 Hi, I'm Mark Uptegrove, President and CEO of the LBJ Foundation. On behalf of our co-hosts, Humanities Texas and the White House Historical Association, welcome to our conversation with Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty on her new book on former First Lady Nancy Reagan. Before we get to that, though, one quick detour. For years, the White House Historical Association has featured a new Christmas ornament focusing on a different presidential administration. The ornaments are wildly popular, with well over a million sold every year. This year, it's LBJ's turn. At the end of tonight's program, we'll hear from White House Historical Association President Stuart McLauren on this beautiful keepsake and the history it represents. Please stick around for that, and I know many of you will be glad to know that the ornament is available for purchase through our store at lbjstore.com. Now it's my privilege to introduce our guests this evening. Karen Tumulty is a political columnist for the Washington Post. Before joining the Post, Karen wrote for Time Magazine, where she covered politics for 15 years. A native of San Antonio and a graduate of UT, she has deep roots in Texas. Tonight she'll talk to us about her new book, The Triumph of Nancy Reagan, which was published today. Doris Kearns Goodwin calls it the gold standard of books on First Ladies for generations to come. Signed copies of the book are also available at lbjstore.com. Our moderator this evening is Anita McBride. Anita serves as executive in residence at the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, where she directs the legacies of America's First Ladies initiative. Her White House service spans two decades and three presidential administrations, including the Reagan administration. She also served as chief of staff to First Lady Laura Bush from 2005 to 2009. Now please join me in welcoming Karen Tumulty and Anita McBride. Well, I have to say thank you so much for the opportunity to interview you about this book, The Triumph of Nancy Reagan, incredible book, so well researched and detailed. So much material about her life that no one, even people who know her well, never knew. So my first question for you about this wonderful book is, and this is the first time you are writing a book, why did you start with this topic with Nancy Reagan? You know, it's interesting this wasn't my idea. My editor, Simon and Chuster Priscilla Payton, who had been my longtime editor when I was at Time Magazine, she and I had talked over the years about the possibility that at some point I might want to write a book someday. And so in the early fall of 2016, it was shortly after Nancy Reagan died earlier that year. She came to me and she just said, how about a big biography of Nancy Reagan? And I don't know, there was just something about it that struck me, but it was interesting because so as a result, I came at this with no book proposal, no outline and really no preconceptions about either this woman or what kind of book this was going to be. Well, what I can imagine, you know, for a person who had been a public figure over such a long period of time to on the state level, but on the national stage, there had to be so much material about her, about her life. And did she keep personal diary the way Ronald Reagan did? Was that a source for you? Tragically, she did keep a diary, but she had it destroyed upon her death. And one of the things that I discovered was that a lot of the narrative about Nancy Reagan, the things that people thought were true really weren't. And there was also a big part of her life that that she sort of preferred to keep private. I mean, the stereotypes, the caricatures of her seemed to come down to, you know, either she was a shallow, fashion obsessed, dilettante, or she was this scheming power behind the throne. What I found was just so much richer and so much more complex. And, you know, I went in knowing that this was going to be a great love story, but the forces that brought these two people together, the sort of needs that they answered in each other were just a real revelation to me. And I also gained a real appreciation for the very big role that she played both in his political rise, in his presidency and tragically at the end of his life when he became incapacitated. It really falls on Nancy Reagan to become the caretaker of his legacy. Well, and I think, and to that point, I think one of the ways you start the book, there were a couple of things that really struck me was the quote from Lou Cannon that Reagan knew where he wanted to go, but she had a better sense of what he needed to do to get there. Did that help to frame how you were going to write this book? Yes. On one of my many, many nights of insomnia worrying about this book, I found this quote buried in one of Lou Cannon's books, President Reagan, role of a lifetime. And I went, oh my gosh, this is my North Star. And it's funny because I later mentioned it to Lou Cannon and he said, I don't even remember writing that, but it really did sort of, to me, clarify that Ronald Reagan was, you know, he had, he was a man of ambition, a man of vision, who had a really, you know, a gift at connecting with the country and making the country believe in itself. But she was really the one who handled a lot of the things that he couldn't, wouldn't. Things like the, he was very conflict diverse. So she would take on sort of the tough, dirty job. And she was much, much shrooter about people than he was. He was a delegator. He was an optimist. He believed that the people around him, you hire good people. You trust them to do the job. For her, trust was a very perishable commodity. And as James Baker, who was their White House Chief of Staff, and then later Treasury Secretary said, she had much better radar than he did and a much better nose for trouble. And she found it easier to influence the personnel decisions. I mean, who she felt needed to be fired that was not helping her husband. And I think the other, one of the other ways you start the book, which I thought was laid such groundwork about how she cultivated relationships of people around President Reagan, was this great description you have about the Blizzard of 1983 in Washington. And she and President Reagan are at the White House. George Schultz and his wife had just returned from a major overseas trip to China. He's about seven months into the job as Chief of Staff. She invites them over for dinner. But she had a reason why she wanted to do that. