Begin Video Clip

CSPAN/FIRST LADIES NANCY REAGAN APRIL 2, 2014 8:00 a.m. ET

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NANCY REAGAN, FORMER FIRST LADY: So, all of you, thank you for your support and to the kids for just saying no. Thank you.

My hope is that the women of the future will feel truly free to follow whatever paths their talents and their natures point to.

I think they thought that the White House was so glamorous and your role was so -- what you did was so glamorous, your life was so glamorous, and all they saw were the parties and the meeting people and, you know -- and I've got to tell you, I never worked harder in my life.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SUSAN SWAIN, HOST: Nancy Reagan served as long-time political partner, fiercest protector, and ultimately as the caretaker for President Ronald Reagan. An involved first lady, she was active in key staff decisions and policymaking and in campaigning. She made drug use her signature White House issue with her "Just Say No" campaign.

Good evening, and welcome to C-SPAN series "First Ladies: Influence and Image." Tonight, we're going to tell you the story of Anne Frances Robbins, known to us all as Nancy Reagan, the wife of our 40th president.

Let me introduce our two guests who'll be with us for the next 90 minutes. Judy Woodruff is co- managing editor and co-anchor of PBS's "NewsHour." In her earlier years, she covered the Reagan White House for NBC and later on co-produced a documentary about the first lady. Thanks for being with us.

JUDY WOODRUFF, ANCHOR, PBS'S "NEWSHOUR": It's great to be here.

SWAIN: Carl Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. He's a Californian who has been covering national politics since 1984, and he co-wrote a book about the Reagan presidency with his father, Lou Cannon, the Reagan biographer.

Carl, nice to see you.

CARL CANNON, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, REALCLEARPOLITICS: Thank you.

SWAIN: To both of you, we're going to start this program just a little bit differently. We looked at hundreds of hours of video about the Reagan presidency in the C-SPAN library and decided to start with a closing chapter. This is footage from the Reagan funeral, when Mrs. Reagan said goodbye to her husband of many years, and we thought that it symbolized this partnership that you both covered so much. Let's watch and we'll talk a little bit more about their relationship.

It's hard to believe it was nearly 10 years ago, Carl Cannon, but as we look at that, as we've been working our way through this series of first ladies' biographies, especially in the 20th century, many of the first ladies were political partners with their husbands. Was this a particularly special political partnership between the two of them?

CANNON: Oh, it was, from the very beginning, from the Sacramento days, from the Hollywood days. But the partnership that we see on display there, as Nancy pats the coffin, it's like -- it's heart- breaking. It's like she lost him twice. And as she pats that coffin, you imagine her patting his shoulder every night for 10 years. She said goodbye to him, goodnight, and every night, it was like losing him again.

And I think -- Judy can talk to this, too -- but it's like -- I think Nancy got a rough start in this town, she got a rough start in Sacramento, but she won everyone over in the 10 years that he had Alzheimer's and she took care of him.

WOODRUFF: And I think -- I was just going to say, Carl put it very well, she called it, I think, the longest goodbye. Maybe they weren't, you know, her words, but people around them called it the longest goodbye, because it was 2000 -- it was 1994 when Ronald Reagan wrote that letter and announcing to the world that he had Alzheimer's.

And of course, no one knew then what it meant. I mean, that was at a time when people knew of Alzheimer's, but it wasn't nearly as familiar to us as it is today. And there was no way of knowing how long he would live. He would leave another 10 years, but out of public view. But she was with him. They were in their home in Bel Air, in Los Angeles, and their closeness was with them right up until the end. And you see that in that video.

CANNON: Susan, the christening of the USS Ronald Reagan happened in 2001. My father and I were both there. And Nancy came out to Newport, and it was a cold, blustery day in April, and there were parties afterwards. And we said, "Are you staying?" And she said, "No, I have to get back. Ronnie needs me. He doesn't like it. He gets agitated when I'm not in the house." I mean, I'm sure she had help, but she really was his caretaker.

SWAIN: So from -- not just those last 10 difficult years for the two of them, but let's have you both talk a little bit about what the partnership meant in terms of national politics. What did each one of them bring to the table politically to make this a successful quest for the White House, ultimately?

WOODRUFF: Well, we could talk for a long time about that, because it was a remarkable partnership. It was a strong marriage. They loved each other deeply. But it was also very much a working partnership, in that once it was clear that Ronald Reagan, I think, was interested in politics -- and it all started with that GE -- being the spokesman for GE, traveling around the country. And I believe he was hired by GE, I want to say 1955, '54, '55, somewhere in there. And from that moment on -- and once he -- the friends they made in Los Angeles decided Ronald Reagan would be a great candidate for governor, and then, of course, he went on to be elected governor in 1966.

She was the person who -- people I've talked to called her the personnel director, because she made sure that the people around her husband were people who always had his best interests at heart. That was one of the principal things she brought to the relationship, always having his back.

SWAIN: Carl, before you answer, I actually want to show a brief clip from "Role of a Lifetime," the PBS documentary you were involved with, and she's talking about what she brings to this partnership, in terms of looking out for her husband. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NANCY REAGAN: I see the first lady as another means to keep a president from being isolated. I talk to people, they tell me things, and if something is about to become a problem, I'm not above calling a staff person and asking about it. I'm a woman who loves her husband, and I make no apologies for looking out for his personal and political welfare.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SWAIN: So, to you, for your thoughts on this partnership.

CANNON: Well, Judy said that she was the personnel director. Stu Spencer called her that. And Stu is the political consultant who ran Reagan's first campaign for governor in 1966. And in September of 1980, when things go -- start to hit a rocky road, and the campaign's in a little bit of trouble, it's Nancy who says, "Where's Stu? Where's Stu Spencer?"

And Stu -- they call -- Deaver called him. And Mike Deaver was only back in the campaign because Nancy had helped bring him back. And Stuart Spencer, when he worked for Ronald Reagan at the 1980 convention, he asked one person it was OK, Gerry Ford, who he'd been his client. When he was going to come back to the Reagan campaign full-time, there was one person he asked Deaver about is it OK, and that's Nancy. How's Nancy with this? Nancy was -- well, it's her idea, and Stuart was on. So it goes way back.

SWAIN: We'll have lots of time in our program to talk more about the White House here, so we're going to go back in time to learn a bit more about Nancy Reagan's biography. Before we do that, let me tell you about how you can be involved. If you've been watching this series, you know that your questions really make it so much more interesting for us so we can take the conversation in the direction of your interest.

There's lots of ways to be involved. You can go to Facebook and find C-SPAN's page. There's already a discussion underway. You can also tweet us @firstladies. And finally, you can used the good old- fashioned telephone. Our phone lines will be open, 202-585-3880, if you live in the Eastern or Central time zones. If you live in the Western time zones, California and beyond, 202-585-3881. And we'll get to calls in probably about 10 minutes or so, but you can get in line so we can get to your comments.

Well, let's go back to where she was born, 1921 in New York City, but her early days were not easy ones for her family. Can you tell us the story?

WOODRUFF: Well, it was not, I would say, the smoothest childhood. Her mother was an actress, Edith Luckett. Her father, Kenneth Robbins, had been a salesman. She was born in New York City. The marriage between Edith and Kenneth did not last very long. Nancy was, I think, around 2 when they divorced.

Her mother really wanted her acting career, and she wanted a safe life for Nancy, so she had Nancy live -- from the time she was 2 until she was 8, when Mrs. Luckett remarried -- with her aunt, with Nancy's aunt, her mother's sister in Bethesda, Maryland, right outside of Washington.

So Nancy lived in a -- well, I guess what was then a suburban neighborhood of the woman who was described as very different from her mother. Her mother was very outgoing, somebody who was the life of the party, was in the middle of every conversation. Her aunt was much more quiet. I think the rules were fairly strict.

But it was a tough time. I mean, Nancy herself, she talked in the interview we did for the documentary about how she missed her mother and she would be thrilled when her mother came to visit. So it was rocky for a few years.

SWAIN: Life changed for Nancy when her mother married a Chicago physician.

CANNON: Loyal Davis. And then things picked up. There was money. He was successful. She went to boarding school. She went to Smith College. He was the doting parent she had lacked. And she said most -- through her life, that's the man she called her father, and it gave her an idea of what a family could be. And from that moment forward, she had -- she kind of had an idea of what she wanted to be and what she wanted out of life, and she wanted to build a family, you know, that was the family she didn't have, and it's something that she and Reagan had in common.

And she went to Hollywood after Smith. She went to the theater, and then she moved out to Hollywood, but she was typecast. And she was typecast in the phrase Garry Wills said, as the steady woman, and that's what she was.

SWAIN: So Stanford Brown on Twitter wants to know about relationships between first ladies by asking, did Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush know each other as students at Smith College?

