Leafing Through the Presidency : The Stream of Books by Washington Insiders Offers a Critical View of the Reagan Style

During last year’s Iran-Contra hearings, news publications erupted with stories about Ronald Reagan’s “hands-off management style.” However, in his book, “Behind the Scenes,” former White House aide Michael K. Deaver provides intimate glimpses of his boss that suggest Reagan was destined to be a laid-back President from the first day of the new Administration.

Just before 9 on the morning Reagan was to be sworn in as President, Deaver went to Blair House to find that Reagan was still in bed. Deaver reminded Reagan that he was to be inaugurated in two hours.

“Does that mean I have to get up?” Reagan replied.

More bedtime stories were to follow. When American fighter jets shot down two Libyan planes over the Gulf of Sidra in 1981, White House aide Edwin Meese decided not to wake up the President at 11 p.m., Deaver writes.

Shultz Waited

In his book, “Man of the House,” former House Speaker Tip O’Neill reveals that in the summer of 1983 he received a telephone call at 7 a.m. at his Cape Cod vacation spot informing him that the Soviets had shot down a Korean airliner. He also found out that Secretary of State George Shultz was waiting until Reagan woke up to inform him of the development.

Beyond aides’ reluctance to rouse Reagan at key moments lies an even more curious tale of what the President has done, or not done, while he was awake, running the country with a no-details management style that is documented bit by bit in a series of books that have been written by several people close to the Oval Office. Books by O’Neill and former Reagan aides Deaver, Alexander Haig, David Stockman and Terrel H. Bell all contain passages that suggest a portrait of a President working short hours, whose policies are shaped by feuding aides and an influential wife.

Some of these books, like Haig’s “Caveat” and Stockman’s “Triumph of Politics,” were at least partially dismissed as expressions of sour grapes by aides whose own ambitions were frustrated. Reagan’s popularity was so durable that critical authors raised relatively few eyebrows. But a second look at all the books taken together may result in a different conclusion.

“It’s possible in the last year as the Reagan Administration begins to unravel, people might take another look at these books for a clue as to what really went wrong,” said political analyst William Schneider of the American Enterprise Institute.

The stream of books began in 1984 when former Secretary of State Alexander Haig became the first senior Cabinet member to launch a published attack on a sitting Administration since Secretary of State James Byrnes took aim at Harry Truman’s foreign policy in his 1947 book, “Speaking Frankly.” Haig, also speaking frankly, wrote in “Caveat” that Reagan’s foreign policy was a free-for-all fight in which Reagan’s inexperienced “chums” from California usually won out.

While some saw Haig as an unabashed power-grabber, Haig wrote in his defense that he merely was trying to decipher (or perhaps create) a chain of command that could handle foreign policy. Haig wrote that he found Reagan’s national security process “incoherent.” To him the White House seemed “as mysterious as a ghost ship. . . . Which of the crew had the helm?”

This mystery surfaced early, in a January meeting of Cabinet designates. “I had sensed in Meese a tendency to assume an unusual measure of authority,” Haig wrote. “In a sort of primer on Cabinet relations with the White House, he explained the President’s ideas, the President’s procedures, the President’s priorities. Reagan himself spoke very little. When he did intervene, it was usually to recall an incident from his days as governor of California that was in some way relevant to the subject.”

With “The Triumph of Politics” published two years later in 1986, former Budget Director Stockman made front-page news with a detailed account of the early budget-cutting battle, which portrayed Reagan as having little or no grasp of his own economic policies.

Stockman contended in his book that Reagan never understood what kinds of devastatingly deep cuts would be required in all government programs to realize his campaign promise of balancing the budget. Stockman found Reagan to be a softhearted soul who knew only that he wanted to balance the budget while cutting taxes, raising defense spending and maintaining necessary assistance for truly needy elderly, disabled and poor Americans. Reagan could not be swayed from any of these convictions, even after it became apparent the combination was impossible.

“What do you do,” Stockman writes, “when your President ignores all the palpable, relevant facts and wanders in circles? I could not bear to watch this good and decent man go on in this embarrassing way.”

Even the Reagans’ daughter, Patti Davis, has written an autobiographical novel, “Home Front,” that reportedly has caused a Grand Canyon-sized schism between mother and daughter. People magazine called the poorly written novel a “literary striptease” depicting her father as “Ozzie Nelson in the White House.” Despite Davis’ weak claims that the book was fiction, the characters were only thinly disguised with the heroine’s mother portrayed as a flighty political wife consumed with her husband’s image, the latest fashions and redecoration of the White House. Both Reagans called the book “interesting fiction,” but Davis has not been seen with the Reagans since, her absence painfully noticeable during her mother’s cancer surgery and her grandmother’s funeral.

Bell, the former secretary of education, has written a book, “The Thirteenth Man, a Reagan Cabinet Memoir.” Once again the theme of government by dueling aides was presented, with a seemingly oblivious Reagan above the fray. Bell writes that after his department concluded an exhaustive study of the effectiveness of the nation’s educational system, entitled “A Nation at Risk,” Reagan presented it with a speech that included his personal wish-list for tuition tax credits and school prayer, subjects that had nothing to do with the report. During preparation of the speech the items were volleyed in and out of the text as various aides got Reagan’s ear and his cue cards, Bell suggested.

Harsh Criticism

O’Neill, a Democrat to the bone, predictably wrote some of the harshest criticism.

“Ronald Reagan lacked the knowledge he should have had in every sphere, both domestic and international. Most of the time he was an actor reading lines, who didn’t understand his own programs,” O’Neill wrote. “I hate to say it about such an agreeable man, but it was sinful that Ronald Reagan ever became President.

