The First Lady: Mrs. Ronald aka Nancy Reagan

Ronald and Nancy Reagan left the White House on January 20, 1989. Three decades before, on January 20, 1961, Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower finished their time in Washington.

Picturing Nancy and Mamie side by side highlights how much has changed when it comes to presidential spouses. And another 30 years on, our new first lady, PhD recipient, Dr. Jill Biden will continue her role as a community college professor as her husband assumes office. The vice-presidential spouse, Douglas Emhoff, it is inarguably the case, has nothing in common when it comes to gender with any of his predecessors.

Reflections on the First Lady in this winter of change comes, from among other things, reading an early copy of Karen Tumulty’s book The Triumph of Nancy Reagan to be published in April by Simon & Schuster. It is prodigious, 578 pages plus notes.

Tumulty has done a superb job, reporting and researching in the Reagan archives, locating everything of significance that been written about or by Nancy herself and about the Reagans as a couple. She interviewed their closest relatives, staff and political aides. The result is a full account of its subject’s multi-dimensional life. The book is as much a triumph for Tumulty as it is for the Nancy Reagan she portrays.

My qualifications for having an opinion on this topic come from having been the editor of her post-presidential memoir, My Turn, written with Bill Novak and published in 1989.

Novak and I had already done well together on other projects, so I worked especially closely with him. For the editing I tag-teamed with my formidable Random House colleague, Kate Medina. I also spent many hours with Nancy (as I was told to call her) in a number of swanky places as the book developed. I served as an interviewer and adviser, and eventually helped Bill shape the book.

I was so deeply engaged in the publishing process that I took responsibility for the seating arrangements at our big bookseller dinner before the book was released. We had to have the same number of courses as we had tables so that Nancy could join everyone in the room for a course. She probably ate very little, her preference when it came to food.

As Tumulty writes and I can confirm, Nancy had real rapport with men when she chose to. For myself I can say, we liked each other. The last time I saw her in Washington, probably a short time before her death in 2016, I introduced myself. Behind the large glasses she wore as she lost much of her sight, she smiled broadly and said, “We did have fun…” And we did.

What makes Tumulty’s book so interesting is that Nancy’s reputation in her public persona was as much about her personal tastes, her appearance, her astrologers and her cattiness as it was about her undeniably significant role in how the Reagan presidency unfolded. Ronnie, as she called him, was her life’s work and there is no doubt that she had an important part in where he succeeded as president and minimizing his missteps.

Nancy’s story is, by any measure, a good one, for its challenges and her humanizing qualities. She had a difficult childhood until she was adopted by Dr. Loyal Davis, a fleeting career in movies, a talent for socializing with her “sort” in Beverly Hills, a poor record (by her own account) as a mother and a defining, devoted relationship with Ronald Reagan in what was an exceptional marriage.

From reading his letters, notes and public declarations of love, it is clear Reagan was as besotted with her as she was with him. Her often awkward style of presentation, “borrowing” and not returning designer clothes, her class faux pas, and her frostiness with Barbara Bush and Raisa Gorbechova, whose husbands were major figures in Ronnie’s orbit never seemed to bother him.

Tumulty’s account of their final years together with his Alzheimer’s and her physical frailty is moving. Even the most glamorous of lives cannot avoid the consequences of old age. Nancy was 94 when she died, older than she wanted to admit.

One striking aspect that emerged in Novak’s and my time with Nancy was that she expressed herself much more vividly than was immediately apparent until you read her words back in transcripts. As Bill began drafting, he became increasingly concerned that he didn’t have enough material to write the book he knew he should. And yet, the book that was published was astonishingly candid, as Tumulty told me reading it so long after it was done.

In a few instances, Bill and I had to shape her insights into sentences that were blunter than she may have realized. The most significant of these was: “Although Ronald Reagan loves people, he often seems remote and he doesn’t let people come too close. There’s a wall around him. He lets me come closer than anyone else, but there are times when even I feel that barrier.”

She didn’t change a word, and never told us to modify our judgments. Nancy trusted Bill, Kate and me. Most of the major reviews at the time were snarky. There was even a biography of her by Kitty Kelley that claimed she had an affair with Frank Sinatra. I had no access to the boudoir, but I’d bet that is ridiculous. She did very much enjoy being with Sinatra, who unlike Ronnie was willing to let his hair (and later, his toupee) down with her.

My Turn was a major bestseller.

I also worked on two books with Rosalynn Carter and have watched with some interest the trajectory of every first lady since Jackie Kennedy. There is no narrative through line; Mamie Eisenhower and Pat Nixon were from a different strand of womanhood than Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama and Jill Biden.

Tumulty observes and I agree that the wives of presidents often feel things even more deeply than their husbands. When Jimmy Carter was defeated for a second term it was Rosalynn who suffered physical symptoms while Jimmy spent his time whittling and writing. Barbara Bush, it has been said, once drove herself into a snowbank with depression. Hillary’s private rage at her husband’s behavior was probably a match for her public anger at “the great right-wing conspiracy” against them.

The men who would be president have an abundance of self-confidence and self-regard to aspire for the job, but their wives tend to suffer the frustrations and defeats more than they do.

The Nancy Reagan in Tumulty’s book is mostly admirable, even when she seems foolish about, say, her age. What she had was acutely sensitive antenna about the people around her husband that transcended politics. In fact, Nancy’s private belief on matters of social policy would not have pleased many of Reagan’s conservative supporters.

There is always a lot to say about the legacy of national figures and celebrities. Karen Tumulty’s book gives Nancy Reagan a legacy that is not perfect, but then again whose is?