WOODRUFF: You know, I don't know the answer to that. I don't -- I'd have to ask. Carl, do you know?

CANNON: Well, they...

SWAIN: They were four years apart, so I think Nancy was just leaving as Barbara Bush was just coming in...

CANNON: Yeah, and Barbara Bush didn't graduate. She was only there a year or two. So I don't think so, but that's actually a good question.

WOODRUFF: But we know Nancy Reagan went to New York to try her hand at acting...

CANNON: Yes.

WOODRUFF: ... right out of Smith. And then she was in New York for a few years before she moved to Hollywood. She had a contract with MGM, and talks about...

CANNON: A rival from Ron's studio, from Warner Brothers.

WOODRUFF: That's right.

SWAIN: Also on Twitter, one of our viewers whose tweet is not coming up nicely for me, Sheldon Cooper is asking about her stepfather and his influence on her politics. "Dr. Davis was very active in conservative politics. Did that influence Nancy Reagan?"

CANNON: He was a Republican, and I think it did influence her. But she -- you know, when she married Ronald Reagan, at their first date, you know, Reagan is discussing politics already, and he's talking about communism, he doesn't like communism. This is 1949. So she would have been conditioned by Loyal Davis to be receptive to Ronnie's message, as she called him.

SWAIN: How did the two of them meet?

WOODRUFF: It's an interesting story, Susan. This was Hollywood in the late '40s when there was, of course, the communist scare. It was after the end of World War II. And there was -- you heard about the blacklist, where people were named for being somehow associated with the Communist Party.

There was a Nancy Davis, which was her name at the time. Nancy Davis showed up on a, quote, unquote, "blacklist" as someone in the Hollywood community who had had something to do with the Communist Party. And she knew that that was not she, and she wanted to get her name off, and she told her good friend -- and I believe he was a producer, Mervyn LeRoy, she said, "How can I get this done?" And he said, "Well, I know Ronald Reagan, who's the president of the Screen Actors Guild, and I think I can talk to him."

And she tells the story, she said as soon as I heard that, I knew who Ronald Reagan was, and I was very interested. And she said, "I told him, well, absolutely, call him up, and I'd be glad to meet with him." And so Mervyn LeRoy called Ronald Reagan. He said he'd be glad to talk to her about this.

And one thing led to another. There was a meeting, and then it became a dinner. And she really tells a funny story about how, you know, they both agreed to go to dinner but insisted they had -- it had to be an early evening, because they both had an early call.

CANNON: Which neither of them actually...

WOODRUFF: Which neither one of them actually did, but...

CANNON: So it's an old Hollywood ruse. If the date doesn't work out, you can end it in a civil way by saying you have to get up early. But they didn't end it early, and a good thing, because they didn't have anywhere to be the next morning.

WOODRUFF: But that was 1949.

CANNON: Right.

SWAIN: And when did they marry?

WOODRUFF: 1952.

SWAIN: So they had a three-year courtship before she married.

WOODRUFF: Courtship.

SWAIN: We have visited the Reagan Library. You'll be seeing some video of some of the people we met there that tell the story of Nancy and Ronald Reagan. And this first piece, this first package is on the two of them and their early relationship and the love letters they shared. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KIRBY HANSON, RONALD REAGAN PRESIDENT LIBRARY SPECIAL PROJECT CONSULTANT: Nancy Reagan was asked if it was love at first sight, and she always says, "Well, it might not have been, but it was pretty darn close." And she's a very sentimental woman. And over the years, she kept mementos of this relationship, you know, from letters to wedding bouquets, and all of these artifacts are on display in the museum and document how important they were to each other.

One of the other interesting things that we have in here, which is very symbolic of their intense relationship, is a letter that President Reagan wrote to his wife in 1953, when he was in New York and he was staying at the Sherry Netherland Hotel, and he wrote a very charming letter to her. He wrote it as if she had actually joined him at dinner. And you can see how creative he was.

The final page of the Sherry Netherland letter is very touching, so let's go take a look at that page along with some of our other artifacts in this collection.

So this is that fourth page of the Sherry Netherland letter. And it's where President Reagan expresses his heartfelt feelings to his wife. This was written in 1953 about a year-and-a-half after they were married. And he says, "I suppose some people would find it unusual that you and I can so easily span 3,000 miles, but in truth, it comes very naturally. Man can't live without a heart, and you are my heart, by far the nicest thing about me and so very necessary. There would be no life without you, nor would I want any. I love you. Signed, the Eastern half of us."

Recently, Mrs. Reagan has given us this little box full of some treasured keepsakes of hers. So we were pleased to receive them because there are some interesting stories inside here. Back in 1950, when Nancy Reagan received her own dressing room when she was under contract with MGM, to celebrate that moment, Ronald Reagan went to a jeweler in Beverly Hills and had a special key made for her, a key for that dressing room, and that has an image of a thespian on the front and the back.

She thought that was such a nice idea that two years later, after they were married and they got their first home, she had keys made for their first home. And there's a little house on the top, and they're both engraved with their initials, Mrs. Reagan's initials and Mr. Reagan's initials. But on his key, right above his initials, in her handwriting engraved, it says, "Our first."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SWAIN: What were their early married years like?

WOODRUFF: Well, Susan, as we said, they married in 1952. And actually, their daughter, Patti, was born in 1952. And she pretty much gave up her movie career. She had been getting some roles fairly steadily. And his career was actually the one that was stalling out at that point, and then the GE offer came along.

But it became -- she became the homemaker. She essentially gave up -- she did do a few television roles I think over that first decade of their marriage. But mainly she devoted herself to being his wife, the mother of Patti, who was their daughter who was born in 1952, and then I think about six years later, Ron, Jr., was born.

But her family was her life. And she devoted all her time to that. And there's a great little story -- I don't know if you're going to show it later -- where once he went to work for GE, GE had this all- electric house built for them, which had every imaginable special feature in it, you know, automatic drape closures, and you push a button, the kinds of things that we wouldn't think much of today, but back then it was a big deal. But she devoted herself to that.

And then eventually, you know, as he came closer to thinking about politics, she became, I think -- much closer, I think, to the wives of some of the men who would be influential in that regard.

SWAIN: And Ronald Reagan, as a divorced dad, brought two children to the marriage, Maureen and Michael Reagan. By the time the family came on to the national stage, first in the governor's mansion in California and then, of course, in the White House years, the family relationship became a great interest to the public. And there were suggestions that there were tensions between the kids.

In fact, one of our viewers refers to this. Why did she have a strained relationship with the Reagan kids? And what is the relationship like with her kids and stepson now?

We have another clip from a documentary, and it actually talks about the Reagan partnership and its effect on the children. So let's listen to Ron Reagan talking about life inside the Reagan household from his perspective, and then we'll come back to you, Carl.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RON REAGAN, JR., SON OF NANCY REAGAN: We were conscious, I think, growing up -- all of us, I know I was -- that there were really two sets of people, two definite and distinct sets of people involved in the family. There was my mother and father, and there was everybody else. And that while we were all part of the family, when push came to shove, there was a distinction to be made that, you know -- it really wasn't like -- it wasn't like, you know, seen and -- be seen and not heard, but it was, you know, we were expected to -- we were expected to put ourselves in second place to whatever they were doing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SWAIN: Carl Cannon, what can you add to this part of the story?

CANNON: Well, Ron had a -- this is Ron Reagan, Jr. The family calls him Skipper. And he had a book party here three or four years ago in Washington, I was there, and he told this story. It's the same theme about emotional distance. And he said, "You know, there's two kinds of fathers. There's the kind who looks out the window and sees their kid playing football, has to go out and join the game. And then there's the kind who goes back to his work."

And you saw where the story was going, but it's not where it went, because he -- as he went on, he said his dad was the kind who always came out and played with the kids. And you find yourselves wondering, what was their beef?

These kids -- you keep hearing about this emotional distance that Reagan had with his children, with people. He taught those kids to swim and to ride. He played ball with all of them. He was very involved. In his own mind, he was a family man first. He separated the Hollywood people into two groups, you know, the people with multiple marriages and then the family people.

He was a divorced dad, but he didn't think of himself that way, and he's -- you know, Jane Wyman left him, so he didn't want to be a divorced dad. And yet Patti and Michael, Michael writes about it years later, when Michael admitted -- said he had been abused by a camp counselor, he tells the story of Nancy being very much attuned to him and feeling his pain and being -- and Reagan's eyes kind of glazing over, that there's this emotional distance that's subtle that everybody talks about. And even Nancy talks about it.

