Certainly, we never would have gotten together if we weren’t already involved in a relationship at the time he was appointed. But neither of us had any idea Alan would ever return to government.
As chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan was invited to many official events, but our status as an unmarried couple created a few awkward moments. One magazine writer described me dropping him off at work in the morning when he was waiting to be confirmed. What was our relationship? Everyone wondered. At times, so did we.
As he prepared to move from New York to Washington, I helped him furnish an apartment at the Watergate. To no one’s surprise, domesticity was not Alan’s strength. How much would I participate in his public life? We decided that for the time being we would try to find a comfortable balance enjoying our life while taking care to be reasonably discreet.
Doors did begin to open for Alan, in the way Washington embraces people who hold powerful jobs. There were official invitations, more than someone with Alan’s work schedule could ever accept. When Mikhail Gorbachev came in May 1990 for a summit with President Bush, we were invited to the state dinner. It was what Washington considered a “hot ticket,” with 127 invitations highly sought by business leaders, politicians, and socialites.
A private person not eager to make small talk, Alan tried to rush past the reporters waiting to cover the arrival of guests. As The Washington Post described us the following morning, “When photographers tried to cajole a smile from Mitchell’s escort Alan Greenspan, she quickly set them straight: ‘For a Federal Reserve chairman, that was a smile.’” Having covered all the Reagan-Gorbachev summits, I was fascinated to watch another chapter in the U.S.-Soviet relationship, this time as a guest at the party.
The warmth of the toasts between the two presidents marked the close of the Cold War era. Gorbachev said, “The Soviet Union does not regard the United States as its enemy. We have firmly adopted the policy of moving from mutual understanding through cooperation to joint action. I think the work we have been doing together with President Bush during these days can be considered as another step toward a more humane and just world.”
For his part, Bush said, “You deserve great credit for the course that you have chosen, for the political and economic reforms that you have introduced, and for creating within the Soviet Union this commitment to change…. We want to see Perestroika succeed. We want to see this transition now under way in the Soviet Union maintain its momentum.”
I was struck by how much had happened in the decade since I’d first come to the White House, when the Soviet Union was an “evil empire” and our two nations were threatening each other with nuclear annihilation. Now, Bush and Gorbachev were trying to define a new kind of relationship, something between former enemies and future allies. And Don Regan, who had tried so hard to dominate that first Geneva summit, was long gone.
Three years later, my husband and I hosted a retirement dinner for the head of the Bank of England. When Alan first became Fed chairman, Sir Robin Leigh-Pemberton and his wife, Rose, were among the first in the very traditional world of central banking to welcome us to their country home, even though we were not married. So I was eager to reciprocate and arranged a dinner in their honor at the Chevy Chase Club, just outside of Washington. It was a lovely evening, but our British friends had of course asked that we invite all of the officials with whom they’d interacted in Washington. That meant including the former secretary of the treasury, Don Regan.
The only correct response was to put on a “social” face and get through it. In fact, there was a touching quality to Regan once he was out of office. He had moved to Florida, and was painting landscapes as well as doing occasional television commentary for CNBC, our business cable network. He was still charming, a wonderful raconteur. You could see the sparks of what Ronald Reagan had liked so much in him. But now the former chief of staff was much more vulnerable, softer than when he reigned supreme in the White House.
I saw him once more, at a dinner hosted by George Shultz and his wife, Charlotte. The Shultzes were participating in one of those little-known, but charming, Washington traditions: when a new treasury secretary is appointed, his predecessors, from both political parties, welcome him with a dinner. This particular occasion was in honor of Paul O’Neill, George W. Bush’s first treasury appointee. (Two years later, O’Neill was fired, and became the first Bush cabinet member to criticize the president in a confessional book—rare for an administration that prides itself on absolute loyalty.) But at that time, O’Neill was flush with his new appointment.
The dinner was held two blocks from the White House at the Metropolitan Club, a somewhat stuffy gathering place that for years has helped Washington men make connections and preserve the old-boy network.
In fact, one of my NBC White House colleagues once told me I’d never make it as a correspondent because I couldn’t join a club. Shortly afterward, his own contract at the network was dropped. But the Metropolitan, and all it stands for, still dominates a certain sector of Washington life. Nonetheless, in 1988, one tradition changed: its members bowed to pressure and began accepting women.
On this occasion, all the former secretaries of both political parties were invited. With at least forty people in the room, what were the odds of my being seated next to Don Regan? Yet there we were, side by side. Again, he was friendly and well mannered, with none of the rough edges that had abruptly ended the public service of an otherwise bright and engaging personality.
In fact, I still have sympathy for some of the people who’ve fallen from grace in Washington. The feeding frenzy can be so unforgiving, especially in this day of nonstop cable news. How do you explain to your kids the invasion of privacy and humiliation when network cameras arrive on your front lawn before dawn? I was embarrassed when camera crews didn’t clean up after themselves while hounding the Clintons’ Arkansas pal Webster Hubbell, the Justice Department official who pleaded guilty to cheating his former law firm. And sometimes, the Washington hunt for scandal traps the innocent. As Ray Donovan, Reagan’s labor secretary, put it after he’d been falsely accused: “Which office do I go to, to get my reputation back?”