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure. So George Schultz was, you're right. He had just replaced Alexander Hague as Secretary of State. And he gets this, everybody's kind of stuck in Washington for the weekend. He gets this Saturday afternoon invitation from Nancy Reagan. Why don't you and your wife come over for supper? Just the four of us. And in the course of the dinner, both Nancy Reagan and Ronald Reagan start peppering George Schultz with questions about his trip. He'd been in China. And it's sort of what were the Chinese leaders like? Do they have a sense of humor? What's their bottom line? Do they have a bottom line? And from there, they begin talking about the Soviet Union. And George Schultz is really struck by how much Ronald Reagan has thought about this and how eager he is to actually... This is a man that, mind you, Ronald Reagan has decades of tough anti-Soviet rhetoric with the exception of Schultz. His administration is a bunch of hardliners who think you could never have anything like a working relationship with Moscow. And George Schultz suddenly realizes this president is dying to make a go of it. He believes in himself as a negotiator. And then suddenly, George Schultz realizes that was the whole reason that Nancy Reagan invited him over to dinner. She wanted to get Schultz away from the rest of the national security officials so that he could hear from Reagan directly. And it is an absolute revelation, as Schultz told me when he told me this story. But at that same moment, Schultz realizes that he has found a pretty powerful ally in this first lady who understands her husband and really is the only person in the world to whom Ronald Reagan is truly, truly close. Well, I think the importance of what you said that about developing her as an ally because she had enormous influence. And of course, getting things done in the White House, the president's schedule. And we'll talk a little bit of that later as well. But she wanted it appears to me in reading that passage that she wanted George Schultz to see what she saw in her husband, the potential to change the course of history. That's true. And she for a number of reasons. One is that she believed in Ronald Reagan's greatness and she wanted him to go down in history, not as a war monger, but as a peacemaker. She also knew that this is 1983. They're already thinking about the reelection that as much as the country likes Ronald Reagan, they are, you know, the polling is showing that there's also a little bit of anxiety that he might, you know, get the country in a war. And that could actually jeopardize his his reelection process. But there is also something that she understands about her husband because she knows him and that is that along with this hard line rhetoric, that there's a real idealism to Ronald Reagan. He believes in the biblical prophecy of Armageddon and he believes it is possible to have a world without nuclear weapons. So, you know, so all of those forces, I think, are are really at work. But she also knows that unless he has the right people around him, advising him, and unless those people are empowered, that, you know, this is never going to happen. There's there's another funny part of the book, although on that because that same year, that same spring, Ronald Reagan gives this speech where he to an evangelical audience where he brands the Soviet Union an evil empire. And Moscow goes ballistic and it becomes a huge thing. Well, Nancy Reagan hated that phrase, evil empire. And Reagan himself said, well, I thought it worked, even if Nancy wants me to tone down my rhetoric. But I talked to Stu Spencer, who was their closest political adviser. And he's also in a private dinner a few days later. And the first lady is just railing on her husband about this evil empire speech. And she just won't let him she won't let him off the hook on this. And at one point, Reagan turns to Stu Spencer and says, well, Stu, what do you think about it? And Stu goes, yeah, you know, they're an evil empire, but you know, that was kind of tough. And Reagan just cuts him off because before he can give Nancy any more fodder and says, well, what's for dessert? You know, that is, in fact, one of the people I know, of course, you talked to Stuart Spencer and there are so many quotes from him in the book as well about just how he described the Reagan's. And their marriage and their relationship as an inseparable team politically and personally. And there are so many others who describe them that way. But their marriage is like other marriages. They fight, they disagree. There's one one example. But President President Reagan was also known to. Cut Mrs. Reagan off on things like that sometimes and stand his ground. And yet he just simply adored her. His his letters to her are so passionate. I mean, hot, they really are. And so, yes, they are very much a real genuine married couple in in that regard, though, they argue they have their disagreements. She stands her ground. At one point, she was talking to Chris Wallace in an interview and she said, well, you know, does my husband ever tell me no? Sure, he does. So I wait a while and then I'll come back at him. I read that and then sort of remember that interview as well. I think, you know, one of the things that in your book and again, this had to be such painstaking research. I know you did it over a long period of time. But giving people an understanding of the totality of her life, the impact of her childhood, you know, experiences on her is very disruptive and and traumatic. And if you could share with us sort of how you saw how that formed her and her the way she thought the attachment to her husband that I'd love to to hear from you about that. Sure, I think you to understand why the Reagan's Bond was so tight, why they what they found in each other, the sort of happiness and wholeness that they found in each other. You really have to understand about the trauma that came with both of their childhoods. But in her case, she was born to an ambitious actress and a car salesman. It's a bad marriage. The her parents will soon go their separate ways. And then very, very soon after that, as soon as she is out of diapers, her mother sort of dumps her on relatives. And then for the next six years, you you see this this little girl just yearning for her mother, who has essentially abandoned her. Now, Nancy Reagan herself would say, oh, my mother had to go out and earn a living. But