reporters for the wire services and every major newspaper. A crowd of curious hotel guests joined them. Some of the journalists joked that the reconciliation was going to be facilitated by Richard Dawson, host of the popular television game show Family Feud. Jim Kuhn was handling the logistics for the White House. Nancy told him to make sure that Michael came into the hotel through an entrance where there would be no opportunity for him to be seen—or worse, talked to—by the media. Alas, with a mob of cameras surrounding the hotel, there was no way to ensure that. Nor was Michael in a cooperative mood. He rejected a suggestion that he enter the hotel through the presidential entrance in the rear and came into the lobby through the front door instead, carrying twenty-month-old Ashley in his arms.
That day, there was a lot to iron out. The president’s diary entries during 1983 and 1984 contain frequent references to his concerns about Michael. Ronnie was dismissive of the investigation of his son for securities fraud, which he believed was politically motivated and aimed at him. But the private struggle within the family weighed upon him:
Wednesday, March 30, 1983: “Left for LA. Met Nancy at Century Plaza late afternoon. Maureen came by re Mike. She’s really being a trooper [sic] & solid sister about the problem.”
Wednesday, December 28, 1983: “I’m worried about Nancy. A deep cough continues beyond when I believe it should have dried up. Mermie [Maureen’s nickname since childhood] came by for a short visit. We still have no break in the Mike situation. We must find an answer to that.”
Monday, November 19 through Sunday, November 25, 1984, after the eruption over Nancy’s comment about the “estrangement” in the family: “One other sour note on Thanksgiving had to do with Mike R. He blew up at something on the TV news based on an interview Nancy had given. He called me & when I tried to straighten him out he screamed at me about having been adopted & hung up on me.”
Monday, November 26, 1984: “To top the day off I called Mike R. We talked for half an hour & I’m more than ever convinced that he has a real emotional problem that is making him paranoid.”
Thursday, November 29, 1984: “Another call from Mike. He is a really disturbed young man. I’ve contacted his Minister & believe maybe we can get through to Mik
e. [… ] Mermie is here for overnight.”
Thursday, December 27, 1984, through Wednesday, January 2, 1985: “On Fri. will meet with Mike & Colleen to see our granddaughter for the 1st time. Had time for a trip to Dr. House. My hearing has suffered no loss since last year. The other good news was our family meeting. I think we passed a watershed & the wounds are healed.”
“The wounds are healed.” That was the official story, at least. Nancy put out a statement through the White House Press Office: “It was a nice visit. There are no differences. All is resolved. Everybody loves each other, and this is a wonderful way to start the new year.” A White House photographer had been stationed to record the two-hour session in the Century Plaza’s Presidential Suite. Ronnie and Nancy brought gifts, and the president got down on all fours to play with his granddaughter. Then the children were dismissed, and, with Michael’s pastor as an intermediary, the adults tried to clear the air.
According to Michael’s account of the meeting, Ronnie told his son that he accepted his explanations for how he had obtained the supposedly shoplifted items. He promised to have the Secret Service write a letter exonerating Michael, which arrived six months later. Michael also asked his father to announce to the media at the next presidential press conference that their stories should quit referring to him as the “adopted” son. Ronnie wisely rebuffed that request, no doubt aware this would only have reignited the story line about their family difficulties. During the session, Nancy acknowledged that her “estrangement” comment had been a mistake, which was the first time Michael ever recalled her apologizing. On the way out, Michael mentioned one more thing.
“You know,” he told Ronnie, “you’ve never told me that you love me.”
His father looked surprised. “Michael, I love you,” he said.
As Michael left the hotel, he made no comment to the media. Things had gone well enough that it was agreed Michael and his family would attend Ronnie’s second inauguration in January 1985. The day before the ceremonies, Ronnie asked five-year-old Cameron if he would like to make a snowman in the Rose Garden. When grandfather and grandson stepped into the frigid air, a line of news photographers was waiting, as was a partially completed snowman put together by the White House staff. The base and midsection were there. All that remained was for Ronnie and Cameron to construct a smaller snowball for the head and put it on top, with the president’s dog Lucky, a lively Bouvier des Flandres, joining them.
“They frolicked in the snow making the head while the press snapped pictures. It was the first picture of us as a family taken together since the rift,” Michael wrote later. “I remember thinking how sad it was that when Dad wanted to do something fun and private with his grandson, it had to become a media event. He had lost all his privacy. I could only think: Was the cost worth the price?” What Ronnie’s son doesn’t appear to have recognized—or chose not to—was that privacy wasn’t the point of that heartwarming family scene. It had been a carefully staged photo op.
The tension with Michael was far from ended. In early 1987 Nancy read that Michael was writing a book about his father. The reported title—On the Outside Looking In— suggested it was not going to be a valentine. Nancy called him and demanded to know what was up. Michael told her he had been offered a lot of money. The deal was said to be in the high six figures. “Of course,” Nancy replied. “I could get lots of money for walking naked up and down Pennsylvania Avenue. It’s a question of taste.”
On April 12, which was Palm Sunday, Michael’s family came to the ranch to celebrate Ashley’s fourth birthday. Nancy was determined to find out what he planned to put in his book. And as usual, she was more attuned than Ronnie to the fact that there was something else in the air. “Michael seemed anxious and upset, and although he didn’t say anything, I could sense that he wanted some time alone with Ronnie and me,” Nancy recalled. “After lunch, I suggested that Colleen take the children for a walk around the pond. As soon as Mike was alone with us, he burst into tears.”