And sometimes people would blame Nancy, White House aides would blame her. Here the son is blaming him. But Nancy, she once told my dad, after they left the White House, you can get just so far with Ronnie and then something happens. It took him a long time, I think, to feel that he could even trust me. And so, you know, that's -- Reagan is this guy everybody loves, and he loves people, but there's at some point a place you can't go with him.

SWAIN: Before we leave the Hollywood years of their life, Allegheny Tableau on Twitter asked this question. "Today's Hollywood is decidedly liberal." I don't know if you agree with that or not. "But was Ronald and Nancy's conservatism unusual in 1950s Hollywood?"

WOODRUFF: Boy, I don't know that I'm the right person to ask about that. There clearly were some other conservatives in the community, but ultimately those -- I think the folks who supported Ronald Reagan and his candidacy, which would be 10-plus years after he left Hollywood as an actor, were people who were not in the movie industry, per se, so...

CANNON: Or they were personal friends.

WOODRUFF: They were personal friends.

CANNON: Jimmy Stewart, people like that.

WOODRUFF: Yeah, so I wouldn't say that they were -- you know, that they were -- the conservatives were necessarily in the extreme minority, but they probably weren't the majority, either.

CANNON: Well, then as now, Hollywood -- most of the people in Hollywood were Democrats. But there's an interesting story about that when Reagan runs in 1966 against Pat Brown, who'd been a two-term -- very popular two-term governor of California -- he'd beaten Richard Nixon like a drum in 1962. But Pat thought it would be wise to run against Reagan as an actor. He would say, "He's an actor," the way you would say, you know, "He's an idiot."

And people figured, well, why did they think this is a winning strategy? Well, my dad, like so many of these things, figured out because his people were all from Northern California, and 60 percent of the voters were then in Southern California, and they were proud of the movie industry.

And there was a telethon that the Democrats ran in which they were criticizing Reagan for being an actor, and Jack Palance was there, and he stormed off the set. And he said, "You know, if you're going to criticize this guy for not being experienced, fine, but don't make fun of him just because he's an actor." And so there was a feeling in Hollywood, even if Reagan didn't necessarily share our exact politics, he's one of us, and they were proud of him.

SWAIN: We're going to take a few phone calls, and then we'll learn more about how the Reagan partnership took them from Hollywood to the governor's mansion in California. Phil is watching us in North Hollywood, California, and Phil, you're our first caller tonight.

PHIL (ph): Hi there. Again, wonderful to see the series. I was up at the Reagan Library, beautiful complex. I recommend it to everybody, whether you agree with President Reagan's politics or not, or Nancy Reagan's politics. But I was kind of struck by something, is the omission. Only we saw maybe like one line about Jane Wyman and not knowing a lot about the relationship or whatever.

I was just wondering what the dynamic was between the Reagans and Jane Wyman. It's kind of fill- in-the-blanks. I just thought that it was odd that there were just one little line that, oh, yes, Jane Wyman, he was married to and very little else.

So I was just wondering how -- obviously, Mrs. Reagan was in control of the presidential library being created. I was just wondering if you had any insight on that. Really appreciate the program, though.

SWAIN: Thanks for watching.

WOODRUFF: You know, I don't think we know very much about that. We do know that Jane Wyman was Ronald Reagan's first wife, that they had adopted two children, and that they -- and that those children were part of the Reagan family after Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman divorced. But you didn't -- there was never any discussion that I heard in all my years of covering the Reagans, of Jane Wyman -- Carl, what about you?

CANNON: Well, Reagan felt hurt by what had happened in that marriage, but Jane Wyman never gave interviews. She never talked about Reagan. And I think she would have just -- I think she'd be just as well to not be made a spectacle of in the Reagan Library. She wasn't part of Reagan's or Nancy's -- she wasn't a part of their political story. She was part of their personal story.

SWAIN: Keith is in Greenup, Illinois. Hi, Keith. You're on.

KEITH (ph): Hello. Thank you for taking my call. I heard or read somewhere that Nancy was really into astrology and things of that sort. And is it true that she had held seances in the White House?

SWAIN: Carl?

CANNON: That would be Mary Todd Lincoln, the seances. Our caller made the same mistake the president of the United States -- the current president made. But Nancy did consult an astrologer after Ronald Reagan was shot, and she did so because she was desperate for anything that she -- anything she could have, and she didn't have much, to control his schedule, and so she would -- she consulted an astrologer. This came out in Don Regan's book. He wrote a kiss-and-tell book, like...

WOODRUFF: Bob Gates.

CANNON: ... Bob Gates has done, and that came out, and it was a mild embarrassment. People still bring it up. But most Americans thought that this woman had been so traumatized by her husband nearly being killed that if she wanted to consult an astrologer, she certainly was in her rights to do.

SWAIN: We'll talk a little bit more about that later on as we get into the White House. Jordan is in Towanda, Pennsylvania. Hi, Jordan.

JORDAN (ph): Hi. My grandmother has the same birthday as Nancy Reagan. She was born July 6, 1920, and she was one of my favorite first ladies. And did her mother live to be almost 100, I mean, when she was in the White House?

SWAIN: Thank you very much. Did you know how long Nancy Reagan's mother lived?

WOODRUFF: Her mother lived to be elderly, but I don't know how old her mother was when she died. I wish I had the reference...

SWAIN: Do you remember that -- was she was around by the -- for the inauguration?

WOODRUFF: I don't remember that she was around at the inauguration.

CANNON: I don't, either. But I do think the caller's grandmother was one year older than Nancy.

SWAIN: Yeah, 1921 was actually her birthday. Sorry to pop your balloon there with your personal family history.

WOODRUFF: I'm looking it up while we sit here. Maybe we can answer it.

SWAIN: OK. Well, Gary Robinson -- and this helps us with the transition from the GE years and the Screen Actors Guild years into politics, and ultimately to the governorship of California. He asks, did Nancy personally like politics? Or did she learn to like it because she loved Ronnie?

CANNON: It's the latter. She didn't love politics, and she wasn't built for politics. It was on-the-job training, and it wasn't always easy. She came to Sacramento in 1967, she didn't like the town, and the town didn't -- and the town reciprocated those feelings.

She was asked to move into this governor's mansion, which was a dilapidated Victorian structure downtown on a one-way street, I think it's 16th Street, if I remember. I went to the high school and junior high school in Sacramento. And it was -- Nancy properly called it a fire trap, which offended some of the city fathers.

But when she took Skipper up, he was -- he would have been eight then, I guess, to -- well, how does -- it's a second-floor bedroom, and the screen is rusted shut -- how does he get out in the case of a fire? And the protocol was there was a dresser across the room, he was supposed to get behind it and ram it into the window, pop out the screen, and then climb down a rope ladder. He was eight.

So Nancy decided they weren't going to live there, and they moved to East Sacramento, and that started an uneasy relationship with the Sacramento press corps and the Democrats in the legislature.

WOODRUFF: I have an answer to Jordan's question.

SWAIN: OK.

WOODRUFF: Edith Luckett died in 1987, so she was alive for most of the Reagan presidency.

CANNON: Wow.

SWAIN: Thank you for finding that. When I was looking at a sort of brief overview of the California governor years and her role as California's first lady, I wrote a couple bullet points down, and they are developed skills that helped her later as first lady of the United States, criticized, as Carl just told us, for not wanting to live in the governor's mansion. She was openly critical from time to time of Ronald Reagan, Governor Reagan's staff. She was criticized by the press for her glamorous friends and her expensive lifestyle and active in a number of issues, including the veterans and Foster Grandparents and wrote a syndicated column.

My notation next to that was "Presages White House years," because those were many of the same things that...

WOODRUFF: It's interesting, isn't it? I think -- and I also think she developed a thick skin during that period. I mean, she didn't like the criticism -- she just especially didn't like the criticism of her husband, and she talked about that. She talked about how, when they came to Sacramento, she thought -- she knew it was not going to be easy, but she did -- she underestimated how much the press was going to -- as it does everywhere, is critical of politicians everywhere.

And I think she developed a thicker skin. And then when the press went after her, she had to develop an even thicker skin, because as Carl said, it had to do with the house, with where they live, with the children, with her choice of causes, and the press -- and she and the press had a testy relationship for part of that time.

CANNON: Well, she shopped in Beverly Hills, and Sacramento didn't have any stores like that. And she was used to the cool breezes of Pacific Palisades, and Sacramento gets very hot in the summer. And mostly she hated the Sacramento Bee, which was the dominant newspaper and a very Democratic newspaper. They were relentless in their criticism of Reagan.

And she finally stopped -- she canceled the subscription and told people about this. And Reagan would pull people and say, "It's OK, I get it at the office." And so -- and he did. He read it in his office.