but you can see that that this child really for quite a while, definitely took second place to her mother's ambition to her social life, to her career. And it really left as as their son, Ron, told me a sort of a shadow on on Nancy Reagan's spirit that that never lifted. She was forever kind of insecure, forever anxious, forever sort of had the sense that no matter how good things got, how successful things got that the bottom could fall out at any moment. And if you don't mind, I would actually like to read a little bit because again, this is one of the things that was sort of frustrating about her, because these were things that she didn't normally reveal about herself. She was didn't like to open up in public that way. But I came across one speech that she gave in 1986. And this was to an audience of children at Boys Town in Omaha, a famous orphanage. And these are also children who don't come from intact, perfect homes. And she's there that day to get to get an award. But she says to them, if you don't mind my reading, yes, please, it's a very raw moment in the book. I was hoping you would read it. So there are four hundred thirty kids in this audience. She says, the reason I'm here today is not because of the award, but because of you. There was a time when I didn't quite know where I belonged either. What I wished for more than anything else in the world was a normal family. Do you know what happens when you heard inside? You usually start closing your heart to people because that's how you got hurt in the first place. You opened your heart. Another thing that happens is you stop trusting people because somewhere along the way, they probably didn't live up to your trust. And there's another thing that happens when you've been hurt. You start to think you're not worth much. You think to yourself, well, how can I be worth anything if someone would treat me in this terrible way? So I understand how you feel beaten down by it all. And, you know, when Ronald Reagan enters her life, her mother, I should say, ultimately redeems Nancy's childhood. She she marries a neurosurgeon. They moved to Chicago. Nancy worships her later adoptive father. But really in Ronald Reagan, I think she found that sort of stability and security that, you know, had been lacking in her life for so long. And then you can understand to why the assassination attempt that happens two months after he is inaugurated, that where he was much closer to death than than the country knew at the time, Ronald Reagan came very close to dying. And so you can see why, once again, there's that trapdoor. It could all be gone in just a second. So that really explains why she sort of turns to things like an astrologer. Ronald Reagan had a deep, abiding religious faith. He believed that he was spared from this assassin's bullet because God had a plan for him. And Nancy Reagan really didn't have didn't come from that tradition. And she was just, you know, grabbing on to anything that she felt could give her a sense of control because she knew that every time her husband left that White House that there could be treachery around the next corner. Now, your description of two of her being in that emergency room and what she saw in her husband is very chilling. I'm not sure I had read the level of detail of the trauma that she endured on that day. And in the speech you just read, too, you can see the example of just the lifelong sort of anxiety and need for security. And but you also talked about in the book when she met Ronald Reagan, who you say it was a state. She sees as a stable force. He was sort of at a floundering point in his life when they met in Hollywood. Can you talk about her coming to Hollywood with the career there, how they met, what developed in those years? Well, the the official story of how they met is that Nancy Davis newly arrived in Hollywood in the fall of 1949. This is the era when the Red Scare is gripping Hollywood. She opens up the Hollywood reporter and sees the name Nancy Davis on a list of supposed communist sympathizers. Turns out it's another Nancy Davis. But she goes to Mervyn Leroy, a very famous director who's directing a movie that she has a small part in. And she says, how can I get this straightened up? Can we go to the screen actors guild and get them to straighten this for me? Well, it just so happens that the president of the screen actors guild is a very handsome and newly single actor named Ronald Reagan. And so Mervyn Leroy calls up Ronald Reagan, who is a little disappointed because he was hoping he was calling to offer him a part. But he says, oh, don't worry about it. And so Nancy Davis says, oh, no, no, I'm going to have to meet with him in person and be reassured in person. Well, it turns out she had had her eye on on Ronald Reagan for quite a while. And in fact, a mutual friend had at one point tried to get them match them up at a dinner party, but there were 10 people for dinner. And Reagan just barely paid any attention to her at all. So that is that is how their first supposedly blind date was arranged. But what's important to understand here. Is that Ronald Reagan is at the low moment of his own life. He, too, comes from a very uncertain childhood. His father was an alcoholic who would take the family just from one disastrous situation into another. He had married he had married his first wife, Jane Wyman. She had basically walked out on it. She got bored in the marriage, just left. Now, this is at a moment when his movie career is hitting rock bottom. Hers, she's on her way to winning the Academy Award for the Best Actress. Jane Wyman's career is on the way up. Ronald Reagan's is on the way down. And then he was literally a broken man when he and Nancy Davis meet for this blind date. He is standing on two crutches because he has shattered his thigh bone in six different places in a baseball game. So really and truly when she opens the door of her apartment for this date, I think nobody, at least of all them, could have imagined what the future was ahead for both of them. But as Ronald Reagan would sometimes put it, he said, if if Nancy Davis hadn't come along when she did, I would have lost my soul. That is how what a low point in his own life that really was. And she saw him to as someone that she could take care of. Did she write? Would she have seen that at that moment? Is that what she was looking for? Well, I open the first chapter of the book with something she once wrote, which is that I always wanted someone