PROPELLED BY HIS BELIEF THAT the country wanted drastic change, Ronald Reagan reversed virtually everything Carter did. Especially important was the new president’s sunny optimism, which gave America a welcome lift after the depressing failures and self-doubt of the Carter years.
When the former California governor and movie actor took over in January 1981, things seemed bleak, with the economy reeling and America seemingly in retreat around the world. But Reagan insisted that the country’s best days as a “shining city on a hill” were still ahead. When he was shot on March 30, 1981, by a deranged drifter named John Hinckley, Jr., the new president impressed the country with his grace and steadiness. At the hospital, he jokingly asked the doctors if they were Republicans, and he told his wife, “Honey, I forgot to duck.” He recovered from the assassination attempt quickly and told friends he felt that God had spared his life for a purpose—to pursue his conservative agenda and roll back what he called the “evil empire” of Communism.
Riding a wave of admiration, Reagan won passage of a series of massive tax cuts and reductions in the growth of government. His hardline policies toward the Soviet Union initially caused consternation and fear, both in the United States and abroad. But in the end they paid off when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev rose to power and entered into a remarkable partnership with his American counterpart. The four Reagan-Gorbachev summit meetings, in Geneva, Reykjavik, Washington, and Moscow, were benchmarks in East-West relations.
As the nation’s condition and mood improved, voters gave Reagan the benefit of the doubt even though the septuagenarian president often seemed disengaged and ignorant of his own administration’s policies. Time and again, he would be caught in errors of fact at his news conferences and in his off-the-cuff remarks; but the country seemed on the upswing so Reagan didn’t pay much of a price for his lapses.
Then came the Iran-Contra scandal, midway through his second term. It turned out that overzealous aides had traded arms for hostages in Iran and then used financial proceeds from the arms sales to help anti-Marxist Contra rebels in Nicaragua, which was against the law. Reagan said he never knew the details of what was going on around him—contributing to his reputation for disengagement. And for a while, it seemed as if his presidency was in jeopardy. But the country tired of the controversy after saturation coverage by the media for many months, and his popularity rebounded.
For much of his second term, Reagan devoted himself to improving relations with Moscow and building on his relationship with Gorbachev. It was a bizarre turn of events, because Reagan had been such a hardline cold warrior for so many years. But Americans supported his efforts.
In sum, Reagan’s eight years in office represented a historic era when American exceptionalism—the notion that the United States has a special destiny for greatness, different from any other nation—became generally accepted once again by U.S. citizens and by many around the world. Within two years of Reagan’s departure, the U.S.S.R. unraveled, just as Reagan said it would after he applied unrelenting diplomatic, military, and political pressure.
REAGAN BROUGHT HOLLYWOOD to the presidency, using all his skills as a former film star and TV performer. He was perhaps the most scripted of all our presidents. Everything was stage-managed, from how he entered a room (head up, shoulders back, walking jauntily), to where he stood (at spots marked with masking tape to give him the best camera angles).
And of course he brought Hollywood to Air Force One. At the end of his successful reelection campaign, in 1984, he even took Frank Sinatra, Charlton Heston, and other legends of Hollywood with him while he stumped through California. They spent time swapping stories, reminiscing, and discussing how well the campaign was going, according to Tim Kerwin, one of the senior stewards.
Heston recalled the hop from San Diego to Los Angeles on the day before the balloting. Nancy had invited him aboard, and Heston said: “That’s an offer one doesn’t turn down. Virtually everyone on the plane looked exhausted: Jim Baker, Ed Meese, Mike Deaver, even Nancy. The only one in high spirits was the president. He was older than anyone else aboard, but his eyes were shining and he made sure he talked with everyone on the plane.
“Champagne was being poured and I asked Jim Baker what the outcome looked like for the next day. He said we’d probably lose Minnesota and the District of Columbia, but win everything else. I had thought it would be closer, but he said, ‘It’s a lock, an absolute lock.’ And, as it turned out, he was right.
“What I remember most is not that he had won by so much, but that to be successful in politics at that level you have to really love it—and Ronald Reagan did… . In fact, when we got off the plane that day in November 1984, he looked as if he could have started the whole thing over again.”
Heston’s observation is widely shared by Reagan’s confidants. One reason for his staying power was his ability to pace himself. Observes David Gergen, one of Reagan’s senior advisers: “He was extremely disciplined as a person and that was not well understood.” But it manifested itself in many ways.
For one thing, he would say and do exactly what he wanted regardless of how much pressure he was under to go “off message.” Whether in public encounters or in private interviews, he could almost never be cajoled, bullied, or sweet-talked by the media into departing from his script. His press secretary went to elaborate lengths to determine the reporters he would call on at East Room news conferences. Reagan would be shown their names and photographs in advance, then a government camera in the East Room would pan the journalists waiting in their seats as Reagan watched a screen in a private room in the West Wing—all so the president could easily recognize them during the questioning. Finally, their names were highlighted on a seating chart hidden in the president’s podium.
All this enabled Reagan to give the impression that he was accessible and knew the press corps well, which was far from the truth. He never thought it was necessary to know them very well as individuals, as long as he knew his lines. And he was an excellent salesman for his policies, especially in the all-important medium of television, where he had once hosted General Electric Theater and Death Valley Days. He was so genial it was hard for even his opponents to dislike him.
