Transcripts For CSPAN2 Karen Tumulty The Triumph Of Nancy Re

Booktv. Work. In this week Public Affairs Virtual Event we bring you a conversation with the Washington Post National Politics columnist who is joining us in conversation for her brandnew book the tramp of nancy reagan in addition to working at the Washington Post she has worked at Time Magazine of the Los Angeles Times in the recipient of many awards including the prize for excellence and recording as four years ago by Simon Schuster to write the prior gravy it is being published tomorrow on april 13, 2021. They call nancy reagan a luminous and exhausted biography which chronicles the private life of influence of nancy reagan, the book draws on interviews with cabinet members, friends and family members and she became one of the most influential first ladies of the century. We invite you to join our Virtual Program joined in conversation by Reagan Foundation Institute Board of trustees kathy busch. Good afternoon i am so pleased to welcome you today for the very special sneak peek at a muchanticipated biography on former first lady nancy reagan, the book, the tramp of nancy reagan written by Washington Post columnist karen to multiwould be officially released tomorrow and karen has graciously agreed to make the Reagan Library one of her first thoughts on the book tour. After devouring the book myself, i think readers will agree its a well researched balanced and insightful look into the life of one of the 20th centurys most fascinating consequential figures. In the interest of full disclosure, i thought i would mention that 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 in their vibrant postpresident ial life, ultimately serving as a spokesperson and press secretary. It was an incredible adventure in one of the great gifts of my life, the journey over the six years open my eyes to the world to the importance of decency, kindness, character and leadership. I also felt the private side of the reagans during unguarded moments where 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 prove me wrong. Karens book to hundreds of individuals over the course of four years drawing on archives, letters, nancys own memoirs, president reagans diaries, white house records and much more. Karen, welcome to the Ronald Reagan president ial library in this Webinar Series that is become so popular especially during this year of difficult separation. I really wish we couldve been together at the president ial library overlooking the majestic simi valley were perched in front of the colorful section of the berlin wall, that section symbolizes freedom over communism that president reagan envisioned and as we learned in your book that nancy reagan had a diplomatic hand into, instead we are relying on Technology Today to take us back in time and bring us together to better understand nancy davis reagan, the daughter, the actress, the partner, the mother, the first lady and caregiver. Before we launch into the meat of the book and tackle so many topics, can you share what inspired you to take this on, how did you go about it and why did you start the book with the soviet union. First of all, thank you so much for having me and i to look forward to when we can be sitting out there on the beautiful patio at the Reagan Library where i spent so many wonderful hours, mostly defrosting from the frigidity of the research at the library. I started, this book was not my idea, it was Simon Schuster my publishers and specifically my editor on the book who is one of my dearest friends in my editor at Time Magazine, 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 it on cspan radio while i was driving and thinking there are so many layers to this complex woman and there was just something about the project that really struck me as interesting and especially since they came to washington in the 1980s and my knowledge of nancy reagan pretty much everybody elses intended to run between one of two character chores, either she was acquitted social life or scheming power behind this, but really listening to the tributes to her at the funeral and watching the left decade of the president s life in 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 a woman in a 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 ride and i think ultimately a new perspective on entire era of our history, why did i come in with the story that George Stoltz told me about the soviet union, i was really looking for something that would signal to the reader that this was not your typical first lady biography in the story that George Shultz told me that nancy reagan impromptu to the white house in the middle of a blizzard to have dinner, two couples upstairs in the white house it sounded like a social invitation George Shultz was new in his tenure he had only been secretary of state for ten months, he didnt really know the reagans all that well and he had just gotten back from a long trip overseas that included a stop in china and dinner progresses the reagans, both of them start peppering him with questions about the chinese leaders and do they have a bottom line and do they have a sense of humor and what makes them tick and beyond that they Start Talking about the soviet union and away from the hardliners in the Typical National Security Council meetings begins to realize something about Ronald Reagan which is that this man has never had a conversation with the bigtime communist leader that he is dying to have one and he has really thought about this a lot, hes very confident in his own abilities of the negotiator but then scholz realizes Something Else which is that this dinner invitation was not the social invitation that nancy reagan had wanted to get him alone with the president so he could begin to understand something about her husband, something that had the potential to change history. He also realizes Something Else which he, George Shultz has found in an incredibly valuable ally in this first lady who is the only person in the world who Ronald Reagan is truly truly close and understand her husband like nobody else and it seemed to me as a perfect opening into a book about her very unique role as first lady, she was somebody who didnt step foot all that often but everybody there knew when she was displeased about something and in her favor tended not to last very long in the Reagan White House because to watch her husband back and he was someone who really didnt have much of an appetite in her interpersonal conflict or the international bottles and she had a sharper sense of people as james baker who was chief of staff and treasury secretary told me, she had this incredible radar that was better than her husband. Fascinating, there is so much here, i want to start at the beginning, you took an incredibly deep dive into nancy davis childhood and her larger mother who was absent during critical years, her father who had no role in her life and doctor loyal davis who ultimately gave her the stability and the love that she craved, tell us about beyond nancy davis. She was the product of a bad match between a very ambitious actress in a car salesman who very shortly after her birth would go there separately. And very shortly after that she leaves the little baby and francis in the care of relatives, and the next six years in her life she yearned with absent mother and as her sons mom told me and as other people pointed out to me, it casts a shadow on her spirit that never really leaves her, it is one of the reasons she was so complex. She believed that how successful they were, there was always a trapdoor in life, it any minute the bottom could all fall out and certainly that is underscored two months after they get to the white house where she almost loses her husband to an intestine bullet. She wasnt somebody who shared a lot about herself, her own children didnt know all of that much about