I could belong to and someone who would belong to me. I always wanted someone I could take care of and someone who would take care of me. And I do think that one of the things that really attracted her to him was that he was not your typical movie star. He didn't have that kind of movie star ego. He really was still kind of a guy from the Midwest. And I think, though, that that is the same interestingly enough, sort of the same quality that attracted Jane Wyman to him, too. And but what the difference between the two of them was that they were both just scorchingly ambitious. Actresses had come from, you know, difficult childhoods. But it was really Nancy Davis later, Nancy Reagan's ambition was really all about him. And so they have this Hollywood marriage for for a good period of time. It was difficult for either of them to achieve great success in that realm. Although you say she got the contract at MGM over a very famous actress. Can you first tell everybody who got her? Well, it's a very funny story. So Nancy Davis, her mother, Edith Davis, is like a networker of par excellence. And so she had all these incredibly high powered friends who were big in Hollywood. Walter Houston, the Davis's would vacation with when Nancy was a child. He won the Academy Award for Treasurer the Sierra Madre when the year that Nancy gets to to Hollywood. But their family was also very, very close to Spencer Tracy. And in fact, kept one of Spencer Tracy's deep secrets. He was an alcoholic. He would have these violent episodes. And when he needed to dry out, he would often turn to the Davis family in Chicago where her adoptive father, loyal Davis was a neurosurgeon and he would find a private floor at Pass event hospital for Spencer Tracy to go dry out. And then he could go on his way so that when it comes time for Nancy Davis, an actress of very modest accomplishments to get her screen test in Hollywood. Spencer Tracy, one of the biggest, most bankable stars at MGM has them pull out all the stops for this. They get George Kukor, one of the most famous directors in Hollywood to direct her screen test. A normal screen test, you just sort of grab whatever technician is around. But anyway, so she gets the contract, but the funny thing that I came across is that because MGM, the biggest star making factory in Hollywood, gives this contract to Nancy Davis, they turned down and another actress who is making her way up at the time and actress who was going by the name Marilyn Monroe. So this is something, by the way, that Nancy didn't find out until probably the late 1980s. And of course, she just thought it was hilarious. Oh, my gosh, because you actually have a great photo in the book, too, of the Reagan's and Marilyn Monroe having dinner probably in the fifties or whatever that was. So at that point, she didn't know that's so interesting. Yeah, that must have been the worst decision MGM ever made. Well, so the Hollywood years in terms of them both being actors are waning for them. Ronald Reagan goes on to be spokesperson for General Electric Theater and is becoming quite politically active in his rhetoric during that time. Can we make the pivot now to going into politics? I mean, Nancy Reagan says she claims they never considered a life in politics. But what happened? Well, what happens is Ronald Reagan gets this television deal. And this is the fifties, you know, there was a time when Ronald Reagan said, I'd never do television because nobody will pay to see you in the theater if they can see you for free at home. But as his career starts scraping bottom, he even does a Las Vegas show at one point. He gets this offer and GE Theater turns out to be an incredibly successful show. The Reagan's money worries are suddenly solved. But part of the deal is that he is to tour the country and speak to GE workers and as GE's catchman. I mean, he meets literally tens of thousands of people going across the country. And it is really in those appearances that Ronald Reagan develops his feel for middle America, those those people who would later become known as the Reagan Democrats. He listens to their concerns. And he has already become he starts out as a really quite liberal new deal Democrat, but he has already begun his own evolution, in part because of the, you know, wars over communist influence in Hollywood, in part because he develops very strong feelings about the confiscatory tax system. But he also begins to understand because he's hearing it out in the country, that the frustrations that, you know, average people are feeling. And he becomes just incredibly popular in these things. And by the early 60s, he has changed his party registration. He's become a Republican. And then in 1964, right before Barry Goldwater is going to go down to one of the biggest electoral defeats in history, they decide his campaign decides a sort of a Hail Mary to put Ronald Reagan on TV. And Ronald Reagan gives this speech, you know, to pitch Barry Goldwater. But it is absolutely electrifying. And in the wreckage that was the Republican Party after that 64 defeat, a bunch of Barry Goldwater's big financial backers come to Ronald Reagan, a, you know, essentially a movie star whose best days in show business are way behind him and talk him into running for governor of California. And that is where, as Nancy Reagan would later put it, and that is how we found ourselves on a road where we never expected to be ever. And she encouraged her husband's political rise. But it was you also describe how it was those skills. She learned from her mother about network and outreach that she was the one who really cultivated these valuable relationships for him to be politically successful. That's right. She was, you know, left to his own devices. He would just have rather been out on his ranch by himself, you know, pounding fence posts. And it really was she cultivates the network. She does the care and feeding of those relationships. As their son, Ron told me, she forces him essentially out there to, you know, again, just building the scaffolding for his rise. And she also becomes kind of a troubleshooter in the first campaign for governor. And she's still finding her way, by the way. She she becomes much shrooter, much more sophisticated about it. But it was like the men who were running his campaign just hated the fact that she'd be on the phone with them first thing in the morning, giving them her whole litany of things she was worried about and how they were all falling down on the