I think of the Sacramento years in a way actually of the time Reagan took care of her, the same way she took care of him in Washington. I think in those years, she was little bit brittle. Joan Didion wrote a piece for the Saturday Evening Post, a very harsh story, and basically made fun of the gaze -- you know, we all talked about that adoring look that she gave Reagan. And Joan thought it was phony. And, you know, we learned over the years, that's what it wasn't, is phony. It might have annoyed you, but it was genuine.

And she developed -- and she felt picked on, and Reagan protected her in this time. You've mentioned the staff. One of the things -- she treated the staff like servants, was one of their complaints. And so in all of these things, I think in those years, she had the rough edges, and Reagan had to smooth them off and...

WOODRUFF: That was a period, I think, when she really learned how to be a political spouse. She learned that the bad comes -- that there are the great moments when you feel terrific and you feel appreciated and then there are the really tough moments. And I think that's what helped prepare her, as you say, for the presidency.

CANNON: One more word about the Sacramento years. Susan, she also had these causes. You know, Carl Anthony did this lecture series -- I guess it was in '94 -- I was there when he did it. It was on C-SPAN. I watched it recently. And he found -- he's a first lady biographer, and he found her interested in drugs and youth as early as 1967. And you mentioned veterans. She was the one who helped get Reagan interested in these POWs and led to John McCain...

WOODRUFF: Vietnam POWs.

CANNON: Vietnam POWs, knowing the families. And so the other thing about Sacramento that you notice is all these causes that came up later in Washington and, yes, they were present there.

WOODRUFF: Well, and the drug abuse she said herself had to do with -- because the children and maybe even the grandchildren of her friends were starting to have these issues, and she saw that when her husband was governor of California, and then she carried it on, because drug abuse became a bigger issue.

SWAIN: So we have nicely answered Regina Crumkey question, which was, did Nancy have causes she started in California that she expanded as first lady?

So let's move to a phone call. This is Duncan who is in Rootstown, Ohio. Hi, Duncan.

DUNCAN (ph): Yes, thank you. Ronald Reagan was a member of the Bohemian Grove. Did Nancy Reagan ever express any feelings about that?

SWAIN: Do you know what the Bohemian Grove is?

CANNON: Yeah, it's a club. It's based in San Francisco. George Shultz belongs to it. All I can tell you about that -- this is very indirect -- is that, when she was first lady of the...

WOODRUFF: It's men-only. We should say that.

CANNON: Yes, yes, it is. And they walk around in the redwoods naked and do other things that seem out of time. But George Shultz is one of the great members of the Bohemian Grove, and Nancy was very close to him, so apparently she didn't hold it against you if you were a member. The calls between Shultz and Nancy that's coming out, as the scholarship, the papers are being released, many - - many more conversations, alliances between them than we knew. Shultz was in Bohemian Grove, so I'm inferring she didn't mind.

SWAIN: Now, there's a much too long and complicated political story to be told about Ronald Reagan's career from leaving the governorship in '75 and mounting his first presidential challenge one later in 1976. But let's look at it from the first lady's perspective. What was Nancy's role in encouraging Ronald Reagan to seek the challenge against Gerald Ford in 1976?

WOODRUFF: There was a group of influential, wealthy Republican men, mostly men, and Nancy was very close friends with their wives. And it was -- I'm simplifying it to some extent, because clearly it was a larger circle of people. It wasn't just this group of men who had their eye on Ronald Reagan. There were people around the country who thought he had been such an effective spokesperson for the conservative cause as the GE spokesman. We remember that when Barry Goldwater ran for president, Ronald Reagan gave a much-commented-on speech...

CANNON: The speech.

WOODRUFF: The -- in fact it was the -- that's right, that was the coming -- you can argue the coming-out speech for Ronald Reagan. And all of those forces, those disparate forces came together while he was still in the governor's office. And they gelled, more or less, in that year after, so that in - - when Gerald Ford was running for election -- he, of course, succeeded Richard Nixon -- in 1976, Ronald Reagan popped on the public consciousness as a very appealing, conservative potential challenger for Gerald Ford.

CANNON: Well, remember, he'd already run in 1968 for president. I have a story about Nancy in the earliest presidential conversation. Maureen Reagan is writing her dad letters, and they communicated. They wrote all these letters back and forth, and she's trying to encourage him to run for governor. And she says she doesn't really know kind of how far down the road he is with this political thing, because she said, you know, you could be governor. And he writes back, he says, well, Mermie -- that was the family name for her -- if we want to talk about what I could be, I could be president.

So then Maureen goes to the house and she thinks, well -- this is 1964, '65. He hasn't run for anything. And so they're going to do this intervention, and Nancy is on the side of her stepdaughter, and they both are telling him to run for governor first. And Reagan says something like, well, I see it's -- you know, everybody's -- it's two against one, or it's a whole conference against me, but that's how involved Nancy was in the earliest conversations about politics.

SWAIN: So the challenge ultimately was unsuccessful. There was a discussion of a co-presidency that went nowhere in Kansas City in 1976. How did they spend the next four years, until the '80 campaign?

WOODRUFF: Well, organizing for the real -- that one popped up pretty quickly. It wasn't completely spontaneous. But after '76, when Ronald Reagan showed that he had the kind of substantial support in the Republican Party, from then on, it was an all-out effort to win the nomination in 1980 and to go on to win the White House.

That doesn't mean that he was a shoo-in. There were other Republicans running. There were still people arguing that he was too conservative, that he was, quote, unquote, a "warmonger," he was known to have very strong anti-Soviet views.

You know, I remember people -- I covered the Carter White House during those years, and Reagan's name would come up, and the critic would say, well, he's the one who's got his finger on the bomb. And so there was a lot of this rhetoric flying around. So this was by no means a walk-in for him. But when the time came, he had the people, he had the money, and...

CANNON: Well, they were out in California living, and it was like he was the nominee-in-waiting for four years. It was a very interesting -- the only thing that even remotely is like it in my -- in the whole time I've been covering politics is like what's going on right now with Hillary Clinton, to be honest with you. Now, she's going to have to win the nomination. They're not going to just hand it to her.

But she -- he had the money, he had the support. The Republican Party was in transition, and it was going to be Ronald Reagan's party. And there were people in the East who didn't realize that, but that's how it proved -- but Nancy sure thought it was true, and she turned out to be right.

SWAIN: And in 1980 -- we're going to have to fast-forward here though -- through a lot of history...

CANNON: Are we going too slow?

(LAUGHTER)

SWAIN: We've got a lot of history to cover. Ultimately, it was a landslide against the incumbent president, Jimmy Carter, 489 to 49 electoral college votes for the sitting president, and much of that was colored by the Iranian hostage situation, and that was coming to a culmination right on Inauguration Day. Would you spend just a minute and talk about that really unbelievable Inauguration Day, when the country had been waiting for the hostages to come home, and it happened just as the president was being sworn in?

WOODRUFF: Well, it was an extraordinary time. And I tell this from the perspective of the Carter White House, because I was covering Jimmy Carter, and they had had a very painful final year of his presidency, for all the world to see the hostages had been taken at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. They were being held by Iranian extremists.

And Jimmy Carter and his administration did everything they could, including -- you know, we know among other things about the failed rescue mission, where a helicopter went down, and it was a humiliating episode in the Carter presidency. And no doubt it wasn't the only reason Jimmy Carter lost re-election, but it certainly was a big factor.

SWAIN: And what was the mood in this country about the change in leadership?

CANNON: Well, on Inauguration Day, Reagan and Deaver came up with a plan, and the plan was -- remember, the hostages were being released, and if they were being released while Reagan was still speaking...

WOODRUFF: And by the way, this was being done deliberately by the Iranians to spite Jimmy Carter.

CANNON: To spite Jimmy Carter. But there was some thought that they would be outside of Iranian airspace while Reagan was still speaking after he'd taken the oath of office. And Reagan -- the plan that Reagan and Deaver agreed on is that Reagan would call Carter up to the lectern, and wouldn't that have been a -- to the podium? That would've been the most dramatic moment, but only if the hostages were released and announce it together. It didn't happen.

But I asked Mike Deaver before he died to tell me the story, and I asked him what -- well, what did Nancy think of this? Because she had a pretty good theatrical sense, too, and he said she was all for it and that this would've been a great moment. It didn't happen, but it wasn't Carter or Reagan's fault.

SWAIN: Well, just 69 days into this new presidency, and we've already heard a caller that asked about it. John Hinckley attempted Ronald Reagan's life at the Washington Hilton. We have an interview with Nancy Reagan in 1999. She took us around the Reagan Library, and she spoke to us about that day. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NANCY REAGAN: We got downstairs, and he kept saying -- I said, "I'm going to the hospital." And he said, "It's not necessary. He hasn't been hurt. They're on -- it's not necessary." And I said, "George, you either get the car or I'm going to walk."