As tough as I can be in reporting a story, I don’t enjoy going in for the kill. Despite the abuse I had suffered at Don Regan’s hands, I couldn’t help feeling kindly toward him.
The Don Regan debacle explains a great deal about Ronald Reagan and his presidency. As politician and president, Reagan could persuade himself of almost anything. He did not trade arms for hostages. He could not confront unpleasantness, and was reluctant to think ill of those around him. He had accepted Don Regan as treasury secretary, and then as chief of staff, passively, on the recommendation of others. Incapable of being cruel himself, he could not recognize cruelty in others. And for all the criticism of his wife’s involvement in West Wing dramas, he badly needed her protection. The rest of the world finally understood that during the last decade of Ronald Reagan’s life.
Nancy Reagan was an inseparable part of her husband’s life, but for many in the press, she was unapproachable. For an interviewer, Nancy Reagan was not an easy subject. Smart and well rehearsed, she was rarely spontaneous. And she was the kind of woman who responded more charmingly to male interviewers, especially personal favorites like Tom Brokaw or Mike Wallace, two old friends. With them she was not only more comfortable; she could even be a little flirtatious. It made for very good television. In addition, she had a special connection, through Mike, with his son, my colleague Chris Wallace.
With me, Nancy was wary. We did several interviews, one for the Today show in New York, another in the White House on her “Just Say No to Drugs” campaign. Each time, she was determined to keep the focus safely on her antidrug agenda, which did a great deal to focus national attention on drug abuse among children and teenagers. I asked Mrs. Reagan how she could raise those issues while the White House was cutting funds for drug prevention and cures. She gave me a steely gaze and stuck to her scripted answer
s.
But for all the cynicism with which some reporters greeted the “Just Say No” campaign, it was important work. With Mike Deaver’s help, Nancy Reagan found a real cause. People made fun of the campaign, but Nancy Reagan greatly expanded the job of a modern first lady, going even beyond the substantive role Rosalynn Carter had played in the White House.
Mrs. Carter had been criticized for sitting in on cabinet meetings, but behind the scenes, Nancy Reagan played an even more important policy role in her husband’s administration, as a powerful advisor without portfolio. It was Nancy who, relying heavily on her brother, a medical doctor in Philadelphia, persuaded her Ronnie to be more open-minded about the scourge of AIDS. He resisted mightily, until it got personal—when their good friend Rock Hudson was afflicted and died on October 2, 1985. Still, Reagan did not give a major speech on AIDS until 1987.
I really admired Nancy and Ronald Reagan’s marriage. It didn’t work for the children, at least when they were younger, but that is their own story; the bond between the two parents in a way excluded everyone else. But I can’t imagine a closer couple. Reagan’s handwritten letters, published recently, show that he had a natural gift of expression that not even Peggy Noonan, his talented speechwriter, could have supplied. And many of his most beautiful letters are odes to his Nancy. Every woman secretly longs to receive letters like the ones Reagan wrote his wife.
By the time they left Washington, Nancy had already overcome the negative impression she’d made in the first years, the years of “Queen Nancy” and all the criticism of her clothes, borrowed jewels, and White House china. Her campaign against drugs had given her a platform from which to lead a national cause. She had suffered and survived breast cancer, following Betty Ford’s groundbreaking example in speaking out as a role model for other women who might not otherwise have sought medical help.
As I stood on the east front of the Capitol and watched the Reagans lift off in their white-topped helicopter, I could not have imagined the sadness that would shade their retirement. For Nightly News that evening, I reflected only on what the Reagan revolution had wrought, and how on their way out of town they had circled the White House for a last, nostalgic farewell.
Reagan’s death after a ten-year retreat into the silent world of Alzheimer’s disease was a great sadness for the nation. For Nancy Reagan, the preceding decade had been a long, mournful time of almost unbearable, unending loss. Though she had to have help to relieve her of some of the duty, she was constantly at his side. As the former president retreated into the darkness of the disease, his wife refused even to consider a nursing home or other kind of facility.
When Ronald Reagan finally died, the outpouring of affection, even nostalgia, for his presidency surprised many of us who had covered his White House. Some felt it was a political decision by the networks to celebrate a Republican life. In fact, the coverage did not go beyond the amount of airtime the networks devoted to the state funeral services for Lyndon Johnson, long before extended live coverage was the norm.
By the time of Reagan’s death, his son Ronald Prescott Reagan and daughter Patti Davis were finally reconciled with their mother, and gave eloquent tributes to their father. Reagan’s devoted daughter Maureen had already died from cancer, far too young. In their complicated family, a role at the services was also carved out for his son Michael, often estranged from his father. And Reagan’s beloved Nancy, a lightning rod for criticism during much of his presidency, had in the years since stirred the nation with her example of steadfast, and selfless, devotion. Her strength and serenity on his final trip to Washington only completed the circle of the Reagans’ extraordinary journey in life and death.