Nancy hugged him and stroked his back, just as she had done on those long rides to the ranch when he was a small boy. For the next hour, Michael poured out the terrible secret that he had been holding inside for more than thirty years. About the camp counselor who had molested him when he was eight years old. About the shameful pictures of him that he was afraid were out there somewhere. About the anguish that had never lifted.
As Michael began to talk, shaking and stammering, Ronnie couldn’t comprehend what his son was telling him.
“What?” he asked.
“He was molested, honey,” Nancy explained.
“By who?” Ronnie asked.
“By a counselor at day camp,” she replied.
“Who was the guy?” Ronnie demanded. “I’ll find him and kick his butt.”
“Let Mike get it out of his system, honey,” Nancy said to him, more firmly.
Then she began to question her stepson, drawing out more and more information: How old was he when it happened? What was the name of the camp? How many days a week was he there? How long did this go on? As Michael answered, he couldn’t look at his father’s face. He stared at Ronnie’s belt buckle, feeling as though he would vomit.
Finally, Ronnie moved toward Michael, and their eyes met. “Dad, he orally copulated me. He took me in his mouth,” Michael told him.
Ronnie put his arms around his son. “Why didn’t you tell me about this when it happened?” he asked.
Michael replied: “Because I was afraid you would stop liking me.”
And then, it was Michael’s turn to say something he never had before. He turned to his stepmother. “I love you,” he told Nancy.
When Michael learned that a thirty-two-page outline of his book had leaked to Penthouse magazine, Nancy assured him that she and Ronnie would publicly support his decision to go public with the sexual abuse he had suffered. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater told reporters that while the president and first lady were “saddened by the fact that he had kept it from them all these years,” they hoped that Michael’s book might help prevent the same thing from happening to other children. Nancy’s press secretary, Elaine Crispen, made a similar comment. Michael wrote later: “It was the first time since Dad had become president that the White House had ever made a statement in support of anything I had done, and I was elated.”
Michael sent Nancy an advance copy of the book in March 1988. She read it with trepidation, staying up half the night. Sure enough, it had plenty of brutal things to say about his father, his mother, and his stepmother. But she saw that he had been just as hard on himself. “It was wonderful to see how Mike had grown and changed, and how he was now able to take more responsibility for his own life,” she wrote. “Ironically, this book, which started off as one more source of friction between us, actually helped us develop a better relationship.”
* * *
Nancy had good reason to be wary of a tell-all book. Her daughter, Patti, then thirty-three, had coauthored a supposed work of fiction called Home Front, which was published in 1986. Nancy learned of the project not from Patti, but by reading an item in Time. The plot centers on the free-spirited daughter of a former TV pitchman named Robert Canfield who becomes California governor and then president. The heroine’s mother, Harriet Canfield, is a fashion-obsessed airhead who, upon arriving at the White House, declares: “There’s just so much history here! Imagine all the people who have been within these walls. But, good grief, I just can’t wait to redecorate.” A People magazine cover story labeled Patti’s novel “a literary striptease that might never have been published but for its author’s obvious family connections. What the book lacks in literary merit, it makes up for in entertainment value as a First Family parlor game.”
To Nancy, seeing her daughter’s bitterness toward her laid out so publicly was not at all entertaining. It was excruciating. In 1989, after several years in which they barely spoke, Nancy wrote in her autobiography that her relationship with Patti was “one of
the most painful and disappointing aspects of my life. I wish it weren’t true, and I still hope it will change, but so far, at least, it hasn’t been a happy story. Somehow, no matter what I do, we seem to square off.”
The rebellious daughter who had burst out sobbing when her father was elected governor was even unhappier to see him in the White House. Over the eight years of Ronnie’s presidency, Patti stayed there no more than four or five times, by her estimation. As she was trying to make it as an actress, Patti bristled at having security agents follow her every move. One day she interviewed hunky singer-actor Kris Kristofferson for the NBC popular-music television show The Midnight Special, and it ended with an overnight tryst. The next morning, Patti found that her Secret Service detail had been waiting all night outside Kristofferson’s New York hotel, unsure when the president’s daughter would reappear. The agents glared at her. “Tell you what,” she said. “On the occasions when I know my plans ahead of time, I’ll let you know. The times I don’t, you’ll have to wing it. I can’t always predict what will happen in my life.” Word of her sleepover with Kristofferson got back to Nancy via the agents’ logs. Her mother told Patti to behave with “a little more decency.”
In 1984 Patti “signed off” on having no Secret Service protection, as her brother Ron had done the year before. Security officials subsequently informed her they had picked up intelligence overseas that a terrorist act was possibly being plotted against one of the president’s daughters, though they didn’t know which one. “Patti screamed & complained so much we took the S.S. detail away at her request,” Ronnie wrote in his February 1, 1984, diary entry. “Now S.S. went to her & asked if she would accept it for no more than a week until they could get this informant out of Lebanon & check the story. She said yes. But today’s the 4th day & she’s screaming again about invasion of her privacy & last night she abused the agents terribly. I said take them away from her so she’s again without protection. Insanity is hereditary—you catch it from your kids.”
The Triumph of Nancy Reagan Page 40