And we got to the hospital, and Mike Deaver met me at the hospital and said he has been shot. And there were police all around, and a lot of noise, and they put me in a little small room. There was one desk and one chair. That was it. And I kept wanting to see Ronnie.

And they kept saying, "Well, he's all right, but you can't see him." And I kept saying, "Well, if he's all right, why can't I see him?" And, finally, they let me see him. He was lying there with that thing on his face to help him breathe. And he lifted it up, and that's when he said, "Honey, I forgot to duck."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SWAIN: How did this assassination attempt change a brand-new presidency?

WOODRUFF: And by the way, I was there the day that Ronald Reagan was shot. I was a part of the press pool that day. It was, of course, a time when -- I'll never, ever forget.

It made her much more protective. She was already completely focused on him and his safety, but after this, it was her -- you could argue her sole focused. I mean, she -- I think at one point she said something like, when he left to go somewhere, she said, I didn't even -- I wasn't even able to breathe deeply until he came back.

CANNON: And that was in your movie.

WOODRUFF: And that's right. It was in -- it was something she said in the documentary to us. It made her much more -- you know, Carl, you've spoken about the astrology. She was looking for any which way she could to keep him safe. Of course, he was president, and he was going to be out and around, but she was grilling people around him to make sure that he was always doing whatever was the safest possible thing. And it just made her even more determined to keep him healthy.

CANNON: Susan, just one comment about that line, "Honey, I forgot to duck," that Nancy said that. For Americans of their generation, that was a famous line. It's the line that Jack Dempsey used after he lost to Gene Tunney, he lost the heavyweight championship of the world. And Dempsey's wife came to see him, and his face was all battered, and she says, "Ginsberg, what happened?" That was her pet name for Dempsey. And he says, "Honey, I forgot to duck."

And the line was reported in the newspapers at the time, and it made Dempsey the hero he had not been in the public's mind until that time. He was really bigger when he lost, because of this bravado. And I think the same thing is true of Reagan. That line was, of course, reported in the press here, and Americans really admired Reagan for it, because they realized what he was trying to do, which was reassure his wife.

SWAIN: So Ronald Reagan really endeared himself to the American public by his reaction, his strength during the shooting, but Nancy Reagan's first year in the White House was a difficult one, some folks suggested as a disastrous debut for the first lady. At the end of the year, her approval ratings were 26 percent, the president's much, much higher. What were some of the reasons that was a challenging first year for her?

WOODRUFF: Well, as in California, where she found a governor's home, a governor's mansion that she felt was unsafe and not up to the standards of what a governor's home should be, she felt the White House was practically in disrepair. She felt that there were repairs -- not only repairs that needed to be done, she felt the furnishings were shabby, and she really -- she wanted a complete renovation, refurbishing of the White House, new drapes, new upholstery on the furniture.

She raised private money to get this done. She wanted -- she thought the china -- she said often, I loved entertaining. I thought that was an important part of being in the White House. It's a way to connect with people, but she said, "We didn't even have a full set of china for a state dinner." So she raised the money to go and buy a new set of china.

She also was very interested in style and fashion. She's always been a woman who cared about her appearance. And combined the efforts to redecorate the White House, the new set of china, and then the publicity about her interest in clothes, you put it all together, and it was the image of a woman who cared more about things that really didn't matter, and it did not go over well with the Washington press corps. They jumped, and I think that contributed -- there's no question that contributed to the public's perception.

SWAIN: I have a question for you, Carl Cannon.

CANNON: Yes.

SWAIN: What is the difference between Jacqueline Kennedy coming in, wearing fashionable, European-designed clothes, and redoing the White House, and Nancy Reagan doing it not that long after?

CANNON: You know, that's a fair question. I mean, for Nancy, she came here, and she thought it would be a fresh start, and for her, it's deja vu all over again. It's Sacramento. She expects Washington to be a little more sophisticated. It isn't, in her mind. Designer dresses, they're criticizing her. They criticize her for going shopping at Bloomingdale's. Well, her friend was Betsy Bloomingdale. Of course they're going to shop at Bloomingdale's.

But, look, Jackie was a special case. There's an edgy website -- I don't frequent it very often -- it's called nerve.com. It's mostly about sex and younger people stuff. But I was on it recently in preparation for this program to see how they ranked the sexiest first ladies in history, and you'd be surprised -- I was -- that Nancy Reagan ranks very high. I'm not surprised that people thought that. I was surprised that this hip young website thought that.

But Jackie Kennedy is number one. And they don't even feel the need to explain it. They just show her picture. She's this glamorous young woman, and Jackie could do things that no one else could do. She's probably sui generis.

SWAIN: Do you have any comments on the difference?

WOODRUFF: Oh, just that I think it was a different time. The 1960s, it was Camelot, it was coming off the Eisenhower presidency, and there was a difference in age and a difference in appearance, and people were -- a lot of people were -- obviously, a very divisive elections between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, but that was a time I think when the country was -- a lot of Americans were excited.

I think the Reagan president was a different time. It was 20 years later. The country was probably getting a little cynical. They'd have been through Watergate and certainly been through Vietnam. They weren't as willing -- they, the American people, certainly the press corps -- was not as willing to just swallow, accept whatever it was that the president and the first lady were doing.

SWAIN: We'll take a call next from Michael in Mont Clare, Pennsylvania. Michael, you are on. Welcome.

MICHAEL (ph): Yes, thank you. This was a great show.

SWAIN: Thank you.

MICHAEL (ph): My question is, politically, was there a position or ideology that they sometimes disagreed upon or that the staff disagreed upon?

SWAIN: OK, thank you. Were there any issues that the Reagans did not see eye-to-eye on?

CANNON: Well, not that I know of, but the staff, absolutely, and there was open warfare on many issues, the most important issue, Iran-Contra, dealing with the Soviet Union, and Nancy would push - - and Nancy had a point of view and she would push on the Soviet Union. She thought -- she believed strongly in negotiating with Mikhail Gorbachev, and she pushed -- she didn't push Reagan, because they saw eye-to-eye, but she pushed back against staffers who she thought didn't have his agenda at heart.

Now, you have to think about this. There's differences in the Reagan administration over armament talks with the Soviet Union. There's not a difference of opinion in the Reagan family. Nancy knew where Reagan was. He was there in '76, the campaign that Judy was talking about. Jerry Ford calls Reagan up to the stage and gives an impromptu speech. What does he talk about? He talks about nuclear war, Armageddon, and how that can't be our legacy.

So Nancy knew that's what Reagan wanted, and she pushed in that direction, but she didn't push against Reagan. She pushed against aides that she thought didn't know what Reagan really wanted.

WOODRUFF: I think she was a moderating influence on him. And I think she wanted for him the best possible -- she wanted him to be the best president he could be and to have the best legacy. And she felt the best legacy was a legacy of moderation.

In some ways, you're right, they didn't disagree. I think she wanted no daylight between the two of them, certainly in public, but there's no question that she worked very hard behind the scenes, especially with George Shultz and others, who had been secretary of state, to make sure that President Reagan was listening to those who argued we need detente, rather than the opposite.

CANNON: Well, and to Nancy -- well, to Judy's point about the moderating influence, AIDS is an issue that's come up. And on AIDS, there were people in the White House who thought Reagan should speak out about it early on. There were people who didn't want him speaking out. Nancy was on the side of the people who wanted Reagan to talk about it.

It's not true, as you see, that he never mentioned it until 1987. He talked about in '85 and in '86. But in 1987, he gave a speech, and Nancy didn't really trust that the White House domestic policy shop would say what she wanted Reagan to say, so she sent for Landon Parvin. And he's been a speechwriter out and he -- in the White House, and he came back, and he was writing these speeches, and Parvin would get some push-back. And finally, he said, "This is how she wants it." And "she" meant Nancy Reagan, and that was the end of the conversation.

SWAIN: So the first lady was having trouble with her public image or in the press corps, and there were approaches to help to try and change that. One of those came early in 1982, with an event in Washington, D.C., an annual press dinner called the Gridiron Club. Nancy Reagan appeared before the Gridiron Club, which is full of political skits and parodies, and it was a game-changer. We're going to listen to her talking about that in a 1988 interview with journalist Hedrick Smith, and she'll talk about her parody and why she approached the issue of her popularity this way.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NANCY REAGAN (singing): Secondhand clothes, secondhand clothes, they're all the rage, at the spring fashion shows. Even my new trench coat with fur collar, Ronnie bought for 10 cents on the dollar. Secondhand gowns, old hand-me-downs, the china is the only thing that's new. Even though they tell me I'm no longer queen, did Ronnie have to buy me that new sewing machine? Secondhand clothes, secondhand clothes, I sure hope Ed Meese sews.

