Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [239]
This second Kennedy assassination seemed to have more of an effect on the Reagans than the first. It happened in their own city, in the very hotel where Reagan’s political career had been launched, and like the stricken Bobby, Ronnie was running for president. “It was a terrible tragedy that all Californians took to heart,” Nancy later wrote.122 Kathy Davis, Reagan’s secretary at the time, recorded her boss’s state of mind the following morning, when Kennedy’s condition was listed as extremely grave. The Governor looked as if he “had been up all night in front of the television. As I later found out he had. First, he asked me to reach Ethel Kennedy on the phone. I tried all day long and was never successful in getting through to her. I’m sure to this day that she doesn’t know that the Governor wanted to offer the services of his father-in-law, Dr. Loyal Davis, the world renowned neurosurgeon.”
Reagan’s secretary also typed a soothing letter he had handwritten to Patti that day, with a curious final paragraph that seems to refer to the seer Jeane Dixon: “Isn’t it strange, a few months ago our friend in Washington told me that she foresaw a tragedy for him before the election. She didn’t know whether it would be in the nature of illness or of accident, but that there would be a tragedy befall him.”123
RFK’s death made Nancy even more uncertain about the wisdom of pursuing the nomination. President Johnson ordered around-the-clock Secret Service protection for all the candidates, but Nancy still worried and kept track of every death threat, even though her husband tried to keep her from finding out about them.124 The King assassination had also shaken Nancy, as she and Ronnie had happened to be in Washington when the news broke, and witnessed the city go up in flames from their penthouse suite at the Madison Hotel. Reagan went ahead with his scheduled speech at the Women’s National Press Club, but they had to be escorted to the airport by National Guardsmen.125
The results of the California primary should have discouraged Reagan 3 8 4
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House for another reason: only 48 percent of the Republicans who turned out bothered to vote for his unopposed favorite-son slate.126 The previous week, a San Francisco Chronicle poll had shown that a paltry 30 percent of Californians thought he was doing a good job. Meanwhile, a petition to have him recalled had garnered two thirds of the 780,000 signatures needed to place the proposition on the ballot in November. Though it would ultimately fall short, this uprising in his own backyard was an embarrassment to Reagan at a time when he was attempting to make a good impression on the national stage. Aside from accusing him of being generally incompetent and endangering the state’s health programs and educational system, the petition charged, “Ronald Reagan is attempting to further his personal ambitions at the expense of the people of California.”127
But adversity had a way of energizing Reagan and bringing out his competitive side. As political operative Robert Walker observed, “When we got into the summer and things began to heat up, Reagan became considerably more enthusiastic about the possibility of being nominated. We were able to get him out of Sacramento more frequently for speeches. By the time he came to the convention in Miami Beach, a great deal of his reluctance had been overcome and he felt that lightning might strike and he would have to be ready.”128
When Goldwater wrote Reagan a letter in mid-June all but