job. And that sometimes she'd be the last person at night they would hear from, too. And this is a time when, you know, political handlers thought the only role that a candidate's spouse was supposed to play was to look good and say what she was told to say. And so when she comes to Washington as now wife of the president, so First Lady of the country, her first year in Washington was so difficult. And we'll get into that. But before we do, did she have a similar experience as First Lady of California? Was there negativity around her, the issues she got involved in? Or was it just private amongst the political advisers? No, it's really interesting. And if you look at the sort of difficulty she encounters in Sacramento for her eight years there, it really does foreshadow everything that goes wrong for her in Washington. One of the first things she does is announce that she is not going to live in the governor's mansion. It is a fire trap, and it really was. It was in this kind of seedy part of downtown Sacramento, across the street from a no-star motel in an American Legion hall. And it really was a fire trap. But this immediately puts her under criticism, like what? The house isn't good enough for you. She picks up the family. They move to a house out in a nicer part of town that is paid for by their political benefactors and then leased back to the Reagan's at a pretty good rate. She acquires a bunch of furniture for the house donated to the state. But, you know, so she develops this reputation as somebody who has very expensive tastes. She commissions a new governor's mansion to be built, which, by the way, nobody ever lived in, because the next governor is Jerry Brown, who was the son of the governor that Reagan had defeated. And he's a bachelor and he lives in an efficiency apartment who sleeps on a mattress on the floor. So she develops this reputation as somebody who has these expensive tastes, who is aloof. And, you know, she she sees Sacramento as kind of a backwater where you can't find a decent place to shop or get your hair done. And so she's, you know, she really does have a difficult time there as well. She's getting more sophisticated about it, but it really does foreshadow a lot of the things that go wrong for her, especially in the early years in Washington. Well, in those early years in Washington, I mean, the press was so negative about her. There were several articles and you quote them in the book. Sally Quinzen was particularly brutal, saying Nancy wants to be queen. And Betty Friedan, then, of course, Gloria Steinem, all of these opinions about her, of course, as really setting feminism back. But she recognized that she was a liability for her husband in that first year. Did she not? She does. And it's important to recognize that all of you need to know the backdrop because Nancy Reagan is a. At least her public image is as a sort of traditional pre feminist mid century wife. And, you know, that immediately sort of creates a lot of friction. Betty Friedan, it's worth noting, was a year ahead of Nancy Davis at Smith College. She she comes to represent as as, you know, feminism is sort of gaining ground. She comes to represent essentially everything the feminists are rebelling against. But the first year is just dreadful. She and the other thing that is worth pointing out, I mean, she has incredibly good judgment when it comes to protecting her husband's image. She is completely clueless and tongue deaf about her own. So she creates a number of controversies. She spends a lot of donated money, some of a lot of it, in fact, from the Reagan's political benefactors redecorating the White House. She buys a set of China again from private donations, a thousand dollars a place setting. This is and they announced this China purchase on the very same day that the Reagan administration announces that it's going to classify ketchup as a vegetable in school lunches. So even as her husband is cutting social programs amid the worst recessions since the Great Depression, the country sees Nancy Reagan out there gussying up the executive mansion, buying fancy China, borrowing, borrowing designer clothes that she doesn't give back. She just sort of steps in from one mess into another. And then on top of everything and the thing that really does overshadow everything of 1981 for her is her own trauma over the assassination attempt. But by the end of 1981, and where she is the most unpopular first lady in the history of polling, she begins to realize that if he is going to succeed, if Ronald Reagan is going to succeed, she is going to have to succeed as well. So you see her really begin to sort of pivot on her own image and start that's when she picks up her signature cause, which is fighting drug abuse among the young. She again, she does this pivot, I think as much because she knew that her mistakes were jeopardizing her husband's success. And and that to that end about the the the trauma, of course, of 1981, you alluded to earlier, you know, Ronald Reagan was more grounded in in his faith and really believed he survived this now for a reason that God had a plan for him and that was sustaining for him. But Mrs. Reagan becomes more focused on astrology and and as actors, you had said in Hollywood that they're inherently actors are superstitious anyway, so they would read their horoscopes. But she really becomes, you know, obsessively reliant on it. And and it's known quite quietly in the White House that this is helping to dictate the president's schedule. Could you talk a little bit about that? She was unapologetic about it, though. And this was her way of dealing with the grief. That's right. And again, astrology had been a very sort of popular pastime in Hollywood in the 40s and the 50s. And even Ronald Reagan said when he went to do that disastrous Las Vegas show, he had looked at his horoscope this morning and it said to take the advice of experts. So his agent said, do it. He said, well, you're experts, and that's how he ends up doing it. But so what happens is she is just absolutely tormented by having experienced her husband coming so close to death. And again, she does not have faith, at least his level of faith to lean on to say, God, preserve me because he had a plan for me. So one day she is on the phone with her friend, Merv Griffin, who is the TV talk show host, but also head of a big entertainment conglomerate. The two of them both have an interest in astrology. And interestingly enough, they both have