HOST: Bravo. That's great.

NANCY REAGAN (speaking): I guess I came around to thinking, well, all right, we'll try. I mean, it can't be worse than it was, you know? And so she said, originally they had thought that I would make fun of the press. And I said, no, no, no, I'm not going to do that. The only way we can do this is if I make fun of myself. If I make fun of myself, then maybe I have a 50-50 chance here.

As you well know, that first year was not -- nobody was really crazy about me. And I don't think I'd have been crazy about me, reading what I did about me.

JOURNALIST: The press was rough.

NANCY REAGAN: The press was rough. And I really don't know why, because it started before I ever got here. They didn't know me. And I never did quite figure out why.

But, anyway, I didn't know until I read it in your book that they were having meetings about me and over the West Wing, that I was a liability and everything like that. Well, I guess maybe I was. I was pretty gun-shy. I mean, it had been rough. And your inclination is to run and hide in a closet and lock yourself in. You know, you tend to pull back when it's -- I do, anyway, when it's that rough, which is the wrong thing to do. You shouldn't do that, but I do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SWAIN: Seems very self-aware of what was happening in Washington.

WOODRUFF: Her instincts were exactly right on. She had self-deprecating humor. She made fun of herself and the press ate it up, the city ate it up. The country, it was -- it turned an important corner for her.

SWAIN: Carl Cannon, another thing that Nancy Reagan did was pick up a theme you mentioned that she'd been involved in, in California, and that is an anti-drug campaign, which became the "Just Say No" campaign. How political was this?

CANNON: Well, first ladies are supposed to have a signature issue, and this was something she actually cared about and she knew about, and this was a phrase that was in the movement, in the anti- drug movement among the psychologists, "Just Say No." They're always thinking of some way to approach young people. It's not easy. And Nancy seized on it and popularized it.

And she -- you know, some people criticized her for it, because -- as being maybe simplistic, but her answer to that was disarming and she said, if it saves one child's life, it's worth it.

SWAIN: And, in fact, the numbers suggested that over the course of the eight years in the White House, drug use among young people did decline. I don't know if it was a result directly of this campaign, but she also had other recognitions. She was invited to speak before the United Nations, first first lady ever to do that, and talk about issues. She also because of this effort was the first first lady recognized by the president in a State of the Union Address, as he was leaving.

In 1986, the two of them -- and this is, again, another first -- sat down before television cameras to talk about the anti-drug efforts. We're going to watch a clip from that next and talk about how they used television to connect with the American public. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NANCY REAGAN: To young people watching or listening, I have a very personal message for you. There's a big wonderful world out there for you. It belongs to you. It's exciting and stimulating and rewarding. Don't cheat yourselves out of this promise. Our country needs you, but it needs you to be clear-eyed and clear-minded.

I recently read one teenager's story. She's now determined to stay clean, but was once strung out on several drugs. What she remembered most clearly about her recovery was that during the time she was on drugs, everything appeared to her in shades of black and gray. And after her treatment, she was able to see colors again.

So to my young friends out there, life can be great, but not when you can't see it. So open your eyes to life, to see it in the vivid colors that God gave us as a precious gift to his children, to enjoy life to the fullest and to make it count. Say yes to your life. And when it comes to drugs and alcohol, just say no.

RONALD REAGAN, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think you can see why Nancy has been such a positive influence on all that we're trying to do. The job ahead of us is very clear. Nancy's personal crusade, like that of so many other wonderful individuals, should become our national crusade.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SWAIN: Carl Cannon, another interesting theme throughout the 200 years of history has been how White Houses used the media. In this case, we have two people who had acting as their profession and television was in its ascendancy as a political force. How did they use it in the White House?

CANNON: Well, you think this, everybody talks about Reagan was an actor, but she was an actor, too. She was on the stage. She had 12 feature films. The comfort level of these two behind the camera, it's the envy of every political couple, and they used it as easily as you and I would just pick up a telephone and call a friend, and that's what they showed.

And even the little things. You know, she's talking about color and she's wearing a red dress, and they understood the lighting, they understood the message, how the message should go with the pictures. They really got it all, and it was almost second nature to them both.

SWAIN: I want to move to the second term in the White House, again, full of so many issues. In brief, some of them included the Soviet summit, which concluded with the arms treaty, the explosion of the Challenger -- any of us alive at that time certainly remember that day well -- the Iran-Contra affair, we'll talk a little bit about the effect on the presidency and how Nancy was involved in that, and the Iran-Iraq war. The -- she overcame the criticism. Does she become a positive political force for the White House in the second term?

WOODRUFF: It was different. I mean, she was burned by the experience of the first year or so, and she came out of that and really was always very careful in her dealings with the press, was very sparing in the interview she gave. And as Carl said, I mean, she has a presence about her, a poise, and she was able to, I think, communicate in a way that, you know, was helpful to the White House.

And I think -- but the second term was very different from the first term in that way. By then, they both had learned a lot, but it was also rough, as we know presidents' second terms can be rough. And the problems came, and you just listed several of them.

SWAIN: Lucy is watching us in Waupaca, Wisconsin. Hi, Lucy.

LUCY (ph): Hi.

SWAIN: Have a question for us?

LUCY (ph): Yes, I do. It goes back to the Jacqueline Kennedy-Nancy Reagan episode, with both of them pretty much having the same interest in changing the White House. I guess I just sense such a double-standard with the press. I have no problem with the press reporting; I have a problem with the press shaping the image.

They gave -- and I cared a lot about the Kennedys. I truly did. But they gave them a free pass on many issues, and they just kind of ripped Nancy Reagan apart, and I just felt like that was a bit unfair. And I don't know if that will ever change. It just doesn't seem to be in my lifetime, anyway, but I just wanted if you could address that.

WOODRUFF: I do think -- Lucy, I do think it was a different time. I think we talked about this a little bit a few minutes ago, but I really do believe, in the '60s, the country was -- and the press corps was just much more accepting of politicians, of presidents. You didn't -- I mean, look at what we now know Jack Kennedy, you know, at least part of the time was doing in his private life. The press completely did not report on that.

But 20 years later, we had been -- the country had been through Watergate, had been through Vietnam, and just many more questions about whether our leaders were telling the truth. And I just think there was a much bigger -- much greater reluctance to believe our eyes. I don't mean me, but I mean the press's eyes. And I think that reflected the way the country felt, as well.

SWAIN: There were some criticisms we talked about, about the sense of style and fashion that she brought to the White House and whether that was appropriate for the times. But they did use the White House extensively to entertain and to promote their political agenda, as most presidents have over the course of history. We're going to show you next a little bit of how the Reagan Library presents Nancy Reagan's style. We'll watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KIRBY HANSON: So as first lady of California, Nancy Reagan knew how important it was for her to dress appropriately, and this gold lame gown is from the Second Inaugural. There's a matching dress underneath, and it was designed by one of her favorite designers who designed for her during the White House years, also. That was James Galanos.

This peach dress is Mrs. Reagan's lucky dress. She wore this when she attended the National Republican Convention in 1980, when her husband was nominated to become president of the United States, and she always loved it. It was designed by Adolfo. It's a very flattering color. She liked to wear it, she wore it quite a bit, and it was one of her favorites.

In 1985, President Reagan flew to Geneva to meet with General Secretary Gorbachev, their first meeting, their first summit, and Mrs. Reagan wore this suit to that meeting. She had lunch with Raisa Gorbachev, and this hound's-tooth suit was designed by James Galanos.

One of the truly most classic dresses that she wore and colors that she wore is exemplified in this portrait dress by James Galanos. She wore it for her official portrait, but she also wore it to a number of other events, and its quiet elegance is very stunning.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SWAIN: From her style, I wanted to ask about their use of the White House for entertaining. There were lots of state dinners, it seemed, during the Reagan years. How did they use them?

WOODRUFF: They used them strategically. Number one, they liked entertaining. I mean, having come from Hollywood, the social life was important to them. But Nancy Reagan herself talks about this. And when I interviewed her a couple of years ago, she said, you know, this is an opportunity to play host to a visiting head of state.

You invite -- she said, anybody will come. And they -- of course, they would have -- you know, whoever the Hollywood stars of the time were -- from Frank Sinatra to Elizabeth Taylor, and you name it, I mean, you're invited to the White House State Dinner and you come, and that's true today for any president.

But the Reagans were very conscious of that and conscious that they could make a splash, impress their guests, and she also said and you can get business done on these occasions. So they used them -- yes, they were social, but they were also business.

SWAIN: Would you talk briefly about the relationship with the Gorbachevs? We've learned so often that, on the diplomatic stage, personal relationships can have very important effects on the outcome. What was important to note about these two couples and their relationship?

CANNON: Well, now, that's...

