Transcripts For CSPAN2 Karen Tumulty The Triumph Of Nancy Re

Turbulent relationship with his father, join in the conversation with your phone calls, Facebook Comments and tweets. In depth with larry elder live sunday at noon eastern on booktv on cspan2. The center for Public Affairs Virtual Event we bring you a conversation with Washington Post National Politics columnist Karen Tumulty who is joining us with her brandnew book the triumph of nancy reagan. In addition to working at the Washington Post she works Time Magazine, the los angeles times, and is recipient of many awards including excellence in political reporting. Ask four years ago by Simon Schuster to write this biography the book was finally being published tomorrow on april 13th, 2020, one. Kirkus reviews because the trance of nancy reagan a luminescent exhaustive biography which chronicles the private life and local influence of nancy reagan. The book draws on interviews with reagan cabinet members, friends, and family members, and how she became one of the most influential first ladies of the century. We invite you to enjoy our Virtual Program with Karen Tumulty joined by kathy bush. Good afternoon. I am so pleased to welcome you today for this very special sneak peek at a much anticipated biography on warmer first lady nancy reagan. The book, the triumph of nancy reagan, written by veteran Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty will be officially released tomorrow and karen has graciously agreed to make the Reagan Library one of her first stops on the book tour. After devouring the book myself i think readers will agree it is a well researched, balanced, and insightful look into the life of one of the twentieth centurys most fascinating and consequential figures. In the interest of full disclosure i thought i would mention i was privileged to work for the reagans as a young woman. First in the white house and then in los angeles after the reagans left washington. There, i was part of their small staff and their vibrant postpresident ial life. Ultimately serving as their spokesperson and press secretary. It was an incredible adventure and one of the great gifts of my life. The journey over those 6 years opened my eyes to the world, to the importance of decency, kindness, character, and leadership. I also saw the private side of the reagans during unguarded moments when i witnessed firsthand their boundless devotion to one another. I was not one of karens sources for the book so i read it with tremendous interest just like all of you will. I thought i knew just about all there was to know about nancy reagan and karens book proved me wrong. Karen spoke to hundreds of individuals over the course of four years drawing on archives, letters, nancys own memoirs, president reagans diary, white house records and much more. Welcome to the Ronald Reagan president ial library and this series that has become so popular especially during this year of difficult separation. I really wish we could have been together at the president ial library overlooking the majestic mountains of seamy valley or perched in front of that colorful section of the berlin wall. That section symbolizes freedom over communism that resident reagan envisioned and as we learn in your book that nancy reagan had a diplomatic hand in too. Instead we are relying on Technology Today to take us back in time and bring us together to better understand nancy davis reagan, daughter, actress, partner, mother, first lady and caregiver. Before we launch into the meat of the book and tackle so many topics can you share a bit about what inspired you to take this on . How did you go about it and why did you start the book with the soviet union . Guest thank you so much for having me and i too look forward to when we could be sitting out there on that beautiful patio at the Reagan Library where i spent so many wonderful hours mostly defrosting from the frigidity of the Research Room at the library. I started, it was actually this book was not my idea, it was Simon Schuster, my publishers, it was my editor, priscilla payton, one of my dearest friends with my editor at Time Magazine and so she came to me in late summer early fall of 2016 a few months after mrs. Reagan died and said we would love to have a big biography of her and there was just something about this idea. I remember the day of her funeral i was driving around doing errands and listening to what on cspan radio while i was driving and thinking there are so many layers to this very complex woman. And there was something about the project that really struck me as interesting and especially since i came to washington in the 1980s and my knowledge of nancy reagan was pretty much everybody elses, tended to run between one of two caricatures, either she was this vapid socialite or the scheming power behind the throne but listening to the trivia to her at the funeral and watching the last decade of the president s life and her life beyond that you begin to get a sense of the real depth of this relationship and i originally thought this is going to be a book about our woman into marriage and a love story but as i got deeper and deeper into the research i realized it was so much more. It was really a whole new perspective on reagans presidency, on his political rise and ultimately a new perspective on an entire era of our history. Why did i come in with the story George Shultz told me about the soviet union . I was looking for something that would signal to the reader that this was not your typical first lady biography. The story George Shultz told me about nancy reagan, supposedly impromptu to the white house in the middle of a blizzard to have dinner just the four of them, two couples up there in the white house sounded like a social invitation, George