 Greetings from the National Archives. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States. It's my pleasure to welcome you to tonight's program about former First Lady Nancy Reagan, featuring Karen Tamulty, author of the new biography, The Triumph of Nancy Reagan. Before we begin, I'd like to tell you about two upcoming programs you can view on our YouTube channel. On Tuesday, May 4th, a noted constitutional scholar, Akhil Reed Amar, will discuss his new book, The Words That Made Us, an account of how Americans wrestled with weighty constitutional questions during the country's first half-century. And on Thursday, May 6th, that noon we'll hear from former New York Times White House correspondent Robert M. Smith, whose new book, Suppressed, reveals how some stories make it to print while others are ignored. The president's wife, the First Lady, has long been a figure of public fascination, although she holds no official office in the national government. There are no written guidelines for what the presidential spouse should do, and each woman adapts the role to her own interests. When Nancy Reagan entered the White House with her husband, President Ronald Reagan, she was seen as a devoted helpmate, unlikely to be an activist First Lady like Eleanor Roosevelt. In the eight years of the Reagan administration, Nancy acted as a true partner to the president and most trusted confidant. To write the triumph of Nancy Reagan, Karen Tamulty spent years conducting interviews and pouring over letters, memoirs and White House records in archives including the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, which is operated by the National Archives and Records Administration. Our presidential libraries, which document the work of chief executives since Herbert Hoover, have a wealth of information about the presidents, their administrations and their families. First Ladies are well-represented by the collections of their official and personal papers. As Barbara A. Perry recently wrote in the Washington Post Book World, relying on Nancy's previously unavailable papers at the Reagan Library in interviews with her son and stepbrother, Tamulty is able to construct a persuasive portrait of the future First Lady's character development. Researchers and writers such as today's guests have made extensive use of the library's collections and there are still many stories yet to be told from these records. Now it's my pleasure to introduce our panelists. Karen Tamulty is a political columnist for the Washington Post. Before joining the Post, she wrote for Time Magazine. In her role as a national political correspondent, she received the toner prize for excellence in political reporting. Previously at the Los Angeles Times, she reported on Congress, business, energy and economics from Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C. She litigated as the author of Lady in Red, a biography of Nancy Reagan. Her political and government experience ranges from her service as press secretary to First Lady Nancy Reagan and as press secretary to George H. W. Bush during his successful campaign for the presidency in 1988 and for the 1989 presidential transition period. Please join me in welcoming Karen Tamulty and Sheila Tate. Thank you for joining us today. Hi, I'm Sheila Tate. I was assuming Karen would jump on before me because she's really the star of this whole thing. I have read her book. In fact, I spent one whole day reading the entire book because I was mesmerized how someone who did not know Nancy Reagan personally had written such an incredibly honest book. I mean, there's nothing in that book that I would disagree with. And believe me, I've read a lot of these Nancy Reagan books where I did disagree. So I hold Karen in high regard and I recommend the book to you without any question. Karen? Well, thank you so much, Sheila. And thank you. I relied on talking to you and also reading your own extraordinary book, Lady in Red, which was really a personal look at her, part memoir, but really the way you were able to get people around her to open up was just extraordinary. And it is also a real honor to be here tonight, even virtually at the National Archives, because I did spend so many weeks at the Reagan Library. I'd never written a book before. I didn't even know if I could write a book. And they had just the help I got, especially from one archivist, Jennifer Mandel, who was like the perfect tour guide to history was just amazing. This book, as I said, I'd never written a book before. And it was really only after a couple of years of research that the pieces, the many, many pieces of this very, very complicated woman began to fit together for me. And I began to realize that, you know, if I did this right, this was not just going to be a biography of a woman of a first lady, a marriage that was an epic love story, but that by understanding Nancy Reagan, you would really understand the rise of one of the most consequential figures of the 20th century, really the shaping of the Reagan presidency and ultimately the shaping of his legacy, because she was there and just an integral part of every bit of it. And I, again, was fortunate enough to have the memories and recollections of so many around her, including one of the smartest things she ever did