July 6th birthdays, which I think she would also share later with George W. Bush. Yes, that's right. But in the course of this conversation with Merv Griffin, he says, you know, there's this woman out in San Francisco in Astrologer. She knew that was going to be a bad day for him. And at that point, Nancy Reagan goes to this woman, Joan Quigley, somebody she has only met in person maybe once or twice and begins to consult her about the president's schedule. Now, this is something that is not well known, even within the White House. Michael Dever, the deputy chief of staff, essentially kind of runs interference for the astrologer. And what people in the White House don't understand is why the scheduling operation is always such a mess because the Reagan White House functions so efficiently in just about every aspect. But then every now and then Dever would come in and say, well, you know, Air Force One on that trip is going to have to take off at 2 12 a.m. And it's, you know, really? So what are we going to tell the press as to why we're taking off in the middle of the night on this trip? And they would say, give them a story, tell them it's for jet lag. And or, you know, decisions would be overridden at the last minute. Now, if you think about this rationally, there could, if you're worried about your husband's security, kind of the last thing you would want to do is give control of his schedule over to a woman you barely even know in San Francisco. But it really was essentially for Nancy Reagan just kind of the only way she was able to get through the day. And ultimately, when she has a big run in, which she engineers the firing of White House chief of staff, Don Regan, right, he gets his revenge by writing about it in his own memoir, which comes out as in the final year of the rate. He doesn't wait for the Reagan's to leave office. It's in the final year of Reagan's presidency that his book comes out and reveals to the world that this astrologer has had an unseemly amount of control over the schedule of the president of the United States. Right. And didn't Joan quickly herself then sort of betray Mrs. Reagan's and President Reagan's confidence by going public with it, too? Yeah, it's funny because for a long time, Nancy Reagan doesn't even tell her husband what she's doing. This is like her deal with Deaver. And then one day, Ronald Reagan comes in and hears her talking on the phone and the conversation just sounds sort of strange. So when she hangs up, he said, who was that you were talking to? And at that point, Nancy comes clean, tells him. And so Reagan says, well, you know, I wouldn't let people know about this if I were you, because that's going to sound a little weird, but he too understands that his wife just sort of needs this emotionally. Now, Joan quickly would later take credit for all kinds of things that really, you know, she could put her finger on the scale with the schedule, but she would later take credit for, you know, arms control treaties and, you know, all kinds of policy issues. I think that was, you know, a little bit, a lot, in fact, exaggerating what her role was. So the causes that Mrs. Reagan, I want to talk a little bit about how she tried to turn around how people felt about her. She used humor in a couple of instances to sort of chip away in the veneer of how people perceived her. She also dive deeply into the drug drug abuse cause. And she was a bit of a force behind the scenes to help her husband soften his position a bit on HIV AIDS, maybe not enough, but there was a particular instance that you talk about that really threw them with their friend, Rock Hudson. That's right. You know, I devote an entire chapter to the AIDS epidemic and what was actually going on inside the White House during all of that. Nancy Reagan is, because she's the daughter of a neurosurgeon, it's sort of more medically attuned to the growth of this epidemic. And also her son, Ron, is in the dance world in New York. He's seeing it up close. They're talking about it a lot. She is beginning to understand that this is happening. But Ronald Reagan, you know, he didn't sort of have sort of her ability to look at these things as abstractions. And it is really when their friend Rock Hudson becomes ill with AIDS and dies of AIDS and publicly acknowledges that that's the disease he has. That not just for the Reagan's, but for the country as a whole, this epidemic finally gets its face. And there is something that happens in the middle of all this. Rock Hudson flies to Paris desperate to find a cure. And there's a French military hospital that he wants to get into. They won't let him in. He's not a French citizen. So he sends an appeal to the White House. Could you help me? And his request goes not to Ronald Reagan, but to Nancy Reagan. And she has come under a lot of criticism over the years by the fact that she referred this to the embassy. But if you think about it at the time, this is like just about the biggest story in the world at that moment, that this very famous handsome actor is dying of AIDS. And I think that she didn't really have a good choice here, because if she had pulled strings for a rich famous actor, when tens of thousands of people are dying of AIDS in obscurity, you know, she would have been criticized for that too. And then there is also the factor that there really wasn't a lot that this hospital could have done for Rock Hudson that, you know, there were really no effective treatments for AIDS at the time. But she, you know, even today, people will often cite the Rock Hudson exchange as a knock on her. What I did find was that she became behind the scenes of really sort of forceful, not forceful enough, but an advocate for her husband to sort of begin to take this more seriously. She single-handedly makes sure that when he appoints an AIDS commission that it has an openly gay member on it, something that gets a lot of criticism from the right. And then when Ronald Reagan is finally going to give his first big public speech on AIDS, this is in mid-1987, really late. She takes the speechwriting away from the West Wing. She does not trust the sort of ideological hard right figures that are running the communications shop in the White House. She hands it to her own speechwriter. She makes sure that Everett Cooth, the Surgeon General, gets a chance to weigh in on what this speech would say. And I actually, in my research, came across the different drafts of this speech. And some of what the, you know, President's