Shultz was pretty new in his tenure, had only been secretary of state for 7 months so he didnt really know the reagans all that well and he had just gotten back from a long trip overseas and included a stop in china. As the dinner progresses the reagans, both of them, start peppering him with questions about the chinese leaders, do they have a bottom line, do they have a sense of humor, what makes them tick and beyond that they Start Talking about the soviet union and shultz, away from the usual hardliners and Typical National Security Council meetings begins to realize something about Ronald Reagan which is that this man has never had a conversation with a bigtime communist leader, that he is dying to have one and he thought about this a lot, is very confident in his own abilities as a negotiator but shultz realizes Something Else, this dinner invitation was not a social invitation and nancy reagan had wanted to get him alone with the president so that he could begin to understand something about her husband, something that had the potential to change history and also realizes Something Else in that moment which is that he, George Shultz has found an incredibly valuable ally in this first lady who is the only person in the world to whom Ronald Reagan is truly truly close, and who understands her husband like nobody else does and it seemed to me sort of a perfect opening into a book about her role, her very unique role as first lady, she was somebody who didnt set foot in the west wing all that often but everybodys there new when she was displeased about something and people who werent in her favor didnt tend to last very long in the Reagan White House because she essentially saw herself as bear to watch her husbands back, that he was someone who really didnt have much of an appetite for sort of interpersonal conflict or battles and really she had i think a sharper sense of people, as james baker, who was chief of staff and treasury secretary told me, she had incredible radar, hers was better than her husbands. There is so much here, i would love to sort of start at the beginning, you took an incredibly deep dive into nancy daviss childhood, the instability of her home life her larger than life mother edith who was largely absent during critical years, her father who had no role in her life and stepfather, doctor boyle davis who gave her the stability and love she craved. Tell us about the young nancy davis. She was born, she was the product of a bad match between a very ambitious actress and a car salesman who would very shortly after her birth go their separate ways and her mother very shortly after that leaves the little baby named him Francis Robbins in the care of relatives and for the next six years of her life, she yearns for this absent mother and as her son ron told me, as other people pointed out to me, it sort of cast a shadow on her spirit, a sort of insecurity that never really leaves her, its one of the reasons she was so complex. She believed no matter how successful they were there was always a trapdoor in a life, at any minute the bottom could fall out, certainly that is underscored two months after they get to the white house where she almost loses her husband to an assassins bullet, she wasnt somebody who really shared a lot about herself, she her own children didnt know much about her childhood or the insecurity, the instability, the lingering effects, the scar tissue, it really left her with. She also would bristle somebody suggested that her mother abandoned her but if you dont mind i found one speech that she gave in 1986, the famous orphanage near omaha founded by father flanagan. They were honoring her that day for her drug advocacy, but she says to these 400 children who come from foster care, broken homes, she says something remarkable in this speech and it was a moment of vulnerability and openness and candor that really struck me is what she said is the reason im here today is not because of the reward but because of you. There was a time when i didnt quite know where i belong to either. What i wished for more than anything else in the world was normal family. Do you know what happens when you hurt inside . Usually start closing your heart to people because that is how you got hurt in the first place, you opened your heart. Another thing, she stopped trusting people because somewhere along the way they didnt live up to your trust and there is another thing that happens when you have been hurt, you start to think you are not worth much, you think to yourself how can i be worth anything of someone would treat me in this terrible way so i understand why you feel beaten down by it all. When you look at that and the instability of Ronald Reagans childhood, as the son of an alcoholic who took the family from one uncertain situation to another you really realize what is the basis for this incredible love story, this incredible bond between the reagans and that is that in each other they finally found the security, the validation and love the two of them had craved and so while this also explains kind of the insecurities of nancy reagan, the complexity of rent nancy reagan it also explains her fearlessness, how she was absolutely fearless when she detected anything that could possibly jeopardize the happiness and wholeness she and Ronald Reagan finally realized in each other. That leads into my next question which is we all read and heard so much about how the reagans met in the evolution of their love story and as you revealed in the book Ronald Reagan was not in a great place in his life or his career when they met. Your book suggested he was broken inside and his heart was in a deep freeze but she was loving and patient and as ronnie would later write nancy moved into my heart and replaced