her childhood or really the insecurity and the instability affects and the scar tissue, it really left her with, she would also bristle somebody suggested her mother abandoned her. But i did find, if you dont mind i tell one speech that she game enter gave in 1986 at boys town the famous orphanage near omaha, they were honoring her that day for her drug advocacy, sh the 400 children of a foster care broken home and she said something to the remarkable in the speech in a moment of vulnerability and openness and candor that really struck me in the reason im here today is not because of the award, its because of you, a time when i didnt know where i belonged either, what i wish for more than anything else in the world was a normal family, you usually start closing your heart to people, thats how you her in the first place you open your heart and another thing that happened you start trusting people, somewhere along the way they probably didnt live up to your trust and there is another thing that happens when weve been hurt, you start to think, youre not worth much, how can i be worse if someone would treat me in this terrible way, i understand why you feel beatendown, i think when you look at that and when you look at 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 and bond between the reagans and in each other they finally found the security and the validation and the love that the two of them had craved and somehow this explains the insecurity of nancy reagan and the complexity of nancy reagan, i think it also explains her fearlessness and how she was absolutely fearless when she detected anything that could possibly jeopardize the happiness in the wholeness that she and Ronald Reagan finally realized in each other. That leads perfectly into my next question which is that we already 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 that he was broken inside and his heart was in a deep praise but she was loving and patient and nancy moved into my heart and i had been trying to ignore for very long time. In the path of the marriage and love letters that he sent in their lifetime and all of which he saved, tell us more. In the fall of 1945 they have a blind date, nancy davis, young actress arrived on mgm and when she opened 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 lays ahead for the two of them. He was an actor whose career was really starting to screen bottom to his shock and dismay had essentially gotten bored with him and walked out in her star was on the rise and in some ways was carrying the torch for jane and he did have the scars from his own childhood and he would quite literally a broken man as he stood there unto crutches on nancy davis doorstep, his thigh bone had been broken and a half dozen places in a Charity Baseball game needs but the last couple months in traction, he would later say if nancy davis hadnt come along when she did, i wouldve lost my soul but hes not somebody ready to settle down or open his heart. I think because of her incredible radar she senses shes going to have to wait this guy out. At one point, his mother even tells her that, she says to nancy she liked a lot better than she ever liked jane, she said i see youre in love with him but hes not in love with you yet, youre gonna have to wait and you will know when he loves you and but youre going to have to wait patiently it takes several years to come around and commit himself. I found the early years of the reagan marriage fascinating as well, you referenced fewer rolls in the arrival of children in the home life, Ronald Reagan begins traveling the country on behalf of General Electric speaking to audiences all over america, only his message and his speaking style, listening to issues that matter to working americans and all led to the realization that it connected in a real intimate way with people and all took off, campaign, sacramento, more campaigns on the white house, tell us about those busy formative years that prepared the reagans were their life in public figures and of course nancys role in all of it. They are scraping bottom professionally, financially, at one point reagan agrees to the most humiliating professional endeavor in his life he becomes the mc of a floor show in las vegas, shortly after that this new opportunity to go into television is the host of General Electric theater and mind you this is something a few years before the Ronald Reagan would consider to write the book, why would anybody pay to see somebody in a theater that can pay them at home and television and how desperate they are in the show takes off. In part of the deal as he travels the country speaking to tens of thousands of General Electric employees doing promotional things for the company, that really is what he discovered his own gift as a politician, the meaning in the late 1950s are the exact same people who would later become the reagan democrat but this puts an incredible stress on his life to small children who is dealing with two stepchildren from the earlier marriage and its in the course of that that hes incredibly passionate letter become so important and if you dont mind some of these letters are hot. Please do. This is one that he writes her in 1963, at this point they have been married for over a decade and he writes her, do you know when you sleep in kroll your fist under your chin in the morning when its barely don i like facing you and looking at you until finally i can touch you ever so lightly that 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 arrived myself but not really because right now as i tried to say what is in my heart i think my thoughts must be reaching for you without waiting for paper and ink and stamps and such, if i ate its because we are apart and yet that cant be because you are inside in a part of me so we really are apart at all, yet i ate because i wouldnt be without the ache because that would mean being without you and that i cant be because i love you. Anyway there are dozens and dozens of the incredibly passionate letters, there are telegrams, she is saving everyone of them in a shopping bag in her closet, Ronald Reagan in many ways claims as he was in a speaker on his paper is even more so, there were enough of these beautiful letters for them to be compiled into a book, wasnt there. Thats right and it was lovely to go through them as well and the library because some are funny and hes doing live references to the characters in hollywood and theyre just absolutely wonderful, they really do speak to the devotion of the reagans to each other, and by the way they speak a little bit to the stress thats going on at home, he also keeps promising her that the wrong separation on them that this wont last forever and at one point he writes i just wish we could go to the farm, that would be the ranch that he had then 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, and 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 ups and downs of her Approval Rating and her frustration about be misunderstood, as you alluded to earlier, the portrait of a shadow socialite drawn by her critics and her husbands presidency would be replaced by a calculating power, imposing her will on matters of states both foreign and domestic, you concluded that one point america never quite figured out what to make of her, she was in a Public Relations tugofwar was that she, i find a conundrum is how this woman who was so incredibly shrewd and incredibly sensitive about protecting her husbands image and almost always dead on the mark and becomes clueless about her own, she brings a lot of her problems on herself, not a great idea, in the middle of the worst recession in Great Depression for her to go out and spend a lot the donated money but nonetheless redecorating the white house or spending it on a thousand dollar place setting china on which they announce on the very day that the reagan a Admi