This discipline was evident on Air Force One. A day or two before departing for some faraway place, he would start eating his meals as if he were already in the time zone he would be visiting, even if that meant having dinner at breakfast time in Washington. When he got on the plane, he did the same thing, to the consternation of aides whose metabolism could not easily adjust to meat loaf at 9 A.M. And Reagan rarely drank alcohol, even wine or beer, aboard the plane, telling aides it sapped his energy. Instead, he consumed quarts of water and cups of decaffeinated coffee, and he nibbled between meals on grapes, apples, plums, and other fresh fruit (with an occasional jelly bean). Reagan always believed this regimen kept him healthy and minimized jet lag.
IN KEEPING WITH his emphasis on stagecraft, Air Force One became a fabulous prop. Reagan understood the airplane’s power as a symbol and he used it as a backdrop whenever he could, just as other presidents had done. But Reagan perfected some new techniques. One was the “Walk,” a carefully choreographed, dignified march from his limousine or helicopter up the stairs and into the magnificent blue-and-white 707. Aides were not allowed near him lest they get into the camera frame. This was a moment for the commander in chief, alone, to stride purposefully into his plane—all for TV. In fact, just about everything was done by the Reagan White House for the three broadcast networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC in those years. That’s where most Americans got their news in the era before the broadcast networks lost much of their audience and influence, and before the 24-hour cable networks (CNN was then in its infancy) set the pace.
“Air Force One became a symbol of American strength and prestige and power, maybe unlike it was used in the past,” former Reagan aide Fred Ryan told me. “We noticed that more and more there was just this awe of Air Force One. People felt it was better than any other aircraft… . It’s not just because it’s the president’s plane. It’s also because so few people have been aboard it. People can go on a White House tour but the general public doesn’t tour Air Force One.” Reagan understood this.
INSIDE AIR FORCE ONE, Reagan could be himself. He was a 9-to-5 manager who set his administration on a conservative course and left the details to his aides. It was a popular business model at the time, but it had its drawbacks—especially because it fostered distance between the chief executive and his own policies and personnel.
Reagan’s behavior on the plane represented his presidency in microcosm. He would drop by the senior-staff cabin shortly after takeoff to say hello, then return to his compartment to read or relax. His confidants say he was far more devoted to his work than his critics gave him credit for, and always tried to act the role of president. Except on long flights, he surprised guests by continuing to wear his jacket and tie because he thought it was more dignified. On long flights, he resorted to a technique from his days on the road as a pitchman for General Electric: He would take off his suit pants and have a steward hang them up while he changed into velour sweatpants. That way, his trousers would never lose their creases and he would always look immaculately groomed.
“People would come up to see him and he would be happy to have meetings,” said David Gergen. “But beneath that affability was a reserve and a discipline that allowed him to get things done.”
Adds Ken Duberstein, Reagan’s last White House chief of staff: “In many ways, Reagan was a loner. He was from a more formal era. He would socialize, but he was never one of the boys.” He believed in wrapping himself in a cloak of mystery, always holding something back. He learned this as a performer, when he was told to leave the stage while the audience still wanted more. That way, the crowd would look forward to seeing him again. Somehow, it worked. “When he walked into a room, he was larger than life,” Duberstein recalls.
The flight crew, which got to know him well, respected him immensely. “He was already a public person before he took office,” said steward John Haigh. “He didn’t have anything to prove. He always was a gentleman and thanked you when you did something for him. And the mark of a good leader is that he inspires people to do their best. That’s what he did. President Reagan came in with an optimism about the country and he left with that same optimism. Whenever he got on the plane, there was an aura around him.”
Time and again, members of his Air Force One crew and his White House aides told me that Reagan somehow made them feel better about themselves, with a joke, an attaboy, or a wink and a pat on the back. “He always had a smile on his face, and he always had a good word for you,” says Jim Bull. “He was always ‘up.’”
He liked to keep track of the plane’s arrivals, and he told crew members how much he appreciated the way they respected his schedule. As the plane pulled to a stop precisely on time, as it almost always did, Reagan would theatrically check his watch and congratulate whichever crew member was nearby. “You did it again,” he would say with a grin.
Once, when Reagan noticed the hardworking Bull at his console, sweating heavily under his earphones, he made a jocular reference to his plight. “You look like you’re ready for a dip in the pool,” Reagan quipped. Bull said, “He just had a way of making you feel better.”
Occasionally, the president would walk into the staff conference room, just aft from his quarters, lean on the back of a chair, and tell stories about his life as a politician or an actor, and perhaps offer his impressions of the place he was going. Word would spread that the president was holding forth and, within minutes, the conference room would be crammed with 20 or 30 aides and guests.
It was another performance, and Reagan loved it. At 6 foot, 1 inch and 185 pounds, with thick, dark brown hair that belied his 70-plus years and the fact that he was the oldest man ever elected president, he cut a striking figure. Reagan loved always to look the part of the president. During these airborne sessions, he rarely talked policy or provided any new insight into his thinking; instead, he would retell stories from his speeches and anecdotes that his veteran advisers had heard many times before. Like all good performers, he made his lines seem fresh every time he spoke them. On such occasions, Reagan managed to establish a personal connection to those around him. This was one of his gifts.
Sometimes his listeners would be amazed at his down-home anecdotes, because he had been criticized so often as an elitist. He liked to describe his favorite way of making sure the jeans he wore on his ranch fit properly. He would wade into a lake wearing the new jeans and leave them on until they dried. The result: a comfortable, formfitting pair of pants. He said it was a method he learned in his younger days as an actor who loved the outdoors but always wanted to look good, even sexy.
Veteran flight steward Howie Franklin says Reagan didn’t associate with the staff very much, “but he would always come in and say hello… . If I went in to give him a glass of water while he was doing presidential work, he did something non-verbally or verbally to raise my self-esteem. I mean, I tried to catch this guy being a phony politician for eight years, and I couldn’t do it. He was the same guy all the time.”