when she was going through one of her very toughest periods as First Lady was to bring in a very sophisticated communications expert who was then named Sheila Patton. So the truth, can I tell you that the truth of it is that every day was an adventure at the beginning because none of us knew what we were doing. We just, you know, we just did the best we could. And I think she somehow survived all our experimentation. Well, one thing I was struck by Sheila though was that, you know, people don't necessarily understand that President Reagan for all of his affability, for all of his gifted connecting with the country was really a very solitary figure. And Nancy Reagan was truly the only person in the world to whom he was personally close. And I was really surprised as I did my research how important it was for him to have her there with him because her instincts about the people around him were in many cases superior to his. She seemed to have a better nose for trouble than he did. I mean, certainly she was controversial in her time. She brought a lot of her problems on herself. So as shrewd as she was about his image, she was kind of confoundingly clueless sometimes about her own. But my question for you is, as this was happening in real time, did you guys really understand how important she was to the success of the Reagan presidency? And really, again, not just as his advisor, but real that she had an influence on policy. We came to recognize that. I mean, when people like Gorbachev, he was paying enormous attention to her. He recognized it. So you started to see that. There were a lot of international people who were calling and talking to her. A number of wives of presidents around the world. There were just a lot of interplay that I think they knew that Nancy Reagan could be trusted with whatever they pulled her or asked her about. She never ever betrayed a trust. And that was like gold in a political White House. Well, I think that, you know, if she had to pick what she wanted her own legacy to be, I was surprised in talking to George Schultz, really how important she was in helping Schultz to understand that Ronald Reagan for all of his Cold War anti-communist rhetoric really was interested and believed that he could change history by reaching out to the Soviet Union. This was something that a lot of people in his own administration didn't think was possible. And the other thing I was struck by was how the smart people in that White House, whether it was Schultz or somebody like Chief of Staff James Baker, were the ones who recognized that Nancy Reagan could be a very valuable ally to have. And that if you could get her on your side and if you could convince her that something was in the president's best interest, that you had a good shot at getting him to. It was almost a lock because she wouldn't, if she was convinced this was something he had to do, it was good for him, it was good for the country, whatever it was. She'd never let up on him until he just said, okay, I'll do it. She was very influential. I think most wives that have good marriages tend to be very influential with regard to their husbands. So why was she so clueless about her own interest? I mean, it was not given that the first year of his presidency, as you're being brought aboard, the country is in the worst recession since the Great Depression. It was not politically the smartest time to go redecorating the White House and buying expensive China and borrowing designer fashions. Why was she so clueless about this? No, I never figured that out. I think she felt, excuse me, I think she felt like she needed to get that house in the order she felt it, you know, the history demanded. And she was just going to go ahead with it. And I think she was willing to pay the price. That was definitely the sense that I got of it. But ultimately, you come up with what was a genius PR strategy, which is to get her to stand up in front of the Gridiron Club, which is a press organization here in Washington, gives one big dinner a year and sing a song and make fun of herself. Nobody believed Nancy, Nancy Reagan had a sense of humor, I think, until that moment. So was it hard to talk her into that? No, actually, what I did is I got, oh God, this is my memory failing, Helen Thomas to help me. And Helen Thomas was a big shot then in terms of the Gridiron. And I took her with me up to see Nancy and talk about it. And Nancy said, I'll do it. He said, but just let me figure out how I want to do it. And let's keep it a secret. It has to be a secret. And we went to work. I mean, Muffy Brandon at the time was our social worker. We got her into the circle and got her to get some of the most outrageous, disgusting flows you've ever seen. Nothing matched. Everything looked awful on her. And she wore these. Basically, we took a basket of this stuff over to the hotel in advance so that when she got there, she was properly dressed and then she left. And I'll never forget this. I was sitting between two men and she was the thing that was making fun of her. The Gridiron started to, I'm sorry, my phone is ringing in the background. They started to, they assumed when they saw her get up and leave, she was really getting up to go get dressed to do this, that one leaned, there were two publishers, one on