SWAIN: That's not the one that was...

CANNON: That's Lady Di there.

SWAIN: Right, sure.

CANNON: Well, Reagan -- look, Reagan thought he could do business with Gorbachev. That's the phrase he used to his aides. He brought his number-one ally to the summit. And his -- the speeches kept getting changed in the White House speechwriting shop. And Allida Black, who's been on this show, who's a first lady historian, credits Nancy with pushing Reagan -- to helping Reagan push back. There was another guy named John Matlock, who was the Soviet expert, and there were a lot of people, including Reagan himself.

But Reagan kept saying to anybody who would listen on this staff, I can do business with this guy. I don't want to be calling him names. And so -- and Nancy -- he took Nancy there as an ally to show the world that the two couples could get along and maybe the two countries could get along.

SWAIN: And while we're talking about entertaining, there's a PBS connection. She continued the tradition of live events from the White House on a cultural stage, introducing the public to some of the musicians and other cultural events in the country.

WOODRUFF: And that's a tradition that continues to this day, "In Performance at the White House." In fact, there was just not long ago, the Obamas hosted one of these. It's become regular.

CANNON: I think Jackie Kennedy started that.

SWAIN: She did, another connection between the two first ladies. Floyd is in Lake Forest, California. Hi, Floyd. You're on. Floyd, are you there?

FLOYD (ph): Yeah, I had a question about the -- how did the Reagans interact with Prince Charles and Princess Diana when they went to visit the White House in '85 or '86? So, thank you.

SWAIN: OK, thanks. We just saw some video of that visit. Do you have any memories of it?

WOODRUFF: I don't -- I wasn't covering the White House then, so I don't remember. I know that it was everybody in the world, you know, who wanted to be at the White House probably wanted to be at that state dinner.

SWAIN: Well, let's move on from there, because our time is going short, to an event that become very important in the ultimate disposition of the Reagan White House, and that's the Iran-Contra investigation. Again, from the perspective of the first lady, this was a real crisis in confidence for the presidency. What was Nancy Reagan's role in counseling the president on how to approach this?

CANNON: Well, she did two things. She thought it was a threat. She didn't think Reagan had done anything wrong, but she recognized it as a threat to his presidency, and she did two things. She doubled down on the negotiation with -- on getting Reagan to negotiate with Gorbachev, which we were just talking about. She encouraged that, because she thought that would be a better way to change the conversation.

But the other thing she did -- and I would -- I'll just say, I haven't mentioned him a lot on this show, but I probably should have -- my father, who is really Reagan's preeminent biographer -- can I say that? I think...

WOODRUFF: The one and only Lou Cannon, you absolutely can say that.

CANNON: Well, his view is -- and he told me that as recently as an hour ago in the green room -- was that he thought the most important contribution Nancy made as first lady was pushing on Reagan to make the apology on Iran-Contra and that it may have saved his presidency.

SWAIN: To get out in front of the story?

CANNON: Well, and to, you know, finally come out there and say -- you know, he had that funny speech.

WOODRUFF: It took him a while.

CANNON: Yeah.

WOODRUFF: The president...

CANNON: Yeah, he didn't really get out in front of it.

WOODRUFF: It was an agonizing period when the president just did not want to acknowledge that this had taken place. And ultimately, what he said was it happened, and I didn't...

CANNON: I can't believe I did this, but...

WOODRUFF: I can't believe that it happened. It was sort of a convoluted explanation, but he did say that it was -- in essence, that it was a mistake. And that broke the ice. The American people turned at that point.

SWAIN: So I want to underscore this, that we're talking about the image and influence of the first lady. In your father's opinion as a biographer, this was a key moment in that presidency.

CANNON: And maybe her most important contribution, and she had many of them. I mean, we were talking earlier about that Gridiron Dinner in 1982, but people forget that -- by the second term, by 1986, Reagan at the White House correspondents' dinner is joking about Nancy's influence. He says she and Don Regan, who was the second chief of staff, and Nancy was known to be trying to get rid of him, and finally did help get rid of him, and Reagan says at this dinner, Don Regan and Nancy had a lunch just the two of them the other day and they brought -- but they each brought their tasters.

And so by -- you know, by the second term, Nancy's influence is acknowledged on the staff, on policy, and...

WOODRUFF: She never acknowledged it as much others did.

CANNON: The president did.

WOODRUFF: But it was very much there.

SWAIN: In 1987, next to last year of the Reagan administration, Nancy Reagan was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy. She decided to go public with this?

WOODRUFF: She did. She talked about it and handled it with grace. And I think this -- this was another, I think, event that drew the public to her, because she was able to talk about it. And as you say, she had a mastectomy and made it -- by no means was this something that was easy to go through. But the fact that she could talk about it at a time when it still was kind of hush, hush. I mean, Betty Ford had been through her own episodes, but I think for Nancy Reagan to do this made a big difference.

SWAIN: Going to hear one last piece of Nancy Reagan in her own voice, looking at her role as a guardian of Ronald Reagan in the White House. This is her talking about her political antenna. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NANCY REAGAN: I think I just had little antennas that went up and told me when somebody had their own agenda and not Ronnie's. And then I'd tell him. He didn't always agree with me, but I'd tell him, and it usually worked out.

BRIAN LAMB, C-SPAN HOST: What was the first thing that you had noticed when somebody had their own agenda?

NANCY REAGAN: I -- you just know. You just -- you can't say. There's something that you -- you just know if your -- if have those antennas.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SWAIN: ... of antennas were probably directed at White House chief of staff Don Regan, who ultimately lost his job, and some of that was over the disagreement over the Iran-Contra affair and how that was playing out. He wrote, as you called it, a kiss-and-tell book. What did we learn about their relationship through that?

CANNON: Well, we learned that this is -- he wanted to get back at her, I guess, and the astrology thing was his -- was a poisonous arrow in the quiver. But, you know, we knew that there was -- they had different ideas of what Reagan ought to be doing. When Nancy said she had antennae, you know, she also listened. She was a careful listener. She tried to get George H.W. Bush to help her get rid of Don Regan, and he told her, "It's not my job." She said, "Well, it is your job," and she's talking to vice president of the United States.

Then later, in 1988, when Bush is running for president in his own right, he promises he'll have a kinder and gentler country. And Nancy's acerbic aside to a friend is, kindler and gentler than whom? So, yeah, Nancy paid attention to what was said.

WOODRUFF: But Don Regan wasn't the first one. I mean she was instrumental earlier in the presidency in the removal of William Clark as the first national security adviser, because she felt he took too hard a line against the Soviets. She wasn't the only one, but she played a big role there.

SWAIN: A few stories that really demonstrate her political antenna on behalf of her husband and her influence inside that White House.

WOODRUFF: It's what we said earlier about her being the personnel director. It was a personnel director -- somebody said the human resources department and the personnel director for the president.

SWAIN: January 1989, they turned over the White House to Mr. Reagan's vice president, the Bushes, George H.W. Bush. And we have about 15 minutes to talk about a very long post-presidency. As we said at the beginning, that was marked fairly soon with the announcement of President Reagan's Alzheimer's.

Before that, in very sort order, this memoir came out. This was just in 1989, so she'd clearly been working on it during at least the latter part of White House years. "My Turn" is the name of it. So her turn at what? How did she use this book?

CANNON: Well, she used it -- she talked about some of these aides, and, you know, she told her side of the story. But the book doesn't have any surprising revelations in it, not really, if you knew about Nancy. She talks about how she supported the president. She supported Reagan. And she makes, you know, her -- you might say she wanted it both ways. She was very powerful, but if you crossed her, you'd feel that, but if you said that she was powerful, she'd think you were dissing Reagan and she'd push back on you.

SWAIN: Also during that time, the opening of the Reagan Library. And how did the Reagans raise the money for this library? And how did they use the library?

WOODRUFF: Well, they raised it -- they went to their friends, many of whom, you know, gave a lot of money, but they -- also through other foundations. I mean, they worked very hard -- to Mrs. Reagan, and initially to the president before he became ill, this was the way of not only telling Ronald Reagan's story, but I think today it's seen as a way of maintaining Ronald Reagan's legacy. I mean, we know in the Republican Party today, Ronald Reagan is still very much a revered figured, as is Nancy Reagan.

And the library is part of -- not only to begin telling what Ronald Reagan did as president, what he believed in, but also perpetuating some of those views. They hold seminars. They hold -- there are speeches they host there. Speakers come and speak about causes. Here are some pictures of the library. It's a beautiful setting right there on the California coast.

SWAIN: Philip is watching us in Brooklyn.