On the day Reagan was buried, I again found myself in a dual role—appearing on the Today program with Katie Couric outside the National Cathedral before the service, then going inside with Alan to attend the memorial as a guest. Afterward, I rushed back outside to rejoin Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert, who had also been at the service. All of us were moved by what Reagan had represented.
During Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the world had gone through momentous change. The Soviet Union had declined and was on the edge of collapse; AIDS had become the scourge of entire populations; taxes had been slashed; defense spending had ballooned; the Supreme Court had been altered for a generation to come; conservatives had taken ownership of the Republican Party.
The outpouring of affection for Reagan during that week telegraphed something more important about his presidency. He was criticized at times for delegating too much, for being late to understand the significance of AIDS, and for being stuck in a 1950s attitude toward minorities. He was praised, perhaps too extravagantly, for ending the Cold War and downsizing government. But his true legacy may have been to give Americans a feeling of hope and optimism that they hadn’t had since the days of John F. Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt. Reagan, like those predecessors, had a rare ability to convey the inherent goodness of America. It meant overlooking some of the nation’s flaws, but it marked a man who was a true leader, and a great politician.
Reagan’s presidency was also the period during which I came of age, as a reporter and as a woman. I had become more skilled as an interviewer, and more humble, discovering how little was really transparent at the highest levels of government. I’d made extraordinary friends, and been an eyewitness to a transforming era in our nation’s foreign policy. But most important, I had met the person with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life.
CHAPTER 5
Scandal on the Hill
Would I ever again be with my family to eat a Thanksgiving turkey, instead of waiting outside while the president of the United States ate his? I was beginning to doubt it. Once again canceling a holiday trip home, I found myself in Kennebunkport, Maine, over Thanksgiving weekend in 1988, watching George Bush buy an extension cord at the local hardware store and rent the video Broadcast News. At least there would be a payoff: I expected to become chief White House correspondent for NBC, the job of my dreams. The campaign was over, and I was covering the transition to the new White House. Chris Wallace had decided to leave NBC for ABC, and I was moving on from my role as “second banana” at last.
Bush’s election seems now to have been preordained, given the collapse of Michael Dukakis. But it wasn’t always that obvious. In fact, as Bush headed toward his nominating convention in New Orleans in 1988, Dukakis was seventeen points ahead in the polls. For the media, there was only one story: Whom was George Bush going to choose to run as his vice president? There was talk of both Bob and Elizabeth Dole, Jack Kemp, John Danforth, Alan Simpson of Wyoming, a close friend of the Bush family, and Dick Lugar from Indiana, a solid senator with seniority on both the Foreign Relations and Agriculture committees. He’d been mayor of Indianapolis and head of the National League of Cities, and, while not charismatic, came from a swing state. But I was also hearing that Lugar’s very junior Indiana colleague Senator Dan Quayle was on the list. Then, days before the convention opened, a story appeared in The New York Times—planted, many suspected, by the Baker forces—that Dan Quayle was under serious consideration. It was a trial balloon, an attempt by the Baker faction to get Quayle eliminated, in favor of Bob Dole or one of the other, more senior, senators. But as it turned out, Quayle had a lot more support with the vice president’s inner circle than even Baker had reckoned. Bush’s campaign manager, Robert Teeter, and political consultant Roger Ailes had both worked for Quayle. They and Lee Atwater were all arguing that Quayle would bring a needed injection of youth to the ticket. And Bush friend Nicholas Brady, a former senator, was promoting Quayle as well.
Everyone was trying to find out what Bush was about to decide, but we were told he hadn’t yet made up his mind. Then, on Tuesday, August 16, my colleague Tom Pettit, who was traveling with Bush, and I both got word that Bush had finally chosen his running mate. As we later learned, the first person Bush confided in was Reagan, whispering in the president’s ear when Reagan arrived in New Orle
ans. Bush then told his wife, Barbara.
His staff did not learn his surprising choice until they had all gathered at the home of the base commander where their plane had landed in New Orleans. As I learned later from several of those present, the vice president was stretched out on a bed, resting and talking to his aides. Margaret Tutwiler and Lee Atwater were sitting on the floor of the bedroom; Baker, Ailes, Teeter, and Craig Fuller, among others, were arrayed around the room. All were eagerly waiting to hear whom Bush had anointed. When Bush told them it was Quayle, there was dead silence. No congratulations, no pro forma nods of approval, just—silence. Even Teeter and Ailes, both Quayle supporters, were reluctant to laud the decision. Finally, to break the ice, Baker spoke up and said, “Mr. Vice President, now we have to start notifying people.”
When we got word that Bush had chosen someone, we jumped on the phones to try to find out whom he’d picked. There is a hierarchy on each network team at the conventions, which have long been proving grounds for reporters. With the nominations now sewn up months in advance because of changes in the primary system, the conventions serve no meaningful purpose except as advertisements for each party and reunions for political reporters. But in 1988, the pending announcement of Bush’s running mate was real news. Breaking that story would be the only shot at network glory. The real contenders to get it were the floor correspondents, the stars of each network’s reporting team. They were the ones, four per network in those days, who wore funny headsets and roamed the floor of the convention snagging interviews.
Talking Back Page 19
