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

and West Berlin for more than a quarter century and made what was perhaps the most memorable foreign-policy declaration of his presidency: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Those electrifying words were not just symbolic. Real work that would ultimately help lead to the end of the Cold War—and in its wake, the unification of east and west—was going on at the negotiating table. Ronnie and Gorbachev met again the following December for the Washington summit they had agreed to in Geneva. It is remembered for the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a landmark pact prohibiting land-based cruise or ballistic missiles with ranges between 311 miles and 3,420 miles. For the first time, the two superpowers had agreed to eliminate an entire category of nuclear weapons. The INF deal would see the two countries destroy nearly 2,700 of these weapons by its 1991 implementation deadline.

Ronnie’s peacemaking efforts were not sitting well with conservative leaders at home. The Right had embraced his vision in other areas as though it were Scripture. But they did not share his commitment to arms reductions and were losing confidence that he was capable of holding his own in negotiations with Gorbachev. They also feared he had been damaged by the Iran-contra scandal, which at the time had been consuming his administration for six months. Shortly before the summit, influential activist Paul Weyrich told the Washington Post: “Reagan is a weakened president, weakened in spirit as well as in clout and not in a position to make judgments about Gorbachev at this time.”

Ronnie invited fifteen or so disgruntled conservative leaders, including Weyrich, to meet privately with him in the Roosevelt Room. “I’ve got to get them to calm down. I’ve got to make sure they understand where I am on this,” he told Jim Kuhn. The group sat stonily while Ronnie did nearly all of the talking during the session. Afterward, as he and Kuhn were returning to the Oval Office across the hallway, the president asked: “Did you notice how that was at the end, Jim?”

“Yeah,” Kuhn replied. “There was dead silence.”

“I didn’t get any applause. There was no applause from this group,” Ronnie said. “I thought I got through to them, and they are still upset thinking I’m too cozy with the Soviets.”

At the Washington summit, Nancy and Raisa once again created a running story line all their own. After the arrival ceremony, when the men went off for meetings in the West Wing, Nancy hosted Raisa and several administration wives, including Barbara Bush, for coffee in the Green Room. Barbara noted in her diary that Raisa did not offer condolences for the recent death of Nancy’s mother or inquire how she was feeling after her mastectomy the month before. Instead, the Soviet first lady began by getting in a dig, saying people were wondering why Nancy hadn’t come to Iceland. Before Nancy could reply that she had been under the impression that the wives weren’t invited, Raisa interrupted: “You would have liked it. People missed you.”

Raisa then proceeded to lecture the other women on Russian history, contrasting the United States’ experience unfavorably with her own country’s and falsely claiming that there were no homeless people in the Soviet Union, thanks to its twenty-five-year housing program.

Obie Shultz leaned over to Barbara Bush and whispered: “Nancy doesn’t like this conversation.”

“Who would?” Barbara answered.

Finally, after about an hour of listening to Raisa, Nancy said, “I’m afraid that I’m keeping you from your schedule.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” Raisa replied.

Several of the women there told Nancy later that they had been shocked at Raisa’s rudeness; Nancy allowed that she was glad others had seen what she had been dealing with. Nor was her overbearing behavior Raisa’s only transgression in Nancy’s eyes. Raisa had taken weeks to respond to Nancy’s offer to provide a tour of the White House later during the summit, though she accepted an invitation to visit Pamela Harriman, a prominent Democratic hostess and fund-raiser. “I was offended,” Nancy said. “In the circle we moved in, you don’t ignore an invitation from the head of state or his wife.”

When Raisa finally agreed to be shown through the White House, she insisted that the time be moved from midafternoon to late morning, and said that she could spend no more than one hour there. Afterward, a reporter asked Raisa what she thought of the executive mansion that Nancy had poured so much energy into renovating. Her reply: “It’s an official house. I would say that, humanly speaking, a human being would like to live in a regular house. This is like a museum.”

By this point, the relationship between the two women was beyond the point of repair. Raisa had been imperious in Geneva, had outmaneuvered Nancy by going to Reykjavik, and now had publicly upstaged her on her own turf. “Nancy Reagan didn’t trust anybody to begin with, but you roll her once, you’re history. And Raisa did it at least three times,” presidential assistant Jim Kuhn said. “But she put up with her. What choice did she have?”

As annoying as Nancy found Raisa, she also appreciated how close the Gorbachev partnership was, and appeared to have recognized in them a parallel of her own marriage to Ronnie. The Gorbachevs met as students and were wed in 1953, the year after the Reagans. In an interview that Nancy gave journalist James Mann in 2005, the former first lady said of Raisa, who died of leukemia in 1999 at the age of sixty-seven: “She was a very strong woman. You always had the feeling if he ever faltered, she would be right there to prop him up.”

The public and decidedly undiplomatic test of wills in which the two women were engaged worried some who feared its impact on the summit’s success. Selwa “Lucky” Roosevelt, who was chief of protocol at the State Department, wrote with exasperation in her memoir: “The Nancy-Raisa exchanges were reported ad nauseum by our press. Certainly Mrs. Gorbachev’s manner could be grating,