Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [243]
The Reagans were less unhappy with Goldwater, for whose reelection campaign in Arizona, Edith Davis had again been a significant fund-raiser.150 After all, his advice had proven to be correct. Nor were they angry with Thurmond, who, along with Goldwater, had been very vocally urging Nixon to take Reagan as his running mate. By some accounts Reagan was on the short list until the last cut, when Spiro Agnew, the man Dick Nixon was most comfortable with, emerged as the surprise choice. That was okay with the Reagans, too. As Nancy told The Washington Post, “My husband feels he can implement his philosophy and ideas more as governor of California than as vice president, and I agree with that.”151
Only the postmortems remained:
“I wrote in a column from Miami that Reagan’s candidacy was almost certainly something that he undertook to do something nice for his friends.
It was so obvious he was not going to win,” said Bill Buckley. “Reagan called to tell me that was exactly correct—it was only because he felt an obligation to them.”152
“I think Cliff [White] gave us a little bad advice,” said Holmes Tuttle.
“He felt we couldn’t convince some of these people unless he was a definite candidate, you understand, instead of just being a ‘favorite son.’ I think we were just overoptimistic. . . . Well, we were a little premature, I’ll put it that way. . . . But it was a good start.”153
“What I remember most,” said Betsy Bloomingdale, “was there were so many Secret Service we could hardly move. And the night Ronnie didn’t make it, we came back to the hotel, and there was not a soul around.”154
Ronnie and Nancy stayed in Florida for the weekend, cruising through the Keys on Alfred Bloomingdale’s yacht. “Only the two of us and the crew,”
Reagan wrote. “That first night, we slept fourteen hours, and we felt the greatest sense of relief either of us had ever known.”155
“Reagan limped back to Sacramento, more than a little embarrassed, 3 9 0
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House to lick his political wounds,” Mike Deaver recalled. “For Nancy, the convention fiasco served as confirmation of her own political antennae. After Miami, she would never again hold back her opinion on major political decisions, whatever the Gipper might be thinking; but it was always about protecting her husband, not about driving him on.”156
“He told me afterward,” Lyn Nofziger confided, “and I know he told other people, too, that he was not disappointed. He did not feel that he was really ready for the presidency.”157
C H A P T E R F I F T E E N
SACRAMENTO II
1969–1974
It was in the California period that I began to understand that there was a Reagan mystique, that it carried a force of its own, and that no matter how you tried you couldn’t pin it down. I saw Reagan run for reelection as governor by running against the government. He campaigned as if he had not been part of it for four years. I can’t explain it either. I only know it worked.
Michael Deaver, Behind the Scenes 1
Reagan is a closet moderate and regularly practiced compromise with other consenting adult politicians in Sacramento.
Richard Whalen, The New York Times, February 22, 1976
Princess Salima, English-born wife of Aga Khan IV, was named the best-dressed woman in the world yesterday, nosing out the leading American entry, Mrs. Ronald Reagan.
Frederick Winship, UPI, January 7, 1972
RONALD REAGAN HAD GOOD REASON TO BE PLEASED WITH HIMSELF ON
December 5, 1968, as he headed to Palm Springs to host the Republican Governors’ Conference. The state budget was now running a surplus, and Reagan had been able to announce the first of four rebates he would give to taxpayers during his governorship. In November the Republicans had won control of the state legislature, and Nixon had beat Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic nominee, by a hair in the popular vote but decisively in the Electoral College. No governor had campaigned harder for Nixon than Reagan, who traveled to twenty-two