Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [261]
But Reagan was both sincere and realistic about not running this time around. In July, responding to a letter from Vermont governor Deane Davis urging him to make another try for the White House, Reagan joked,
“Just between us, though, I think we’d better settle for the North Pole—it’s easier to reach than that other place you mentioned.”118
“They got along fine,” Nancy Reagan said of her husband and Nixon, adding, “We were never close.”119 Nixon seemed to alternate between slighting the Reagans and courting them. Nancy Reagan told me that they were never invited to a state dinner by Nixon, though they were by Lyndon Johnson, who seated her at his table. They were asked to San Clemente in the summer of 1970 for an intimate dinner with the Nixons and Henry Kissinger, who was then national security adviser. Reagan wrote Kissinger a cryptic note the following day: “It was good seeing you last night—my mind is busy but my lips are sealed. Enclosed is the Pat-ton speech made to his 3rd Army before it left England to cross the Channel.”120
On July 15, 1971, Nixon startled the nation—and Ronald Reagan—
when he announced that he would be paying an official visit to Communist China the following year. Bill Buckley, who was in Sacramento to tape a session of his talk show, Firing Line, with Reagan, was at the Governor’s house when “there was a call from his office saying that it was very important to hear a special broadcast that Richard Nixon was making at six o’clock. It was the announcement that he was going to China, which was a very anti-rightwing thing to do in those days. So we sat and watched it. And then the phone rang, and someone came in and said, ‘Dr. Kissinger for Governor Sacramento II: 1969–1974
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Reagan.’ Henry was losing no time.”121 As Buckley recalled, Kissinger guaranteed Reagan “that the strategic intentions of the President were in total harmony with the concerns of the conservative community.”122
In October, Nixon sent Reagan on a two-week tour of Asia to reassure our allies that his historic opening to China would not change their relationships with the United States. In Japan the Reagans were the first foreign visitors who were not heads of state to have an audience with Emperor Hirohito, and in Thailand they were received by King Bhumi-bol—Ronnie bowed and Nancy curtsied. In Singapore, Reagan met with Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, and in South Korea with President Park, who told him how he dealt with student unrest. “Just before our arrival there was rioting on the campus of the University of Seoul,” Nancy recalled. “It was interesting to see how such things are handled in these countries. First, let me say there was irrefutable evidence that the rioting was engineered by Communist infiltrators. The president simply closed the university, and the young men were drafted into the army. President Park told Ronnie that after they had a little taste of military life, he’d reopen the university, and he was sure the returning students would have a greater appreciation of their educational opportunity.”123
There was also a quick, unannounced detour to Saigon, where Reagan was helicoptered to lunch with President Thieu while Nancy and young Ron took a second helicopter to the American ambassador’s residence.
Nancy also made a point of visiting an American military hospital in the South Vietnamese capital. Between official duties, the superstitious Reagans bought a “spirit house” at Bangkok’s floating market for their garden in Sacramento, and Nancy found time for a visit to Hanae Mori’s couture house in Tokyo. “Skipper was the best traveler of all,” Nancy Reynolds told the Sacramento Union upon their return. “He certainly developed the most sophisticated palate and was quite an expert with chopsticks by the time we left.”124
Reagan’s most important stop was Taiwan, where he and Nancy dined with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and