either side of it. And one leaned across behind me to the other one and said, Nancy Reagan's leaving. I bet she's, and I won't use the word but it starts with a P. It was unbelievable. And I just stared straight ahead as if I didn't even hear it. And when she came out, nobody even knew at first, somebody came out with a rack of clothes. This was part of the song that was going on. And then she came through the middle of that rack. And at first nobody knew who it was. And all of a sudden they started realizing and everybody started screaming. I've never seen anything like it ever. And I've been to a lot of those events and I knew we had it made. One thing though that I came across in my research and as we watch these photos go by, you know, in trying to explain why the Reagan's were so closely bound together, you know, and usually even for a loving successful marriage. I really decided that it was true rooted in the impart at least in the fact that both of them had come through very difficult childhoods and that they really found in each other a security and a stability that both of them had needed. In Nancy's case, she was actually abandoned by her action. She would not use that word. I'm sure she would bristle at that word. But her actress mother, you know, left her with relatives for six years in Bethesda just outside of Washington here and really traumatized her. I mean, she spent the next six years of her life just yearning for this absent mother. Edith Davis ultimately remarries, brings her to Chicago with her. Nancy adores her stepfather. You know, he becomes the second most important man in her life. But as her son Ron told me, those years had really left a shadow on her spirit that never really lifted a fear that the bottom could drop out at any moment. And surely when she almost loses her husband to a would be assassin to two months and is pregnant, pregnant, pregnant presidency, you know, that seems to be confirmed. And I was wondering, did she ever talk about those difficult years in Bethesda when she missed her mother and the kind of shadow that it really left her with. He would tell me about the loneliness because she got older, she started recognizing how hard it was on both of them. She was loyal to her mother. She, she, she, I think she had a terrible trauma with the father that locked her into the bathroom. Do you remember that story? Yes, that that would be her biological father who she essentially wouldn't even recognize as her father. She was completely estranged from him until he died. Right. Yeah. Well, the, and the other thing of course, the president was the son of an alcoholic who had taken this family from one precarious situation into another. When he meets Nancy Davis, then a young actress on the MGM lot on what was supposedly a blind date though I found some evidence that Nancy had kind of set her eye on this guy fairly fairly. I think she did a little political work behind his without his knowing about it. You know, he is really at people don't realize a low point of his life when he meets Nancy Davis. He's, you know, he does have the shadows of his own childhood, his first wife has essentially gotten bored with him and walked out his movie career is coming to an end. He arrives on her doorstep, literally a broken man standing on two canes because his leg has been broken and six places in a baseball game he's been in traction for two months. But Ronald Reagan would later say, if Nancy Davis hadn't come along when she did, I would have lost my soul. And even their courtship doesn't exactly go all that smoothly either I mean this guy was not easy to pin down. At one point even his mother who seems to have liked Nancy better than she liked his first wife Jane Wyman says to Nancy, Nancy, I can see that you are in love with him but he is not yet in love with you, you are just going to have to wait and you will know when he loves you. And I was really struck by by that because certainly when the Reagan's met her career wasn't going anywhere. His life was scraping bottom and surely nobody could possibly have imagined what lie ahead for both of them and they do have some very difficult years of their early marriage again their careers aren't going anywhere he's not getting any jobs at one point he has to take this completely humiliating gig emceeing a floor show in Las Vegas. So what do you think she saw in him that probably wasn't of, you know, incredibly terribly apparent to the rest of the world at that time. Ronald Reagan had a way of gathering you in, in a funny way because he was quiet, but he was. I think he, I think she was mesmerized by my really do. He was, he was not like most Hollywood guys, you know, he wasn't on the make. He was he wanted to have a real relationship and I think she valued that. And I think that's what attracted her to him. Well, she says, yeah, that he didn't seem to have the movie star ego. Oh, we are just seeing a picture of the Braggans with Marilyn Monroe can I tell the story that was my favorite little bit of trivia that I dug up when I was doing research for the book and that was, so Nancy Davis, young actress, not terribly distinguished at that point comes to Hollywood in 1949 her screen test is sort of magical it is set up by among other people Spencer Tracy the famous actor who