Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [274]
We moved on to other subjects. The title had long been a problem, since Reagan had clung to the idea of calling the book Trusting the People, which didn’t even sound like an autobiography, but we managed to persuade him to accept An American Life, which he quite liked. On three other subjects he was intractable, however. He would not add a single word more to his rather hermetic account of the Iran-contra affair (in fact, it was the only subject on which I received a brief, stiff note from Reagan, via his chief of staff, declaring that while the president shared my goal of making the book “an open, frank account,” he had made his decision on this matter, and we were to “move ahead promptly in accordance with his instructions”), nor did he wish to explain in any detail how he had formed his views on abortion or how the savings-and-loan crisis had begun.
I pointed out to him that most people regarded the savings-and-loan crisis as having occurred on his watch, rightly or wrongly, and that he should therefore address it somehow in the text. He shook his head patiently. A lot of people supposed that, he said, but it wasn’t true. The problems with the savings-and-loan organizations had begun in California and Texas, had they not? I agreed. Well, the president went on, that was just the point. In both of those states, state law precluded federal intervention—there was nothing the federal government could have done. It simply wasn’t his responsibility.
I got up to stretch my legs and was followed by the aide who had been sitting next to me. Surely federal law supersedes state banking laws, does it not? I asked him. The aide shrugged. “Well yes, technically,” he said. “But he’s always believed that, you see.”
I saw all right. Reagan was so persuasive, so gentle, so convincing a father-figure, so charming, that nobody wanted to argue or disagree with him. Besides that, his ideas were deeply entrenched, and sincerely held. Even when he was wrong, it was easier to go around him than to face the fact head-on.
We returned to the table just as coffee was served. Reagan, whose mind was already on his golf game, gave the paper bag to an assistant, who came back a few minutes later with a handsome china plate on which were neatly piled some homemade cookies. The president took the plate and held it up so that we could admire them—for a moment I thought he was going to say that he had baked them himself, but no, they were chocolate-chip cookies that had been baked for him by the Reagans’ Hispanic maid. He described with pride how she had risen at the crack of dawn to bake them and had given them to him to bring to the office as he was getting into the car.
I glanced at the plate. The cookies looked as if they had been baked by a child or somebody to whom the idea of a chocolate-chip cookie was basically foreign. They were lumpy, with a crisply burned crust, and rather thick for cookies. Still, Reagan was beaming at them as if they were culinary works of art, and it was impossible not to be touched by his pride and by his genuine gratitude that somebody who worked for him would go to this much trouble on his behalf. He took one off the plate, then passed it to the person on his right, and so on around the table. Chuck Adams, I noticed, put his in his pocket. I tasted mine, found it too sweet (but I totally lack a sweet tooth), and put the remainder in my pocket, where I was to find it