“I’ve known every President since Harry Truman, and there’s no question in my mind that Ronald Reagan was the worst. . . . We’re talking about a man who went into meetings reading all his remarks from three-by-five cue cards.” O’Neill writes that an auto executive told him that Reagan once met with the heads of three major car companies and read for a few minutes from the wrong cue cards. “His guests were so embarrassed that no one could bring himself to mention the mistake,” O’Neill wrote.

O’Neill also wrote that he was particularly appalled at the planning of the Grenada invasion. At a meeting of high-level American officials discussing the upcoming maneuver, it became apparent to O’Neill that no one had informed British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, even though Grenada is part of the British Commonwealth. Later, after O’Neill asked whether Thatcher knew, O’Neill could hear Reagan on the phone with Thatcher “fumbling” and making “apologies.”

At one point in the meeting Reagan referred to a speech he had loved about the 1946 liberation of the Philippines. Later Reagan pulled O’Neill aside to say he hoped the same thing would happen in Lebanon. O’Neill concluded with alarm that the invasion of Grenada was really designed not so much to save American medical students but more to divert public attention from the recent terrorist bombing in Lebanon that had killed 241 Marines. “I left the meeting with a great concern for my country,” O’Neill wrote in his notes that night.

While Deaver’s book, “Behind the Scenes,” is obviously meant to be a 263-page valentine to the Reagans, there are anecdotes that help to confirm much of what some critics have alleged, primarily the charge that Nancy Reagan has too much influence on the President. Mrs. Reagan was “like a dog with a bone” when she tore into a political issue that interested her, Deaver writes. She “has been at her best in persuading (Reagan) to take the longer view of history. When some of his staff wanted him to get tough with the Soviets, she argued that he should soften his language. . . . She lobbied the President to soften his line on the Soviet Union, to reduce military spending and not to push Star Wars at the expense of the poor and dispossessed. She favored a diplomatic solution in Nicaragua and opposed his trip to Bitburg. Nancy wins most of the time. . . .

“Those who clash with her will perpetuate the image of Nancy Reagan as the Invisible Hand, manipulating, ruthless in dealing not only with her husband’s adversaries but with friends who let him down. Let the record show that she acted, when she acted, only to protect the President.”

Ignored in Oval Office

In another anecdote that Deaver related with fondness, Deaver enters the Oval Office to discuss something with the President, but Reagan ignores him while trying to teach his new puppy obedience. “Here, Lucky. Here, Lucky,” Reagan says as Deaver fails to attract his attention.

The most interesting thing about all of these books may be that their revelations have seemed to slide right off what some have called Reagan’s Teflon coating.

“Most people are pretty savvy now about the media and they understand the only way to sell a book is to tell dirty little secrets,” Schneider said. “There has been nothing revealed that is so surprising or shocking that it would tarnish his reputation.

“The most damaging things were revealed in Stockman’s book. That was truly horrifying. And if that doesn’t hurt, nothing will. People understand the Stockman book was written by someone who had an ax to grind, who was frustrated by the failure of his program, and trying to make some money. It came out at a time when things looked pretty good in the country, and people took it with a grain of salt.”

While these books do not seem to have hurt Reagan, “I don’t think they’ve made his day,” political analyst Peter Hart said. “Never has an Administration been more concerned or self-conscious about the image of the President, and yet here comes the kinds of things one thinks you could control, your own allies writing about you.”

Hart feels that the books served to “provide material for serious commentary in trying to make a point about Ronald Reagan. Probably what’s more damaging is the humorous commentary, from Johnny Carson or Jay Leno. They see these things, it becomes part of their monologue and then it reaches serious numbers of people. That’s how it makes a difference.”

This Administration is the first in history to spew forth so many candid books while the President is still in office. But the authors follow a broad national trend in this regard. Politicians have discovered the New Age of publishing, in which everyone who is in the news for 25 minutes or less is flocked with book offers. Along with the likes of Olympian Bruce Jenner’s spurned wife (“I Am Chrystie”), business mogul Donald Trump, Elvis Presley’s widow and eight members of last year’s New York Giants football organization, those with tales to tell about Reagan have joined the true-confession factory. The money paid for such books is usually so big that the timing of them becomes critical, and authors are not bothering with the niceties of waiting until the President completes eight years in the Oval Office. According to published reports, Stockman earned $2.4 million for his book, O’Neill $1 million for his, and Deaver $500,000.

Fast-Buck Artists

“This Administration probably has a lot more fast-buck artists, people out to get some return on their investment,” Schneider theorized. “If they get in trouble, like Deaver or (Lyn) Nofziger, the next thought that occurs to them is, ‘How can I make some money off this?’ We will have books from Nofziger and Meese.”

Nofziger, the former White House aide recently convicted of illegal lobbying, and Atty. Gen. Meese, under investigation for possible involvement in an Iraqi pipeline deal, have not announced any plans to write books. But booted White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan has, for a reported $1 million, and so has former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who will augment his reported $500,000 advance with an ambitious speaking tour this month. Davis is said to be working on another novel--this one about political intrigue. And Michael Reagan, one of Reagan’s two children from his first marriage, is writing an autobiography due this spring that reportedly is so critical of Reagan it has been described as a “Daddy Dearest.”

Publishers are eager to pay hefty sums because the public has a nearly insatiable appetite for true insider information. Joni Evans, the publisher of Random House, said the tell-all trend was quietly born about 15 years ago with apple-pie movie star Doris Day’s book, “My Story.”

“It was a true eye-opener, a true shock,” said Evans, whose company published O’Neill’s book and will publish Mrs. Reagan’s autobiography and Reagan’s biography after they leave the White House.

“I think the country has become very intimate,” Evans said. “Society has become far more in-depth oriented. There is without a doubt a trend that many public personalities are telling their stories, which was never true before.”

If nothing else, they make good bedtime reading.