One homey touch was that Reagan insisted that the crew always have a birthday cake on board. That way, when he found out a staff member or guest was celebrating a birthday, he could hold an impromptu celebration, which he enjoyed. Sometimes he got more than he bargained for. When a Secret Service agent puffed out his candles once, he blew chocolate chips from the top of his cake all over the president.
BUT REAGAN WAS not always a happy flier. He confessed to senior advisers: “I long for the days when the president never left the continental United States, when it was traditional that he never traveled abroad.”
Larry Speakes, his first-term White House spokesman, recalled that, “The farther away he had to go, the less he cared about going. He [liked] to be at home in the White House, or at Camp David, or, most of all, at the ranch.”
Marlin Fitzwater, who replaced Speakes as spokesman in February 1987, added: “He didn’t like to travel. For a politician as successful as he was and as popular with the masses, he didn’t really enjoy any of the politician’s stereotypes, such as rope lines and handshakes, receptions and greetings—or travel… . I would guess that we probably traveled less than any other modern president. If he didn’t have to go, he didn’t want to go. And I remember him talking about not liking to go on foreign trips; they were just too long.
“My speculation was that this was one of the areas where age came into play,” Fitzwater told me. “We always had to keep in mind that this fellow was seventy-seven years old and he had traveled a lot, and there were few places he hadn’t seen… . It was kind of like, ‘Been there, done that.’ … Reagan didn’t have a tourist impulse in him.”
A man of the old school, he much preferred the train trips he had taken as a corporate spokesman for General Electric. Like Franklin Roosevelt, his boyhood hero, Reagan enjoyed the slower pace of first-class rail travel because it allowed him to relax and ruminate. There was also a fear factor; for years, Reagan and his wife, Nancy, were distressed whenever they read about plane crashes.
In the end, though, they realized that traveling by air would be required if he was to be a successful candidate and governor of California, and they accepted it. Still, as governor, he and his wife made a habit of flying separately as often as they could. That way, both of them would not be killed in a crash, leaving their children as orphans.
But President Reagan tried to replicate the leisurely routine of his younger days. This extended to developing his travel schedule, which would be decided weeks in advance and almost never changed. There was rarely any frenetic activity in Reagan’s Air Force One. “By the time he got on that plane,” says Fitzwater, “the speeches were written and approved, the advance texts were printed, and we knew exactly what was going to be said and when. Basically, we even knew the outcome of the meetings that the president was going to hold.”
This allowed the president to have as carefree a trip as possible.
AS PRESIDENT, he enjoyed flying over the United States, especially en route to California. He loved to look out the small oval windows of his cabin, and he would frequently leave his compartment and excitedly tell aides when the Rocky Mountains rolled by; that meant he was nearing his home state. He had more of an eye for geography than most people realized, and could name cities and towns as Air Force One passed over. He would ask the crew to verify them, and he was almost always right.
Reagan was at heart a nostalgist who believed in the idealized America that he celebrated in his speeches, a place where middle-class families lived the good life in solid little houses behind white fences with a car in the driveway and maybe a dot of aquamarine in the backyard signifying a swimming pool. He loved to watch such scenes as Air Force One flew over the endless suburbs of America. In many cases, the real lives below bore no resemblance to his idealized vision; America was, after all, mired in a deep recession during much of his first term and he seemed to give little thought to the millions left out of the American Dream.
But he remarked to aides that he would love to take the leader of the Soviet Union on a flying tour of America, to prove once and for all that capitalism and democracy worked. Even his aides thought he was naïve to think it would make much difference but Reagan had a simple faith in the goodness of the United States that he believed would triumph. In his mind, this nostalgic vision was always crystal clear. The irony was that George Herbert Walker Bush, Reagan’s successor, was able to show Mikhail Gorbachev parts of America from the air, and the Soviet leader was impressed, just as Reagan predicted he would be.
IF HIS WIFE, Nancy, was aboard, he would closet himself with her in the front cabin, chatting, dining, checking his briefing books and his speech texts, or reading biographies and history. This was the president’s pattern in everything he did: Nancy came first, and he was perfectly content to isolate himself for long hours with her. There were many little touches indicating his affection. He would put his hand protectively on the small of her back as they climbed the stairs, and they would hold hands in the president’s stateroom. He had the towels in the bathroom changed from green and white to red, which was her favorite color.
He loved to eat foods from his youth, such as meat loaf and macaroni and cheese but would relent when Nancy was with him. At her request, he would have a bowl of vegetable soup and an avocado-and-shrimp salad, or a plate of fruit and vegetables. “All she wanted was for him to stay alive for a long, long time,” says chief communicator Jim Bull, whose console was only a few feet from the president’s suite.
But when he was not traveling with her, nutrition would go out the window, at least at his main meals, and his preferred menu would reappear. In addition to the meat loaf and macaroni and cheese, the stewards would serve him lemon meringue pie or chocolate chip cookies, some of his favorites. And he looked forward to seeing Bavarian cream apple pie on the printed menu. When that happened, he would ask the stewards to give him a light portion of the main course so he could indulge himself with a big slice of the creamy dessert. If Nancy was aboard and saw the item, she would tell him, “You’re not having any of that,” and he would meekly acquiesce.