an emptiness that i had been trying to ignore for a long time. Share a little bit about those early years of their courtship and the path of their marriage and the beautiful, eloquent love letters he sent to her over their lifetime and all of which she saved, tell us more. Guest in the following 1949 they have a supposedly blind date. I have found evidence that nancy davis, young actress newly arrived on the mgm lot had been trying to make their paths crossed long before that but certainly when she opens the door of her apartment that night there is simply no way that either she or Ronald Reagan could have begun to imagine the future that lay ahead for the two of them. He was an actor whose career was really starting to scrape bottom. His first wife, to his shock and dismay had essentially gotten bored with him and walked out, her star was on the rise and he really in some ways was still carrying the torch for jane wyman. He did have the scars of his own childhood and he was quite literally a broken man as he stood there on two crutches, and nancy daviss doorstep. s fire bone had been broken and a half dozen places in a Charity Baseball game and he had spent the last couple months in traction and was later if nancy davis hadnt come along when she did i would have lost my soul, but hes not somebody who is ready to settle down or even to open his heart and i think because of her incredible radar she senses shes going to have to wait this guy out and at one point his mother nelly even tells her that, she says to nancy who she likes a lot better than she ever liked jane wyman i can see that you are in love with him but he is not in love with you yet. You are going to have to wait and you will know when he loves you but you are going to have to wait and she does patiently, gently, take several years for him to come around and commit himself. Host i found the early years fascinating as well, you referenced fewer movie roles, arrival children, bustling home life, Ronald Reagan begins traveling the country on behalf of General Electric, speaking to audiences all over america, honing his speaking style, listening to issues that matter to working americans, it all led to the realization that Ronald Reagan connected, very real intimate way with people and it all took off, campaigns, sacramento, more campaigns, the white house, tell us about those formative years that prepared the reagans for their life as public figures and nancys role in all of it. They are scraping bottom, professionally, financially, reagan, the most humiliating professional endeavor of his life, he becomes the mc of a floor show in las vegas but shortly after that this new opportunity to go into television as the host of General Electric theater comes along, this is something that a few years before, Ronald Reagan would not have considered. He writes in one of his books why would anybody pay to see somebody in a theater if they could see them at home for free on television but it is a sign how desperate they are that the show takes off and also part of the deal is he travels the country speaking to tens of thousands of General Electric employees doing promotional things for the company and that is where he discovered his own gift as a politician, the people he is meeting in the late 1950s are the same people who would later become reagan democrats but this puts an incredible stress on his wife who is home with two small children, is dealing with two step children from the earlier marriage and it is sort of in the course of that the views letters, these incredibly passionate letters become so important that if you dont mind, so of these these letters are hot. Host please do. This is one that he writes her in 1963. By this point they have been married for over a decade and he writes her do you know that when you sleep, you curl your fists up under your chin and many mornings when it is barely don i live facing you and looking at you until finally i have to touch you ever so lightly, you wont wake up but touch you i must or i will burst, probably this letter will reach you only a few hours before i arrive myself but not really because right now as i try to say what is in my heart i think my thoughts must be reaching for you without waiting for paper, ink, stamps and such. If i ache it is because we are apart and yet that cant be because you are inside and a part of me so we werent part at all yet i ache because i wouldnt you without the ache because that would mean without being without you and that i cant be because i love you. There are just dozens and dozens and dozens of these incredibly passionate letters. There are telegrams, and she is saving every one of them in a shopping bag in her closet. Ronald reagan in many ways, as eloquent as he was as a speaker on paper i found is even more so. Enough of these beautiful letters to be compiled into a book, wasnt there . Guest that is right and it is lovely to go through them because some of them are funny and hes doing these kind of rye references to characters in hollywood, absolutely wonderful but they do speak to the devotion of the reagans to each other and constantly also they speak to the stress going on at home because he keeps promising her that as hard as these long separations are on them that this wont last forever and he writes i wish we could go to the farm, the ranch and put barbed wire behind the whole thing and neither of us would ever leave without the other. Even though the reagans had been in public life for many years nothing prepared them for washington life. In the media scrutiny that followed. You spend a lot of time in the book on Nancy Reagans relationship with the press, the ups and downs of her Approval Ratings and frustrations about being misunderstood. As you alluded to, the portrait of