Nancy Reagan, Vindicated at Last

During her three-day visit, Mrs. Reagan lunched with the current first lady and met separately with President Obama before accompanying him to a signing ceremony creating the Reagan Centennial Commission. She hosted a big get-together at the Capitol Hilton that constituted the kickoff of The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation's $100 million fundraising effort to update the Reagan museum and host a variety of events in two years during the Reagan centennial. Though vilified during her husband's presidency, vindication is now complete for the "lady of grace, courage, and quiet strength" that Reagan Foundation chairman Frederick J. Ryan Jr. referred to in his introduction at the Capital Hilton Tuesday night.

That crowd, which included Reaganites from Alan Greenspan to Edwin Meese, concurred with Ryan; the applause Mrs. Reagan received lasted longer than her brief remarks. And it's not only in Reagan Country that a woman once referred to by fearful White House aides as the Iron Lady or the Ice Lady is now treasured.

President Obama put it this way: "There are few who are not moved by the love that Mrs. Reagan felt for her husband -- and fewer still who are not inspired by how this love led her to take up the twin causes of stem cell research and Alzheimer's research. In saying a long goodbye, Nancy Reagan became a voice on behalf of millions of families experiencing the depleting, aching reality of Alzheimer's..."

Mrs. Reagan's greatest sacrifices were borne in private, of course, tending in quiet moments to a man who could no longer recall close friends or trusted aides, let alone the world leaders and political rivals with whom he had tangled in his career's epic journey. Ronald Wilson Reagan outlived his oldest daughter, but didn't know it, and couldn't so much as open his eyes during the last few years of his life. But Nancy was always there by his side, tending to him, comforting him, and protecting his legacy. She took her solace where she could find it; in I Love You, Ronnie, a 2000 book about their correspondence through the years, Nancy revealed that she had read and re-read their many love letters going back 50 years. Four years later, in a book he penned before he died, Michael K. Deaver, a confidante of both Reagans, put it this way: "Now to a man no longer capable of looking after himself, Nancy is everything there is left to be: caretaker, guardian, nurturer of the Reagan legacy."

I found that out first-hand in March 2001, at the christening of the Navy aircraft carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan. Nancy came out from California to Newport News for the ceremony – she christened the ship herself – and at a reception afterward my father and I asked her how long she was staying in the East. Only one night, she replied, adding that she felt guilty about even that brief a stay. "Ronnie doesn't like it when I'm not there at night," she said. It was about the most simple and poignant expression of pure devotion I'd ever heard.

In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Mrs. Reagan said that she still "sees" her husband in the halls of their home, especially at night or when she wakes up in the morning. "I miss Ronnie a lot, an awful lot," she said. "People say it gets better. No, it does not. It sounds strange, but...I see Ronnie. At nighttime, if I wake up, I think Ronnie's there and I start to talk to him."

This is understandable, especially since Reagan was something of a ghost-like presence in the fading years of his life. Still, it is risky territory for a woman who, after her husband was wounded in an assassination attempt, consulted astrologers to try and keep him safe in his travels. At 87, however, Nancy is beyond posturing. She did look resplendent in her red pants suit with matching red shoes at the Tuesday reception, but she apparently figures that the press she gets is the press she's gonna get. Besides, what can anybody write or say about her that hasn't already been said? Gloria Steinem once called her "the marzipan wife," and the New York Daily News compared her to Marie Antoinette. She hadn't been popular in Sacramento, which she deemed too much of a cow town, but the reaction to her on arriving in Washington bordered on cruelty.

A Washington Star columnist wrote in a cutting column about Mrs. Reagan's "piano legs," while The New York Times drew attention to her designer dress during a visit to a New York rehab center for addicts -- as though this constituted hypocrisy of some sort. Johnny Carson quipped that her favorite junk food was caviar, and even Bob Hope, a family friend, joked that Nancy's nursemaid tickled her under the chin while saying, "Gucci, Gucci, goo."

But in hindsight, the seeds of Nancy's ultimate vindication were planted even then. Heeding her husband's advice just to laugh it up, Nancy played along. At an Al Smith Memorial dinner in New York in her first year in office, Nancy alluded to the then-popular "Queen Nancy" postcards that showed her wearing a crown, and deadpanned, "Now that's silly. I'd never wear a crown. It messes up your hair." As the crowd laughed, she added that her newest cause was a charity called "The Nancy Reagan Home for Wayward China," a reference to her fancy new dinnerware. The following year, at the Gridiron Dinner, Mrs. Reagan took advantage of her training as an actress to dress as a bag lady and sing a ditty called "Second-Hand Clothes" to the tune of "Second-Hand Rose."

Only, as it turns out, Mrs. Reagan isn't a second-hand anything; she's sui generis, and even old political adversaries of her husband's have come around. Presiding over Wednesday's ceremony at the Capitol was another Californian, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a liberal Democrat who was no fan of the Reagan Revolution back in the 1980s. Pelosi, who has had a tough year of her own in the public relations department, rose to the occasion, recognizing that Mrs. Reagan was being honored, too, as well as the memory of her husband.

"Today, it is a great privilege for all of us to be joined by the former first lady," Pelosi began. "President Reagan and Mrs. Reagan had one of the great love stories of all time, and the American people benefited from that," Pelosi added. "Mrs. Reagan, with your presence here today, I hope you know that we honor you."

Pelosi lauded Mrs. Reagan's support for stem cell research, as any Democrat would have. But then she went on to point out that the former president's statue contains pieces of the Berlin Wall, "as a symbol of his commitment to national security and to his success," which not all Democrats would have added.

The previous evening, I'd wandered around the hall at the Capital Hilton asking old Reaganauts how Nancy had finally turned things around. "They had her wrong all along," replied Martin C. Anderson, who is at the Hoover Institution these days and has a new book out on Reagan. "They thought she wasn't smart? She's a 'Smithie.' She went to Smith College. She's smart and tough – and she was that way all her life."

Anderson's wife and co-author, Annelise Anderson, had a different take: "Nancy took care of a man for 10 years, and this was a man whom the people of the United States loved," she told me. "Americans know that, and they admire her for it." I'll give the last word to Ken Khachigian, a California Republican political consultant who worked on many a Reagan campaign. "Her reputation was set for all-time at (Reagan's) funeral," he said. "There she was: classy, dignified, loyal, strong. What's not to like?"