At a basic level, Reagan was at peace when his wife was at his side and unsettled when she wasn’t. “The main difference was his personality,” recalls Marlin Fitzwater. “When she was on the plane, he was a more relaxed, contented fellow. When she wasn’t on the plane, he was always anxious to get home, less communicative. It is amazing, the way people talk about their love story, but his home was wherever she was, and you could see a kind of definition of his life in her circle. If she was with him it didn’t matter where we were going or when we got back. He was always comfortable. But he was always a little anxious, a little more on edge and everybody could tell that he was a different personality when they weren’t together. He didn’t like to travel without her.”
For her part, Mrs. Reagan was her husband’s protector. When she felt that his aides weren’t serving him well, she stepped in to correct the situation. She was a big reason that White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan was ousted during Reagan’s second term.
And her influence extended beyond personnel. After Reagan’s disastrous first debate with Democratic challenger Walter Mondale in 1984, Nancy sat glumly in the president’s cabin on Air Force One with her husband and speech writer Ken Khachigian. “Ken,” she asked, “why isn’t Ronnie mentioning Walter Mondale in his speeches?” Khachigian hemmed and hawed. He didn’t want to create a fuss by explaining that senior White House strategist James Baker had ordered a ban on references to the Democratic nominee so Reagan could remain “above the fray.”
When Nancy persisted, arguing that Mondale’s daily attacks were undermining Reagan’s popularity, Khachigian told her about Baker’s directive. The First Lady immediately summoned Baker to the cabin and confronted him. “Jim, no more white picket fences,” she declared. “From now on, Ronnie has to respond.” Baker was angry, but agreed to the new terms of engagement.
All the while, President Reagan sat quietly and doodled on the text of a TV ad that Khachigian had prepared. Nancy was the confrontationalist in the family; but everyone around the first couple knew that the president’s silence meant he was giving tacit approval to her demands. And her strategy worked. Reagan went on the offensive and his public standing improved.
REAGAN’S HABITS ABOARD the plane revealed traits that the public never knew about.
In addition to his disciplined style, which went counter to the stereotype of him as lazy, he was more of a general-interest reader than anyone suspected, favoring biographies and Western novels. But he wouldn’t allow his staff to leak the information to the media because he didn’t want journalists to psychoanalyze him or mock his choices. He was a disciplined reader of his briefing memos, although he preferred them to be concise and got bored with long-winded analyses. He enjoyed reading the comic strips in the Sunday newspapers, and would sometimes chuckle out loud.
He was devoted to updating his diary. He would use the long hours aboard Air Force One to jot down his thoughts in a book bound in red leather, with each paragraph carefully written in flowing longhand. He later used these jottings as the basis for his presidential memoirs.
Contrary to his public image of eternal good cheer, Reagan sometimes had a bite to his humor. Once his staff was engaging in chitchat as he did his paperwork, and the talk turned to Hollywood. Someone mentioned a rumor that a film might be made of the life story of pint-size actor Mickey Rooney, whom Reagan had known during his Hollywood days. The speculation turned to who would play Rooney in the movie, and an aide suggested that the actor simply play himself. Reagan, who had been listening to every word, interjected, “He’s too short.”
Reagan was something of a practical joker. A favorite trick was to prowl the staff cabin and find someone who was sleeping, preferably with his mouth open and in an awkward position. The president would motion for a White House photographer to come forward and he would stand in the aisle, grimace or frown, and wave his arms silently as if he were very upset, all while the photographer snapped pictures.
A week or so later, a manila envelope would arrive on the victim’s desk containing photos of the scene, with the president’s signature and a handwritten reminder of the trip. Among his favorite targets were Press Secretary Fitzwater and Secretary of State George Shultz. After catching Shultz asleep during a trip home from Latin America, a photo arrived showing the secretary unconscious and the president standing next to his seat in an imploring pose. Reagan’s handwritten note said: “George, wake up! The Soviets are coming!”
At first, the gambit caused a good deal of embarrassment, but eventually the pictures became prized possessions.
Reagan rarely showed any temper. One of the rare cases came on a campaign stop in 1984 when the mobile staircase wasn’t working and he had to exit the plane through an enclosed jetway. This meant that hundreds of people who had been waiting to see him on the tarmac wouldn’t get the chance. Reagan upbraided his staff. “All these people got up early on a Sunday morning to shake my hand,” he said sharply, “and they couldn’t do that. Make sure it never happens again.”
REAGAN WAS MORE SUPERSTITIOUS than most Americans suspected. His wife shared that trait, especially after the assassination attempt in March 1981. Nancy Reagan eventually enlisted the services of an astrologer named Joan Quigley, who would determine when the stars were aligned for good or ill, and Nancy would try to shape her husband’s schedule accordingly. Virtually no one at the White House knew about the astrologer, but many suspected that something weird was going on.
Fitzwater recalled proposing a press conference for a Tuesday at 11 A.M., but Reagan sent back a note saying he wanted to do it Thursday at 3 P.M. The press secretary went into the Oval Office seeking an explanation. “What is this?” Fitzwater asked with a laugh. “Why this time? It’s kind of strange.”
The president replied mysteriously, “Don’t ask, Marlin.” So they proceeded with the Thursday timing.
It still isn’t clear how much the Reagans altered the president’s travel schedule according to astrological charts, but several senior aides say Quigley’s influence was substantial. For example, Reagan’s meetings with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev apparently were scheduled in accord with the movement of the planets and the stars.
Once the staff arranged for Reagan to attend a Baltimore Orioles baseball game on a day the astrologer considered inauspicious. “Nothing better happen to Ronnie today,” Nancy warned a senior aide, “because he was not supposed to be gone” from the White House. She would review her husband’s schedule in advance, consult with Quigley by phone, sometimes for hours, and send back changes such as when press conferences should or should not be held, when trips should be arranged—even the precise times when the president’s Marine One helicopter and Air Force One should lift off and land.