more conservative advisors were arguing for, should be in that speech, are really horrifying to somebody who is reading this in the 21st century. You know, they, you know, the bigotry, they didn't want to, you know, Reagan in the speech points out that you cannot get AIDS from mosquitoes or from having your food prepared in a restaurant by someone who's HIV positive. The conservative advisors in the White House are trying to take all of this anti-scientific stuff out of the speech. They are trying to get the President to portray AIDS, not as a health issue, but as a moral issue, as an issue of choices. And if, you know, again, the speech is not remembered as, you know, particularly path breaking, but I've seen what the original speech was going to look like. And oh my gosh, it is so, so much worse. All the depth of her influence clearly impacted what direction that his communication on this issue would go. And I'd like to just go to two last issues where the ability to protect her husband and his place in history on two of the most significant aspects of his tenure, the relationship with the Soviet Union, forging that relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev and the other, of course, that could have completely derailed his presidency at the end, the Iran-Contra issue. If we can, at the time that we have remaining, talk about those two. Well, you know, and we talked a little bit about how hard she was pushing. And also on the Soviet Union, how hard she was pushing her husband toward what she believed was his place in history. And again, with an understanding of his own beliefs with regard to that. But even as this is happening, his presidency is threatened, you know, on the verge of being offended by this scandal in his second term, where it turns out that he was trading arms to Iran in exchange for the freedom of U.S. citizens being held hostage in Beirut. And that the money from those arms sales in violation of U.S. law was going to fund the anti-Sandinista, what Reagan called the freedom fighters, the Contras in Nicaragua. Nancy Reagan understands that, first of all, if it turns out that her husband knew about the diversion of money, impeachment is not a theoretical risk here. It's a cinch. And also she understands that at this point, everybody in the White House who had any connection with this is in criminal jeopardy themselves and therefore is looking out for their own hides. And I really do think that the chapter I wrote on the Iran-Contra affair is really the heart of the book because that is where you see Nancy Reagan behind the scenes essentially takes over the rescue effort. She engineers a shakeup of the White House staff over her husband's stubborn resistance that begins with getting rid of his autocratic chief of staff, Don Reagan. But then she also, and this is just as hard, has to bring Ronald Reagan around to admitting to the country and just as importantly admitting to himself that he had violated his own policy and had in fact been doing something he had promised he would never do, which is essentially paying ransom for these hostages. And what it took for her to do that at a moment when his presidency is in its moment of greatest peril is just really extraordinary. So Karen, two things. One, it was no secret, you know, the level of dysfunction in their family life, particularly with the children. Can you speak a little bit to that? Who cooperated with you? Who didn't? What you learned? Sure. Well, first of all, it was sort of the collateral damage, I think that came from how closely bonded together Ronald and Nancy Reagan were, that there was no room there for anyone else. And that included their four children, two of them from his first marriage and the two they had together. And even Nancy Reagan said, you know, all I ever wanted to be was a good wife and mother. And I guess I was better at the first than I was at the second. So you know, every single one of these four kids has felt kind of like an outsider in this. And you see it play out in some very difficult and painful relationships. So when I was doing the book, Ron Reagan was just of enormous help. And he, in fact, helped me get my hands on some records, even her kindergarten records, which I blood relative had to ask for. Their son-in-law Dennis Ravel talked to me. He was the widower of Maureen Reagan. Nancy Reagan's stepbrother, Richard Davis, also spoke to me. But both Michael, the adopted son from the first marriage and Patty, the daughter, did not speak with me. I was fortunate, however, in the fact that both of them had written their own very raw, very honest books about their relationships in this family. So I felt like I was able to give them voice in my book, even without speaking to them. Now, you did get a great reference to, and there are some very painful moments that you describe in the book, particularly the relationship with Michael. And I think it was hard to read. But I would like to ask you one last question, too, on what do you think the greatest misconception about Nancy Reagan is? Just how many layers there were to Nancy Reagan? How complex she really was. And one of the reasons she was so easily caricatured is because as Carol McCain, who was John McCain's first wife, who was an aide to Nancy Reagan, starting in the 1980 campaign, told me, she said, she didn't want to make it easy for people to figure her out. I think this may have developed, even going back to her childhood, as almost a survival skill. So again, just all the different layers that you had to peel back to sort of get to the real sort of heart, to the real truth of who she was. Yeah, definitely a very complex personality and to live such a public life for so long, but really try and hold on to so much of your privacy is very difficult. We do a tremendous job of helping us understand. Well, the other thing is, you know, the characteristics, I mean, she was defined by anxiety and insecurity, but there was also a certain fearlessness to her. When she perceived that there was a threat to the happiness and the wholeness that she had finally found in Ronald Reagan, she was just absolutely fearless. And with that, I wanted to ask you, what is her role or what is her legacy of being an American First Lady? You know, it's so interesting because First Lady's and certainly Anita, you know, better than most people. I mean, they come into this role. It doesn't have a job description. You know, it doesn't have a portfolio. They, you know, they each