Should an 80-year-old former president be answerable for an alleged date rape in 1951? Kelley’s book is likely to kick off a debate about how far is too far in biography. Kelley argues that Mrs. Reagan’s influence on the presidency makes her fair game - from the $3,000-a-month bills for computerized astrology spreadsheets that dictated Reagan’s schedule, to the body count of top officials she pushed out of office. Kelley, who has written nasty, bare-all profiles of Frank Sinatra and Jackie Onassis, insists she is a serious biographer. Her richly reported book does make an honest attempt to analyze its subject, a woman so driven by insecurities that she was parodied by White House staffers as “the hairdo with anxiety.”
It took four years and some 1,000 interviews for Kelley to penetrate the protective circle around the First Lady. Rebellious daughter Patti Davis never spoke with Kelley but was interviewed by two research assistants, an arrangement that gave her a measure of deniability. Other Reagan siblings contributed as well to the portrait of a woman who beat her daughter in the face with a hairbrush and used Secret Service agents to spy on her children. The family’s obsession with son Ron’s sexual orientation produces some amusing exchanges. When 17-year-old Ron is caught in his parents’ bed with the wife of singer Ricky Nelson, Michael Reagan consoles his father with “the good news. you found out he isn’t gay.”
The soap opera “Santa Barbara” is no match for real life with the Reagans, as Kelley portrays it. She reports on Nancy’s regular three-hour lunches with Sinatra in the family quarters. The crooner was brought in the back door of the White House, and the First Lady accepted no phone calls when he was there, not even from her husband. But that’s the “soft” side of Nancy Reagan. Kelley depicts her as Marie Antoinette, vain and self-absorbed, fretting for an entire day over the amount of nutmeg in a veloute sauce and accepting more than a million dollars’ worth of free designer clothing during her time in the White House. She apparently found it far better to receive than to give. She kept a closetful of unwanted gifts to recycle. Stepdaughter Maureen’s wedding present of pewter swizzle sticks topped by tiny elephants was the donation of some eager Republican. When grandson Cameron forgot his teddy bear at the White House, he got it wrapped as a birthday present months later.
For all of Nancy’s grasping and pettiness, Kelley provides ample reason to sympathize. As a child she was abandoned by her parents and sent to live with relatives. After her mother remarried and reclaimed her, she spent years campaigning for her stepfather to adopt her. Even her storybook marriage to Ronald Reagan began on a sour note. Reagan is described as feeling “trapped” after Nancy tells him she is pregnant. At the time he had “at least six other relationships” and was wooing actress Christine Larson, who had rejected his marriage proposal. The night Patti was born, Reagan wept to Larson that “his life was over.”
Kelley’s revelations are unlikely to affect the president’s place in history. As for his wife, the book underscores what was already known: that as First Lady she wielded power her amiable husband could only imagine. The Reagans have pointedly ignored the book, but even now, Kelley is feeling what she calls “the long hand of Mrs. Reagan.” Talk-show hosts like Joan Rivers and Larry King–who are friendly with the Reagans - have reportedly decided against having Kelley appear. But keeping the author off the airwaves may, by piquing the public’s interest, only keep the book on the best-seller lists.
