Karen Tumulty’s biography, on the centenary of Nancy Reagan’s ‘official’ birth, paints a romanticised picture of a neurotic prototype for Melania Trump
After Jimmy Carter’s glum diagnosis of national malaise in 1979, Ronald Reagan supposedly restored the customary swagger of the US by making the country “feel good about itself”. That folksy blessing didn’t extend to his wife: on the evidence of Karen Tumulty’s biography, Nancy Reagan spent his entire presidency in a state of seething anxiety that frequently tipped over into hysteria.
Aides in the White House came to dread her passive-aggressive silences on the phone and her basilisk glare when she allowed them face time. Likening her to a missile, a friend tells Tumulty “she was good at going stealth”. She monopolised Ronnie and staff members who had to relay her phone calls to the Oval Office said they were on the “Mommy Watch”. In later years, as his mind blurred, she became his agitated attendant, whispering panicked prompts in the hope of covering up his debility.
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