The Triumph of Nancy Reagan Karen Tumulty (motivational novels .TXT) 📖

politics. As she liked to point out, she became a Republican before he did, and spent many late nights stuffing envelopes at Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign headquarters in 1960. But hers was a different brand of conservatism than her father’s, particularly on the issue of women’s rights. She and Ronnie had spirited arguments over the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, which he was against and she supported. Ronnie contended that it was just another way for the government to interfere in people’s lives and that it would lead to women being drafted into combat.

Maureen was also keenly interested in closing a growing “gender gap” identified by pollsters during Ronnie’s presidency. It showed that women were increasingly less likely than men to support Republicans. “There are issues of unique concern to women, but these issues don’t end with women,” she told her father. “The problems of child care for working parents, equal pay for equal work, equal pension benefits, availability of credit, and enforcement of civil rights statutes all uniquely affect women, that’s true, but when a woman is discriminated against, her children are discriminated against, her husband is discriminated against, her community is discriminated against. All office holders have to address these women’s concerns, because they are also family concerns and community concerns.”

In 1982 Maureen, who previously hosted a radio talk show in Los Angeles, ran for the US Senate. She was one of eight people in that year’s hotly contested Republican primary. It had always been Ronnie’s practice not to endorse anyone in intramural GOP contests, and no one would have expected him to make an exception for his daughter. Things became uncomfortable, however, when the president told reporters that he did not want Maureen to run. Ronnie later insisted he meant the remark to be “facetious,” but the damage had been done.

There was no way of misreading her uncle Neil’s view of the race. Though Ronnie’s older brother had given away Maureen at her wedding only months before, he signed on as a campaign cochair for her leading opponent, San Diego mayor Pete Wilson, who ultimately won the race. “I don’t look well upon kids riding on their father’s coattails,” Neil Reagan told reporters. He later cut a radio commercial in which he declared: “We Reagans urge you to support Pete Wilson.” That Neil was speaking only for his wife, Bess, and himself was a detail meant to be overlooked.

Nor did it help when Ed Rollins, a top White House aide, observed to the Sacramento Bee’s Leo Rennert that the president’s daughter “has the highest negatives of any candidate I’ve seen.” Rollins added: “Her campaign has not caught fire, and she has serious financial problems. She’s been strident on some issues, and, while the president has been scrupulously neutral, there’s an impression that Maureen is not the overwhelming choice of the Reagan boys.”

Rollins, who thought what he told the reporter was off the record, apologized to Ronnie. As Rollins recounted the conversation, the president replied with a chuckle: “Well, Maureen was a little worked up about this. But, hell, Ed, don’t worry about it. I know she shouldn’t be in this race. There’s nothing you said that I haven’t thought to myself. I wish she weren’t running, too, but we’ve both got to be careful. I’ve said something I shouldn’t have said, too.”

Maureen’s campaign spiraled into oblivion. She got no help from the network of wealthy Californians who had bankrolled her father’s career. Where three of her opponents had raised upward of $500,000 each by April, she had only $3,438 in her campaign coffers. She came in fifth in the June 8 Republican primary, with only 5 percent of the vote. Ronnie tried to make amends by having Maureen named a special consultant to the Republican National Committee. He valued her political instincts and blunt advice, and her role with the national party organization brought her to Washington frequently. Maureen became a regular presence in the White House, living in the Lincoln Bedroom for long stretches. She bonded with Nancy over their shared mission of watching the president’s back. When his spokesman Larry Speakes had occasion to go to the family quarters with business for Ronnie, he would sometimes find Nancy and Maureen in their bathrobes, “chatting like schoolgirls.” Maureen even began calling Nancy “Mom”; she still referred to her own mother as “Jane.”

There would be no such warm moments with Michael, the son who had grown up feeling that being adopted meant he was not quite a real Reagan. A rank aroma of opportunism arose around nearly everything he did, and with it a potential to embarrass and compromise his father. As Speakes would later recall: “Michael Reagan always had schemes for making money from his father’s position, and Fred Fielding, who had to deal with potential conflict-of-interest problems as the president’s counsel, would come around and say, ‘Well, Sonny Boy’s at it again.’ ”

Maybe Michael was overcompensating for his insecurities, or perhaps he was simply greedy. Either way, White House aides learned to keep their distance. “He was a wheeler-dealer,” said Jim Kuhn, who was Ronnie’s executive assistant. “Mike would call all the time for this and that, and you knew not to… You wanted to be respectful of Mike, but if you got on his side and got too cozy with him, you would’ve been out. I mean, you just had to know that.”

Michael, who was well into his thirties, was still racing speedboats. The month after Ronnie was elected, he also took a job as vice president of sales for a small company in Burbank, California, that made parts for aircraft and missiles. In May 1981 five letters surfaced in which Michael had invoked his father’s name as he sought contracts with military bases. In one, he wrote: “I know that with my father’s leadership at the White House this countries [sic] armed services are going to be rebuilt and strengthened. We at Dana Ingalls Profile want to be involved in that process.” Asked about it