have to invent it on their own. And usually, because they invented knowing their husbands, or someday maybe knowing their wives, and knowing what they need. And I really think that, you know, as controversial as Nancy Reagan was for much of her public life, Ronald Reagan chose well. And I think that, you know, I think the country owes her a debt because I think that her role in the success of this presidency and in Ronald Reagan's place in history was just absolutely enormous. Well, you have done an extraordinary job, Karen. I thank you so much for someone who does feel passionately about the role of American First Lady or First Spouse, you know, in the future and the influence that they can have and how they use their platform. You did an incredible job researching the totality of her life. And I hope that people when they read your amazing book, The Triumph of Nancy Reagan, will look at her through a much different lens than perhaps they had in in the past. This is the book. It's fantastic. I think we are also showing the link of how people can get your book. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. This has just been such a pleasure. I really appreciated an opportunity to talk to you and the only as a Texas native and a UT grad. My only sadness here is that I couldn't get to do it at the LBJ Library, which is such a special place. I think soon you will be able to. I know they'll want to have you there. Thank you. It was an honor for me. Having worked there and known Mrs. Reagan some, I learned so much. Thank you. Thank you. Our thanks to Karen Tumulti and Anita McBride and to our sponsors, the Moody Foundation and St. David's Health Care. And now, for more on that Christmas ornament, here's my friend, the President of the White House Historical Association, Stuart McLauren. Good evening. I'm Stuart McLauren, President of the White House Historical Association. What a terrific program and conversation with Karen Tumulti regarding her new book on Mrs. Reagan with Anita McBride, who is on our board of directors here at the White House Historical Association. And thank you to our friends at the LBJ Library and LBJ Foundation for putting on such a wonderful program. I want to invite all of you to join us here at the White House Historical Association virtually from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for our First Lady Symposium that will take place on May 6th. This will feature an array of extraordinary presenters and speakers, including Karen and Anita. You can find out more information and actually register for the symposium on our website, WhiteHouseHistory.org. Now I want to share something with you that gives you a behind-the-scenes look at an important part of White House history. Every year since 1981, the White House Historical Association has created the official White House Christmas ornament. Many of you probably collect these and give them to friends and loved ones every year. Well, this year in 2021, we are featuring the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson and First Lady Lady Bird Johnson. This ornament has just been revealed, and in the following video, you'll see the story behind the ornament, the story that it tells, and the story of how it is made. Yesterday is not hours to recover, but tomorrow is hours to win or to lose. Every year, the White House Historical Association commemorates the legacy of a president through its White House Christmas Ornament program. The official 2021 Christmas ornament honors the 36th president, Lyndon Baines Johnson. On November 22, 1963, about two hours after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Vice President Johnson took the oath of office aboard Air Force One at Love Field. Johnson immediately set out to heal a morning nation while advancing legislation to bolster Kennedy's legacy. During his five years in office, Johnson's administration submitted more than 80 bills to Congress and enacted some 200 pieces of legislation. Many of these advanced his vision for the country, which he called the Great Society. My father's legacy, legislation for education, for civil rights, for the arts, for space, for health care, opportunities that enrich the lives of millions of Americans. President Johnson's list of domestic achievements is remarkable, but his approach to foreign policy proved controversial. Johnson's war against North Vietnam became increasingly polarizing. The economic cost of the Vietnam War also limited the effectiveness of Johnson's Great Society programs. In addition to his foreign and domestic policy initiatives, Johnson continued President and Mrs. Kennedy's support of the arts and the humanities. His administration helped establish the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. The Johnson's also furthered Mrs. Kennedy's vision of the White House as a living museum, creating the official position of White House curator and establishing the committee for the preservation of the White House. One side of the ornament features a painting of the White House. The White House has a special, special time. In the Blue Room, we would have a beautiful tree. Children would come in and they would look up and they just couldn't believe it. They were these gorgeous ornaments all the way to the ceiling. And of course, our wedding was in December, so we had lots of Christmas decorations for the wedding. One side of the ornament features a painting of the 1967 Blue Room Christmas Tree. Mrs. Johnson requested that Robert H. Lasek, a designer for American Greetings, paint the official Christmas tree in the Blue Room for their card that year. This card was sent out by President and Mrs. Johnson to White House staff members, family and friends. On the other side of the ornament, there is a quote from President Johnson. Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country. To right wrong. To do justice. To serve man. The flowers encircling the quote are inspired by Lady Bird Johnson's beautification programs on the White House grounds and throughout Washington, D.C. These are Texas Blue Bonnets, a favorite of Mrs. Johnson and the official state flower of Texas. Every year, our ornament is produced by a small business that is family run and veteran founded. The proceeds of this ornament help fund the Association's educational mission to enhance general understanding of the White House and the people who lived and worked there. This year, we are proud to commemorate President Lyndon Johnson and his legacy.