“My control over the departure times of Air Force One when the President was aboard was absolute,” Quigley recalls. “This was a matter of safety, first and foremost, both at home and abroad… . The original departure time is the most important factor for general safety on a trip. But I never took chances. I cast a chart for both Reagans for the various locations during the times they would be away. In addition, I cast the charts for the countries and cities, when available, for the time of the Reagans’ visits, as well as the mundane material for the proposed location, which included the solar ingresses, lunar cycles and cycle charts of the planets Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.”
Under the astrologer’s guidance, Mrs. Reagan set the moment that her husband and Gorbachev, then attending a summit meeting in Washington, needed to sign an important agreement limiting intermediate-range missiles, which both sides had negotiated for many months. It had to be done on a Monday at 2 P.M., the First Lady declared. “Pens had to hit paper then,” recalled a senior White House adviser who was familiar with the incident. That’s when they signed it, too, although only a handful of White House aides knew why the Reagans were so adamant about the timing.
After former White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan (still bitter over his ouster) disclosed the astrologer’s role in his book late in Reagan’s second term, it became an open joke in the West Wing. Communications Director Tom Griscom would note the arrival of Nancy’s recommended changes in the president’s schedule with the line: “Let’s go check the bones out” or “Let’s read the bones, and see what they’re telling us today”—a reference to sorcerers consulting chicken bones to predict the future. Griscom recalled thinking at the time: “It’s a heckuva way to control a schedule.”
Yet the White House was receiving many death threats against the president, and Mrs. Reagan repeatedly told friends she was worried about a second assassination attempt. This intensified her protective instincts, and she turned to the astrologer for emotional support.
For his part, Reagan had some peculiar superstitions of his own. He would wear the same suit and tie for his summit meetings with Gorbachev and for other important events if things had gone well when he wore those clothes before. He was religious about wearing what he called the “good-luck cuff links,” which Nancy had given him many years earlier. Each one contained a calendar of the month of March, with a tiny gemstone marking March 4, their wedding date. Shortly after boarding Air Force One, recalls former aide Fred Ryan, “he would flash the cuff links to show he had them on. He felt that things would be safe if those lucky cuff links were on.”
He would bow his head and say a prayer before each takeoff. When Michael Deaver, his longtime confidant and media adviser, asked him about the habit, Reagan said he was just asking “the Lord” to take care of Nancy in case anything happened to him.
HE COULD BE remarkably naïve. During one California trip, a member of Congress arrived very late for the flight home; Reagan had invited him as a guest. But the Secret Service was not pleased when the legislator rushed up the stairs carrying a big hunting rifle in a leather case. When Reagan came back to say hello after takeoff, the congressman had a bright idea.
“I know you like guns,” he said to the president. “Let me show you this beautiful rifle I’ve got.”
“Really?” Reagan said politely. “I’d love to see it.”
The congressman unsheathed the weapon and pointed out the scope along the barrel. “You can pick up something at three hundred yards with this,” he said proudly.
At this point, the Secret Service agents and staff were getting nervous.
“Mr. President,” the legislator said. “Pick it up. Try it.”
Reagan grabbed the rifle, raised it to his shoulder, put his hand around the stock and heard an agent shout, “Don’t pull the trigger!”—just as Reagan did just that. The loud click startled everyone, despite the background roar of the 707’s engines.
Fortunately, the rifle was not loaded. But the chagrined congressman quietly put the weapon back in its case and changed the subject. Reagan acted as if nothing unusual had happened.
ANOTHER QUIRK centered on Reagan’s sleeping habits—or lack of them. It was never widely known that he couldn’t sleep on airplanes. That’s one reason his trips seemed so leisurely.
Most presidents will depart in the evening for a lengthy foreign trip and get at least a partial night’s sleep on Air Force One, then start the next day with a full schedule at the point of destination. Not Reagan. His staff would make sure the septuagenarian president flew during the daytime, and not for too long at a stretch. He would arrive in time to sleep in a bed at his destination. Nancy, however, could sleep on the plane, and Reagan would often slip out of their cabin to let her rest while he schmoozed and told stories to aides and guests.
Ensuring that the president was well rested became a constant preoccupation, and with good reason. After a long day of meetings in Brasilia during a trip to Brazil, Reagan was barely awake at a late-night banquet given in his honor. At the end of his ceremonial toast, he told his hosts how wonderful it was to be with them in “Bolivia.” The news media barraged him with criticism the next morning for not knowing what country he was in, and as Air Force One descended into São Paolo, Reagan noticed a banner near the tarmac held by some local citizens: “The people of Bolivia welcome the President of Canada.” He pointed it out to aides, and had a good laugh at his own expense.
IN MOST CASES, he left the heavy lifting to his aides. On nearly every flight, the White House staff would be hard at work completing his speeches and policy pronouncements and in general running the government while the president kicked back. His critics called it laziness, or lack of intellectual capacity. Reagan called it delegation of responsibility.
This dynamic was clear in the run-up to his first summit with Gorbachev on November 19–21, 1985, in Geneva. It would be Reagan’s first meeting with a Soviet leader, and tensions were high. “There was palpable electricity,” says former adviser Duberstein. “It was high-stakes poker.”
Flying to Geneva on November 16, Reagan learned that Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, a hardliner toward the Kremlin, had written him a letter urging a firm stand against the Soviets on arms control. The letter, however, had been leaked to The New York Times for that morning’s editions, and moderate administration officials thought the leak was aimed at ruining the summit. In any case, the incident showed how divided Reagan’s advisers were, and how he had been unable to unite them behind a single policy.
