Reagan by Bob Spitz

Author:Bob Spitz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-10-01T16:00:00+00:00

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Nancy Reagan, a not-so-innocent bystander, became a victim of the backlash. She wasn’t used to being subject to criticism; she had managed to sidestep the spotlight as the governor’s wife. As the First Lady, however, and in a time of economic duress, she very soon came under fire.

“Virtually everything I did during that first year was misunderstood and ridiculed,” she recalled.

As early as the inaugural, Americans perceived—rightly or wrongly—that Nancy Reagan was an imperious character. While average Americans struggled to get by, she surrounded herself with her millionaire Los Angeles friends who arrived in Washington in private planes and limousines like potentates at the court of Louis XIV. Much was made of her visits to the New York showrooms of top fashion couturiers like Bill Blass, James Galanos, and Adolfo, where she tried on $25,000 beaded gowns and $1,000 cocktail dresses that skimmed her size-four figure. She was photographed in a $25,000 Maximilian mink coat, wearing $480,000 diamond earrings. It was no secret that her Beverly Hills hairdresser, Julius Bengtsson, traveled everywhere with her, and on Air Force One, at the taxpayers’ expense. Her personal manicurist arrived once a week from Los Angeles to touch up her nails. One of the hottest-selling postcards in Washington, D.C., was a depiction of the First Lady wearing an ermine cape and crown jewels above the caption “Queen Nancy.”

“We had a huge image problem on our hands,” says Sheila Tate, who arrived late during the transition as Nancy Reagan’s press officer.

No matter what the intentions of the president’s wife, they were often construed as self-indulgences. There was scorn when she announced the redecoration of the White House residence for $822,640 and a national uproar at her purchase of 220 place settings of gilt-edged Lenox china at $1,000 per place setting, despite her insistence that the cost would be covered entirely by private contributions. On the same day the government set new nutritional guidelines declaring that, to rein in the cost of school lunches, ketchup would henceforth be considered a vegetable, the White House announced that Nancy Reagan had spent $209,500 for another set of new china, this one for the residence, each piece hand-painted and monogrammed with her initials. The press began referring to the whole mess as “Chinagate.”

Her reaction to the criticism of these extravagances was tone deaf and defensive. She seemed to have no understanding that the country was mired in a recession, or of the straits most of the public was in. She lacked her husband’s skill with people. And she was awkward and condescending toward the press, which showed her no mercy. “She was a target for reporters,” says Peter McCoy, her chief of staff. “Everyone had it in for her; they just beat her up.” Even social friends, like Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw, came down hard on her for indiscretions, perceived or otherwise. Comedians routinely made her the punch lines of their jokes. The situation confounded the First Lady, who was easily bruised. “There are times

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