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condemned the immorality and the “utter stupidity” of Betty Ford’s remarks. “Involving any prominent individual, this would be a disgusting spectacle,” he wrote. “Coming from the First Lady in the White House, it disgraces the nation itself.”63 So many angry phone calls, telegrams, and letters deluged 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that the President was only half joking when he said that he was afraid his wife’s remarks would cost him 20 million votes. The very next week, however, a Harris Poll showed that she was a lot more popular than he was, and in analyzing the results, Louis Harris said, “Mrs. Ford’s outspoken statements have won support from those younger and more independent elements in the electorate who are indispensable to her husband in a contest for the White House next fall.” Feminist leader Betty Friedan anointed the First Lady “the best kind of liberated woman.”64

Reagan vs. Ford: 1975–1976

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None of this went over well with Nancy. In mid-September she took it upon herself to attack the increasingly admired First Lady. She didn’t mention Betty Ford by name in the speech she gave to the Women’s Republican Club of Grosse Pointe, the richest town in the Fords’ home state of Michigan, but everybody knew exactly whom she was referring to when she said, “I am disturbed about the growing immorality. . . . Our sons and daughters are told not only that it’s all right to break our rules of morality, but that there should be no rules at all. . . . I believe it is time the great majority of us said, ‘Enough already. Stop.’ ”65

The great issue of the day for American women was the Equal Rights Amendment, which had been passed by Congress but had not been ratified by the required three quarters of the states. Among the wives of potential presidential candidates from both parties, a field that included Georgia governor Jimmy Carter, Arizona congressman Morris Udall, and Sargent Shriver, only two opposed the ERA—Cornelia Wallace, the wife of the Alabama governor, and Nancy Reagan. As First Lady, Betty Ford became the amendment’s most prominent supporter, spending countless hours calling state legislators and urging them to vote for it. Her progressive views endeared her most of all to women in the media, just as Nancy’s obsession with tradition and appearance worked against her. As Helen Jackson, the wife of another prospective candidate, Senator Henry

“Scoop” Jackson of Washington, said, “More is expected of wives this year than at any other time in a Presidential campaign. We all discuss cerebral things. . . . I think it’s all because of Watergate and the women’s movement. Watergate made people more concerned about the kind of people elected to public office, and because of the women’s movement, wives are now expected to be able to talk issues. It takes a lot more energy now than when all we did was drink tea and shake hands with the ladies.”66 At the end of 1975, Newsweek put Betty Ford on its cover as “Woman of the Year” and Time named her its “Man of the Year,” making her only the eleventh woman to receive that distinction.

Ironically, in private Nancy Reagan, because of her glamorous upbringing and her years in Hollywood, was much more sophisticated than Betty Ford. As the editor of Interview in those days, I had occasion to see Mrs. Ford at Halston’s dinners, where she was really a fish out of water—

extremely pleasant but at a loss with guests such as Diana Vreeland and Truman Capote, who had both hit it off perfectly with Nancy. One of the 4 4 6

Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House new friends Nancy made during this period was Barry Diller, who was a senior ABC executive when he met her at a dinner given by Oscar and Françoise de la Renta in Los Angeles. “I was seated next to her, and instantly we got it,” Diller recalled. “It didn’t really make any sense—we weren’t of the same age, I was hardly a Republican—but within twenty minutes we were telling each other about our lives.” After the Reagans left Sacramento and Diller took over Paramount in 1974, he continued to see her, and when his relationship