was actually a childhood friend of hers. So, you know, he gets a big deal director to direct it and you know she does well enough to get a contract from the studio in 1949. The fact that MGM offered a contract to the young Nancy Davis is one of the reasons that it took a pass on another actress that it was considering named Marilyn Monroe, which I think was probably the worst decision in MGM ever made. From a monetary standpoint you're probably right. How much did you think that their careers in Hollywood and their understanding of the like power of the visuals the power of the image really shaped the success of his presidency. Well I think there was an undertone of that. I don't know that it dominated. You know he he was not there's nothing false about Ronald Reagan that's one of the things I think we all loved about him. He was a genuine, wonderful human being and you walked out of the Oval Office proud that he was president. I don't think. I mean I think I definitely think Hollywood shape them gave them an understanding of, you know what, what kind of impression they left. And they're there. They were always very careful to dress properly I remember when we were flying to Alaska one time and I wanted to wear some cruddy old jacket and she said no no no you can't wear that can't wear that and I remember them arguing back and forth about it and she finally prevailed and he wore a nice warm coat. But that was all an image thing in her mind I'm sure of it. Yeah, you know it's funny I came across so many. I mean they were a real married couple these two. Absolutely. As deposit as they were to each other they would have real married couple arguments. Yeah. And I must say though, you know I think as rough of a go as she had of it as First Lady as controversial as she was the country really gets a different view of her a different understanding of her a different appreciation of her after the presidency. When he is diagnosed with Alzheimer's. And it falls upon her to not only become the caretaker of him physically and of his dignity, but also to become the caretaker of his legacy. And I was so struck by how shrewd she was about that as well. She doesn't want him to, she never does seems to have trust trusted ideologues she's very pragmatic. But one of I one of the things I thought was that you're right people wanted to sort of write him off oh he's just a Hollywood actor, reading his lines. And she decides to do something extraordinary, which is to publish his handwritten diaries and publish a half century of his correspondence and publish the handwritten he had been given before he ran for president so that Americans could see in his own handwriting in his own words, that these, these were the ideas of Ronald Reagan, that he really did come to office with a fully formed idea of where he wanted to take the country, and how he wanted to govern it and I always thought, you know, that was, in some ways, that last decade of her life was really her final gift to him and really was the greatest testament of her love for him because people would no longer cynically think that this is adoring gaze that she had had cast on him throughout their marriage and their public life was anything but genuine. I can attest to the fact that it was genuine. I one of my favorite memories of him was when I was at the Reagan Library and I was up. Just lift your screen just a bit. Okay. Okay, here we go. Okay. Yeah. He said hey Sheila come here. And he took me he took me over to the facing west and he leaned down he says look down see that down there he says that's that's where they're going to plant me. He could he was happy to not love somebody like him. I mean he had. He was such a genuine person whatever he was whatever he felt he said and he just you felt better I never forget one time going up to pick her up in the in the residence to go somewhere and she was running late and he came out to apparently you know keep me company. And the things he said about Nancy Reagan and and how much he loved her just I they always stuck in my head because he just he couldn't stop talking about it and about how wonderful his life was. And he had just and then the other thing is he said, you know what today I had a call from a woman, a German woman who's gotten to the United States and she had hidden a Jewish girl during the war. And he said she told me the story she's probably except for Nancy the most wonderful amazing person I've ever talked to. And I mean he just wanted he had to talk about it. It was really interesting. He was he was quite a guy. Well again I think we are coming to the end of our half hour but again Sheila I have been so grateful to you and your many insights and you know I I loved I loved your book and it was just so valuable. To me as I was trying to write mine so well I loved your book I read it I sat down early one morning and I never got up until that time for dinner. I read the whole book, and I just could I mean you could have written twice that much and I'd still be sitting there. It was just really really amazing I loved the book. Well thank you so your mutual admiration. Well again thank you very much and I think we'd like to thank everybody who joined us this evening as well and take a look at both of our books. Thank you very much. Thank you bye bye.