On the first afternoon of the summit, he and Gorbachev held a one-on-one meeting for 49 minutes at the pool house of the Chateau Fleur D’Eau overlooking Lake Geneva, and it went well. Even though nothing much was accomplished in concrete terms, the two men agreed to meet again. Reagan was pleased. He believed he had established a rapport with his Communist counterpart.
As he flew home on Air Force One, Reagan began to decompress, as so many presidents had done before him under similar high-pressure circumstances. He told his staff: “We’ve seen what the new Russian looks like. Now maybe we can figure out how to deal with him.” He said he had told Gorbachev that the two of them could bring peace for generations to come, and they should work hard to “erase these things that have made us suspicious of each other.” It was a heartfelt testimonial to Reagan’s optimism and a clear statement of what he hoped to accomplish, but some of his hawkish advisers feared he might have been gulled into a false sense of hope.
Their next summit, at Reykjavik, Iceland, on October 11–12, 1986, was even more dramatic. Gorbachev had asked for the meeting on short notice, and there was little time for Reagan and his staff to prepare. After agreeing in principle on one proposal for arms control after another, Reagan and Gorbachev were on the verge of accepting an extraordinary pact to eliminate all the superpowers’ nuclear weapons, which would have been a stunning move. But the deal fell apart when Gorbachev demanded that Reagan give up research and development for a futuristic, space-based “shield”—formally called the Strategic Defense Initiative and nicknamed “Star Wars”—to shoot down nuclear missiles. Reagan said no, and the summit meeting collapsed.
The problem for Reagan and his aides was how to put the best face on what had happened. The first news reports by the wire services and on the television networks indicated that a deal of historic proportions had been within grasp, and Reagan let it slip away. As Speakes tells the story, the counter-spin was largely formulated by key Reagan aides during the four-hour Air Force One flight from Reykjavik to Washington.
It happened while Reagan quietly nursed his wounds over the messy outcome. He closed the door to his cabin, causing aides and stewards to fret that he was more upset than they had ever seen him. Yet he bounced back after a couple of hours alone reviewing the events of the previous two days. By the time Air Force One was making its descent into Washington, his optimism had returned and he was talking to aides about his desire to meet with Gorbachev again soon. “I’m okay now,” he told his senior staff in the conference room. “I know that I made the right decision. It was the right thing to do. We couldn’t give up America’s insurance policy.” He was talking about SDI.
Meanwhile, the PR campaign had moved into high gear. First, White House National Security Adviser John Poindexter gave an on-the-record, 80-minute briefing to the reporters in the media cabin. This was transmitted to the rest of the press corps. Poindexter blamed Moscow for the summit’s failure. “Soviet rhetoric was far out in front of what they were actually willing to do,” Poindexter said as he puffed on his pipe, at one point dropping wearily to his knees in the aisle so his arms and elbows rested on the press table.
Speakes took a sheet of Air Force One stationery and outlined what he called “an unprecedented news blitz that would begin when we got back to Washington.” The exhaustive script called for Secretary of State George Shultz to meet with the editorial boards of major newspapers such as the The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and decision makers at ABC, CBS, and NBC. Other senior officials, such as White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan, would make the administration’s case in separate briefings and interviews with other major news outlets, including the The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report. Still other officials would appear on the network morning shows, write op-ed articles for newspapers, and give more interviews. Monday night, the day after he returned, Reagan himself would address the nation at 8 P.M. and argue that he had presented the Soviets with the “most sweeping and generous arms control proposal in history.”
The remarkable thing is that Reagan had virtually nothing to do with the development of this plan on which so much was riding. He approved an outline of it before he landed, and then went to the residence to rest. More to the point, the plan worked, and the media portrayed Reykjavik much the way the White House wanted.
YET HIS DISENGAGEMENT was also at the heart of the Iran-Contra affair, the worst scandal of his presidency. The episode was politically devastating to Reagan for two reasons: He had promised never to negotiate for hostages, and financing the Contras was against the law.
“Iran-Contra was a very discouraging period for him because he always felt if he was right about something he could go to the American people and persuade them,” says former secretary of state Shultz. “He thought he was right in this case because he was trying to free the hostages, and he found that he couldn’t convince the American people.”
Reagan struggled for many months to clear himself and reestablish his credibility, and he finally came to terms with the fact that some of his aides had deceived him. In the end, the public lost interest after no one could prove that he had direct knowledge of any wrongdoing.
It turns out that Reagan could have seen signs of trouble if he had paid attention to what was going on around him aboard his plane. Jim Bull, the military official who was responsible for all communications to and from Air Force One, says he got suspicious because there were so many secure phone calls between Oliver North, a National Security Council operative who turned out to be a key figure in the Iran-Contra transactions, and Bud McFarlane, the president’s national security adviser. McFarlane generally accompanied Reagan on Air Force One. “It seemed to be trouble,” Bull says, but he remains certain that Reagan knew little or nothing about what was going on.
• • •
HISTORIANS WILL SPEND YEARS debating whether President Reagan was lucky or smart, but his admirers say he always had an intuition that the Communist empire could not stand. When he gave his dramatic speech at the Berlin Wall on June 12, 1987—declaring, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”—few thought such a thing was possible in their lifetimes. But the wall came down not long after Reagan left office.
Why was he so right about such a fundamental question when so many of the “experts” were wrong? “It came from a depth of conviction about what worked and what didn’t work,” Shultz told me. “He believed that when something is really wrong it is not going to survive.” Communism was in that category. It was not only evil, he believed, it ran counter to human nature and was unworkable.
