Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [264]
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their patriotism by giving dinners for prisoners of war returning from Vietnam after the Paris Peace Accord was signed in January 1973, and their steadfastness by hosting a controversial reception for South Vietnamese president Thieu a few months later. They made another trip to the Far East for Nixon in late 1973, even as the deepening Watergate scandal was causing other Republicans to keep their distance. They cultivated the grandees of the national press, growing ever closer to the Annenbergs, Gardner and Jan Cowles, and Kay Graham. By the end of 1974, Reagan could proudly point to the more than $5 billion given back to taxpayers in rebates, credits, and property tax cuts, and the 300,000 names taken off the state’s welfare rolls as a result of his reforms.137 He had gone from the candidate who was scorned for saying “A tree is a tree is a tree—how many more do you need to look at?” to a governor who oversaw the creation of the Redwoods National Park, added 145,000 square miles to the state park system, sponsored the nation’s toughest water pollution control laws, and established the Air Resources Board to deal with smog-causing automobile emissions. He shared credit for what The New York Times would call “a first-rate environ-mentalist” record with his resources director, Norman Livermore, a lumber-man who belonged to the Sierra Club and, like Bill Clark, rode horseback with him.138
For her part, Nancy’s persistent lobbying for a new Governor’s Mansion had finally paid off, even though, as she liked to point out, she and Ronnie would never spend a night in the $1.4 million, thirty-one-room, yellow-stucco edifice rising on eleven acres of riverfront land given to the state by the Kitchen Cabinet.139 She had also seen to it that the old gingerbread mansion would be preserved as a State Historic Site, and diplo-matically gave a few official functions there, with Mike Deaver pounding away at the piano in the parlor.140
“Ronnie accomplished a great deal during his eight years as governor of California, and in my own way, I suppose I did too,” Nancy later wrote.
“But for me, the return of the POWs marked the high point of Ronnie’s administration.”141 The Reagans hosted four dinners for the returning servicemen, two at the Executive Residence and two in Pacific Palisades.
“When they were landing in California, we saw them on TV,” Nancy Reagan told me. “And I said to Ronnie, ‘I just can’t wait to get my arms around them and tell them how I feel.’ They would get up and toast Ronnie for what he’d done. And Ronnie would say, ‘That’s not what we’re doing—we’re toasting you.’ I remember one man gave me the tin spoon he 4 2 4
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House had eaten with in prison. Patti came to one of the dinners—I thought it might be good for her to hear their stories—but she was very bored by the whole thing.”142
One of the returnees, Nancy recalled, was future Arizona senator John McCain, who would become a close friend of theirs. “We met John in Sacramento. He had been seven years in solitary confinement, and the ones there the longest came back first. He could have been released earlier, but the North Vietnamese wanted him to meet with Jane Fonda when she went to Hanoi. And he wouldn’t do it.”143
Nancy also prevailed upon Justin and Punky Dart to lend their Holmby Hills house for two large receptions for the POWs on March 28
and April 10, 1973. In between these two parties, the Governor and First Lady gave their dinner for Thieu at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where guests were greeted by picketing protesters led by Jane Fonda and her second husband, Tom Hayden, a founder of the radical Students for a Democratic Society.144 Nancy seated the South Vietnamese President between her and Irene Dunne, and Reagan’s table included Doris Stein, John Wayne, and Cy Ramo, the chairman of TRW, a major defense contractor based in Los Angeles.145 “Tell Jane Fonda what a dope she is,” Zsa Zsa Gabor told reporters as she arrived.146
Nancy donated her