It's Friday, March 11, 2022, the day of the week when I pass along a quotation meant to be inspiring. Today's comes from Nancy Reagan, who was buried on this date six years ago.
To note that the media was not always kind or supportive toward Nancy Reagan is like saying Jussie Smollett doesn't necessarily have a fetish for the truth. The nasty press coverage began in Sacramento, where Nancy was considered a snob, and continued in Washington among a caste of political writers who hadn't seen Ronald Reagan coming in 1980, and didn't much like being surprised. The new president was pretty genial about it all, however, and it seemed the press corps sometimes took out their frustrations on his wife.
During those eight White House years, however, a thaw took place in Nancy-media relations. It started as early as the spring of 1982, when the first lady poked fun at herself in a Gridiron Dinner song spoofing her preference for designer clothes. At a 1983 Christmas season White House event, Nancy further charmed her critics by hopping onto the lap of a Santa Claus-clad Mr. T -- a confident gesture of affection usually reserved for her husband.
Speaking of President Reagan, later chroniclers of the period, including some prominent feminist scholars, found evidence of Nancy's modulating influence on the conservative hardliners in his administration, on issues ranging from stem cell research to U.S.-Soviet relations.
Meanwhile, the intense personal bond between Nancy and Ronald Reagan eventually melted away the doubts of all but the most skeptical Scrooges. The heroic way she responded to his Alzheimer's sealed the deal: This was a woman to be admired, not scorned.
"I try to remember Ronnie telling me so many times that God has a plan for us which we don't understand now but one day will," she wrote while her husband was still alive but lost in the mists of Alzheimer's disease. "It's hard but even now there are moments that Ronnie has given me that I wouldn't trade for anything. Alzheimer's [is] a truly long, long goodbye."
And so, in the end, Nancy's much-mocked adoring "gaze" at her husband became a source of pride for Republicans, and one of inspiration for those open-minded enough to see it for what it was, which was heart-felt devotion.
"They never stopped dating," Reagan biographer Craig Shirley noted upon Nancy's death. "In his later years, she gave part of herself to him, like an O. Henry story. She ate less, slept less, worried more, cried more and, when he died, she mourned him greatly."
In covering Nancy's funeral, Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times put it this way: "Although the Reagans may have come to Washington as envoys from nouveau riche California, by the end they were pillars of manners and dignity. To their supporters, they were reverse Kennedys: unapologetically old, old-fashioned and utterly faithful to each other."
Nancy Reagan always deserved a serious, full-length biography of her own, which arrived last year in the form of a deeply researched and well-written tome by journalist Karen Tumulty. "The Triumph of Nancy Reagan," it is called, a fitting title for a force of nature who never wore a dress larger than size 2.
"Nancy Reagan was quiet and mild," Bill Clinton once noted, "but you could tell that she had steel on the inside."
Many a hapless White House aide learned that lesson when they put their own ego ahead of the president's interest. So, too, to did some of the leading players on the global stage. Today as the Russian military, under control of a former Soviet KGB agent, pounds Ukrainian cities, I'm thinking of the 1984 White House reception where Nancy Reagan was introduced to Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko.
Leaning down to Nancy, Gromyko whispered, "Does your husband believe in peace?" "Yes, of course," the first lady replied tersely.
"Then whisper 'peace' in your husband's ear every night," Gromyko responded.
Without missing a beat, Mrs. Reagan answered in kind, "I will," she said. "And I'll also whisper it in your ear."
And that's our quote of the week.
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.