His visit to Moscow for his final summit with Gorbachev in May and June 1988 brought all these issues to the fore. First of all, Air Force One had to fly through Soviet air space—reminding the Americans of the fact that the Soviets had shot down a Korean airliner in 1983 and killed 269 people, including 63 Americans, provoking angry denunciations from Reagan.
The atmosphere aboard Air Force One was a mixture of anticipation and trepidation as the president and his staff pressed their faces to the windows, wondering what might happen next. “You had a sense of the vulnerability of the plane and a sense of the history of the shootdown,” Fitzwater says. “There was a strong feeling of, ‘We’re flying into an unknown land and unknown circumstances,’ and that was without regard to the unknown issues we were going to have to deal with.
“Reagan was going finally to see the evil empire,” recalls Fitzwater. “And we were all part of this phenomenon, and that was kind of magnified by the fact that one of the purposes of this trip was to put an end to the evil empire view of the world.”
The trip was a success. Reagan walked with Gorbachev through Red Square and proclaimed that the two nations were now partners, not enemies. It was a remarkable about-face for the quintessential cold warrior.
Yet the moment could not completely erase all those years of superpower tension. “After spending five days in Moscow, feeling like you were bugged everyplace … wondering if the maids in the hotel and the drivers assigned to us were all KGB,” says Fitzwater, “there was this overwhelming sense of being watched and a kind of paranoia set in about everything… . By the time we got back on that plane it was like climbing back into the womb of mother America, and I remember going up the steps and thinking, ‘God, let me get up those last six steps and inside the door. When I’m inside the door I know I’m safe. Just let me get on that plane.’ It was an incredible feeling. And to a greater or lesser degree, I think the president’s staff and the president have that feeling every time they get on that plane.”
Minutes after Air Force One lifted off from Moscow and began the long flight home, someone started to sing “God Bless America” and the entire staff quickly joined in. Soon after, the stewards began serving the famished staff hamburgers and Cokes—American comfort food—that they had been saving for this moment.
THE EIGHTIES WERE years of public preoccupation with fame, wealth, and glamour. The hot television shows were Dallas and Dynasty, which celebrated those qualities. Reagan did the same. If the poor were getting lost in the shuffle, so be it. That seemed to be the administration’s attitude, or so Reagan’s critics said. In any case, the perks returned to the White House and Air Force One, where passengers still loved to snitch the plastic cups, napkins, pads, matchbooks, and boxes of candy, all bearing an Air Force One logo.
Under Reagan, the pecking order was all-important—to some members of his staff. “By protocol, only the President and Mrs. Reagan were to use the front exit; everyone else was to use the rear exit,” recalls journalist Hedrick Smith. “But the TV cameras and welcoming parties were at the front, and the most perk-and-publicity-conscious officials—press spokesman Larry Speakes; Dick Darman, a top presidential aide; national security adviser Bill Clark—would violate protocol and get off at the front, ahead of the president, rather than exit from the rear.” Reagan, who hated confrontation and exhibited surprisingly little ego about such matters, let it go.
This easygoing manner helped him in many ways. People believed he was genuine. Even his long vacations at his Santa Barbara estate, Rancho del Cielo, didn’t hurt his image very much. Americans felt that the septuagenarian president had placed the country on a proper course and he deserved his time off. Not that public opinion seemed to matter to him when it came to his beloved ranch. He told aides he would not forgo traveling there because it refreshed and invigorated him. He told one aide that the more time he spent at Rancho del Cielo, the longer he would live and the happier he would be; it was hard to argue with the boss when he put things in such personal terms. After a few months, his staff rarely second-guessed his vacation time, and he ended up spending the equivalent of a full year of his eight-year presidency at the ranch.
In fact, after the Soviets shot down the Korean airliner in August 1983, Reagan was reluctant to leave his cowboy paradise, arguing that he could handle any decisions from there. But his aides insisted that he would look too detached and lazy if he didn’t return to Washington, and he did so reluctantly. Still, he seethed. “I want you to know,” he told Fred Ryan aboard Air Force One as they flew eastward, “the trip got cut short three days. You owe me three days.”
Ryan laughed it off, but not long after they got back, he got a note in Reagan’s distinctive scrawl. “Remember,” the president wrote, “you owe me the three days.” Of course he got them.
En route to California, as he anticipated the joys of riding horses, clearing brush, and chopping wood at the ranch, Reagan would loosen up remarkably and so would those around him. During a 1983 flight from Washington to Santa Barbara for the July Fourth holiday, George Skelton of The Los Angeles Times pulled a surprise on the president during an interview in his private cabin. A few weeks earlier, Reagan had spoken to a group of young people at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in Houston and seemed to counsel them, with a sly smile, to take care of their health so they could enjoy vigorous activities later in life; many in the audience, including several Reagan aides, thought he was referring to sex. Skelton decided to follow up on it when the opportunity arose.
He managed to schedule an interview aboard Air Force One about Reagan’s overall health at age 72, which was sure to be an issue in the following year’s reelection campaign. Skelton took an expansive view of the health issue and asked the president what he had meant in Houston. Reagan denied that he had been referring to sex, insisting that he was talking about riding horses and other outdoor activities. Then, as he sat across a small table from the commander in chief, Skelton dropped the bombshell. “Well, I’m on shaky ground here, okay,” the reporter said nervously, “but I’ve got to ask a seventy-two-year-old president if you still have an active sex life.”
Reagan broke into a grin and laughed. “I don’t think, no, George, and I’m remembering things like Mr. Carter in Playhouse and so forth [a mangled reference to candidate Jimmy Carter’s much-derided admission in a 1976 Playboy interview that he felt lust in his heart toward some women]. No, this is a subject I think I’ll stay away from.”
Reagan took it all in stride, and never held the question against Skelton, whom he had known for many years. Reagan’s aides, however, were nonplussed at Skelton’s audacity and the president’s nonchalant but savvy decision to stay mum.
AS WITH MOST PRESIDENCIES, staff members were eager to travel on the plane as a demonstration of their importance. One aide, who had worked for Reagan while he was governor of California, was known not only to enjoy the perks of the executive branch but also to drink too much. On one trip, he had done his customary imbibing, and then, as Air Force One rolled to a stop on the tarmac during the evening he rushed to the front door to supervise the president’s arrival. The man hastily stepped out as the door opened, only to find that the outside stairs had not been fully deployed. He fell more than 20 feet to the ground, sustaining severe injuries. He left White House service soon thereafter.
THERE HAVE LONG been rumors about what guests and staff bring home on Air Force One, especially during the high-living Reagan days. “Well, everybody brought back mementos and gifts,” Fitzwater says. “And generally speaking it was reasonable. It was stuff you could put in your luggage. The only kind of single item that was always talked about and outside the ‘too big for luggage’ [standard] were rugs, because so many of the government trips were to Middle Eastern countries or even Russia and China, and rugs were one of the things that you could always get cheaper there than you could in America. They could fold them up pretty small but they were still bulky and heavy, and there’s no way you could put them on the plane without being seen and being obvious about it.”
Each individual was still responsible for paying customs fees on purchases, Fitzwater says, adding, “It was just a convenience.” But not a small one, because the buyer didn’t have to carry the rugs and check them in himself; government workers would simply pick up the purchases along with other baggage outside staffers’ rooms in their hotels and everything would magically show up on the tarmac of Andrews Air Force Base, at the base of the plane, or back at the White House. Someone else did the heavy lifting.
The real problem apparently was caused by journalists traveling on the press plane. “The worst offenders were members of the press corps on return trips from California, who had the travel office staff and the flight crew stock cases of wine in the luggage or cargo holds,” says a White House official from those days. Staff people would bring back a bottle or two, but most were afraid to abuse the privilege. “I don’t think it was corrupt, just self-indulgent,” says the official.
REAGAN’S LAST trip aboard Air Force One, on January 20, 1989, provided final insight into the man and his era. Instead of the sadness and recriminations that marked the last flights of Nixon, Ford, and Carter—who all left office as defeated men—Reagan’s trip was celebratory.
As is customary, he boarded Marine One on the morning of the inauguration of his successor, George H. W. Bush, and was taken on a quick tour of the capital. When the helicopter swung around for a final look at the White House, he said to Nancy, “Look, dear, there’s our little shack,” bringing her to tears.
The presidential couple kept to themselves for a while on Air Force One, but eventually they came out into the main cabin area to thank the staff and crew for their help over the previous eight years. At one point, Mrs. Reagan asked the pilot, Bob Ruddick, “Do you think it would be okay if Ronnie came to the cockpit and watched the landing?” This is something the commander in chief had rarely done since LBJ’s day, preferring not to distract the pilot. Ruddick agreed.
As the plane approached the outskirts of Los Angeles, a steward peeked into the presidential stateroom and saw Reagan with Nancy on his lap. They were looking out the window and pointing out landmarks to each other. After a few moments, they got up and stopped in the staff cabin as the big aircraft soared over posh Orange County, part of Reagan’s conservative base for many years. “You want to see where all the Republicans live?” Reagan told aides who had gathered around him as he pointed to the suburban tracts sweeping by. “You see all those swimming pools down there?”
Reagan then made his way to the cockpit and took the observer’s jumpseat behind the pilot. As other aides and crew members wandered in and out, he pointed out some of the sights he knew so well from his days as California governor and all his trips back to the Golden State.
Suddenly he turned nostalgic, with his particular homespun flair. “What time is it in Washington?” he asked.
“Sir, it’s five o’clock in Washington,” replied chief steward Howie Franklin.
“Hey, boys, just think,” Reagan exclaimed. “George Bush has put his clothes in my closet.”
ONE OF REAGAN’S many legacies was the 747 jumbo jet that he left to his successors. After he was elected to a second term in 1984, his staff, his military advisers, and the Secret Service all recommended that he order a more advanced plane to replace the then-outmoded 707. The critique was compelling: The 707 was too noisy, generated too much pollution, couldn’t fly far enough or fast enough, and was limited in its communications systems and other equipment. “The airplane was an antique,” said pilot Ruddick, “and the president’s aircraft needed to accommodate a larger number of staff people than the 707 could handle.”
Reagan, like Eisenhower under similar circumstances three decades earlier, had another reason to order the new plane. When he attended international conferences, he noticed the leaders of smaller and less consequential countries arriving in 747s, which outclassed his 707.
The president, the First Lady, and their advisers pored over plans and, in the end, ordered not one but two souped-up 747s. This was a security precaution. One would serve as the main Air Force One and the other as a backup that would be ready at all times in case the first plane went out of service—at a total cost of more than half a billion dollars.
The aircraft were supposed to arrive in 1988, the final year of Reagan’s term. But serious problems developed in the manufacturing process, and the new planes weren’t delivered until Reagan had left office. He never set foot on “his” new plane.
It was left to George Herbert Walker Bush, his successor, to take the saga of Air Force One to the next level. Beyond that, Reagan’s 707 is being kept near his presidential library and museum outside Los Angeles, where it will become the centerpiece of a permanent exhibit on presidential travel.