PHILIP (ph): Yes, thank you, Susan. A wonderful program. I love it. Let me say at the outset that, in the interest of full disclosure, I just love Mrs. Reagan. And the first thing I have to say is, I've watched every episode of these series so far, how nice it was to find out that Nancy was not the first lady -- the first first lady that wanted to bring new china into the White House. I was very happy to hear that there were other first ladies that wanted to do that, as well.

And speaking about the china -- and I mention it because Nancy -- it didn't go on for a week or a month. It went on almost for a year, that china story. The media really lambasted her. And I have to mention that one of Nancy's good friends, Lee Annenberg, who was an expert at protocol, such an expert that the queen of England at one time it's reported referred to her for a consultation. And Nancy had friends like this, you know, with poise and grace. And I think Nancy, as Mr. Cannon mentioned earlier, when you have that much poise and grace, and you're a perfect size six, you're going to have some enemies.

And my question is, every White House administration has a very close-knit circle of friends. But it seems like the Reagans had many, many fierce, loyal supporters. And I was wondering, how did they engender -- especially Mrs. Reagan -- how did she engender and cultivate all those people that were so loyal to her and her husband?

SWAIN: Thanks very much. Good question. By the way, you said, for the record, she's a perfect size two?

CANNON: Size two.

WOODRUFF: Or a zero.

CANNON: Yeah.

WOODRUFF: There is a zero.

CANNON: Is there?

SWAIN: So not to spend too much time on her dress size, on her importance in keeping that circle of advisers together that so guided the...

CANNON: Well, it's a little different with Reagan and Nancy. He was a movement leader. People -- he was a beloved conservative leader. Conservatives had been waiting for a guy like this for a generation, and they're still waiting a generation later. A guy like that comes along once -- he's like Roosevelt in that respect. People love what he stands for.

Nancy's situation is a little different. People love her. She has these lifelong friends, and she cultivates them and she treats them well. And I think she's in that sense -- if she was never even in politics, she would have been an admirable person the way she kept her friends.

SWAIN: How many good years did they have after the White House, until his illness was announced?

WOODRUFF: Well, he left the -- they left the White House in January 1989, and it was just five years later in 1994 that he announced that he had Alzheimer's. So I think there was -- there was a period of years -- that's five years, and you could add maybe a few years after that when he was communicating and recognizing her. But the point came in the late '90s, where she was telling people he didn't recognize her. So she was open about that. And then he died in 2004.

SWAIN: We have...

CANNON: In 1991, at the 80th birthday of Reagan, Margaret Thatcher came, and they held it at this library. And Reagan got up and spoke, and he said -- you know, he spoke glowingly about Thatcher. And then he said -- then he turned to Nancy and he said, "Put simply, my life really began when I met her and has been rich and full ever since." So they had -- there was a time there when they left the White House where they -- it was really magical for them.

SWAIN: And this tour that Mrs. Reagan gave to C-SPAN of the library in 1999, she talked about Alzheimer's and the effect on her as his partner. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN LAMB: What have you learned about this disease?

NANCY REAGAN: That it's probably the worst disease you can ever have.

BRIAN LAMB: Why?

NANCY REAGAN: Because you lose contact, and you're not able to share -- in our case, you're not able to share all those wonderful memories that we have. And we had a wonderful life.

BRIAN LAMB: Can you have a conversation that makes sense to you with the president?

NANCY REAGAN: Not now, no.

BRIAN LAMB: The letter itself, what were the circumstances in which he wrote the letter? Were you with him when he wrote it?

NANCY REAGAN: I was with him. We were in the library, and he was sitting at the table in the library. And he sat down and wrote it. And that was it.

BRIAN LAMB: First draft?

NANCY REAGAN: First draft. He crossed out one word there, or two -- I think it's one or two words. I don't know what that was, but only Ronnie could write a letter like that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SWAIN: So as Carl Cannon told us earlier, she devoted -- once his illness became debilitating, she devoted her life to being his caretaker, but occasionally she would make a foray into the public arena. One of those was over the stem cell debate during the Bush administration.

You've stayed in touched with her. You did this documentary recently. What is her own explanation of how she used these post-White House years and when she decided to become public about issues and candidates that mattered to her?

WOODRUFF: Well, mainly, again, it was all about pushing and preserving her husband's legacy. It was all about Ronald Reagan, the man who was at the center of her life for 55 years until his death. And her interest -- I think you were going to bring this up, Susan, in stem cell research, even when it was not a popular thing in the Republican Party, was all about the connection to Alzheimer's. And then she had friends who had children with juvenile diabetes. And it was believed -- and scientists argued that, you know, we need to do much more with stem cell research than the United States had been doing.

And she lobbied President George Bush -- George W. Bush in the early 2000s when this was an issue, again, went against the party. She called members of Congress. She was a fierce advocate. She made speeches for it. You could trace, I think, almost everything she's done since then to something that either has to do with what her husband did or Alzheimer's.

SWAIN: In terms of party politics, in 1996, she gave a speech to the Republican convention in San Diego. Fast-forward to 2008, she got involved in the McCain presidential effort by endorsing him. When has she chosen to be involved with Republican Party politics, and why?

CANNON: Well, she knew John McCain, and she was there when he came back out of Vietnam. And the Reagans are one of the first couples that -- that McCain went. So I tend to think of that as an old -- another one of Nancy's friendships in which she was loyal.

But, you know, Judy's right. She's not -- she wouldn't be now -- if she were entering the arena, we wouldn't think of her as on the right wing of the Republican Party. We just wouldn't. We would think of her -- more of a moderate Republican.

SWAIN: Were there any other social issues that were of interest to her?

WOODRUFF: It was mainly stem cell. I mean, she -- and she was very clear about -- you know, she was very strategic about it. I know she worked with a team of people who were very involved in this issue, and they planned way ahead about, where can we use Nancy? Where can she go to make a speech or who can she call? She wanted to get it done, and she was effective.

SWAIN: Kim is in Ukiah, California. Hi, Kim, you're on.

KIM (ph): I love this show. I've watched every week. But I was wondering, what charities or groups is Nancy Reagan doing at this time?

WOODRUFF: You know, I can say, Kim -- and I've already shared this with Susan and Carl -- I actually spoke with Mrs. Reagan today on the telephone. I was fortunate to be able to speak with her. She is every bit as sharp as she as she has been, was in very good spirits, but she doesn't get around as much as she used to. And I think her ability to get out in public and do the kinds of things that she did for many years, that's something that's very limited.

She still can get out, and does. But it's not as much. She's 92 years old, and she's not as active in public. But she still follows what's going on avidly. She follows the news. She may even be watching you tonight, Susan. She is an avid follower of what's going on in American politics and American life.

SWAIN: Just last week, her office released a statement on the passing of Larry Speakes, who was the Reagan spokesman, and who also tragically had Alzheimer's, a connection between him and his boss. We just showed a picture of Nancy Reagan with Michelle Obama. Were there first ladies that she had a special relationship with, do you know?

CANNON: I don't.

WOODRUFF: She certainly -- she's certainly overlapped with Barbara Bush, because they were vice president and president at the same time. And so -- but, you know, the Reagans left Washington after. They were not around in Washington during the Bush presidency. And then before that, they weren't in Washington. I think she's been available to other first ladies. You saw -- you just saw her there photographed with Michelle Obama.

I know that Laura -- President George W. Bush and Laura Bush I know saw her from time to time. But she's very much been focused on her husband while he was alive and since then on her life in California.

SWAIN: Justin is in Plainfield, Indiana. Hi, Justin. You're on.

JUSTIN (ph): Hi, thank you for taking my call. This has been an excellent series. I really enjoyed it. But you kind of touched on it early about the special relationship between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. And I wanted to know, what was Nancy's relationship to the Thatchers, both Margaret and her husband, Denis? And also, does she feel that it's time that we have a woman president in this country? Thank you very much.

SWAIN: Thank you. Do you anything about the relationship with the Thatchers?

CANNON: Well, I know that Nancy invited Margaret Thatcher to the 80th birthday party of Reagan, so that's pretty good. He asked about a woman president?

SWAIN: It was a statement, that someday -- that it's time for a woman president from this country.

CANNON: He may not have to wait that long.

SWAIN: And then we'll do a series on -- a very short series on first men.

CANNON: First gentlemen?

SWAIN: That's right.

(LAUGHTER)

So we have about four minutes left. And it's important for us to kind of put a capper on this 90-minute conversation. What is important do you think to know about Nancy Reagan's effect on the role of first ladies and her contributions to the Reagan presidency?

WOODRUFF: I think it's pretty much what we've been saying, that she -- you know, first ladies have long been -- certainly in the modern era -- have been close to their husbands, have been -- have paid close attention to policy. I think Nancy Reagan took that to a new level, because it wasn't so much that she wanted to be sitting in cabinet meetings or policymaking meetings. She didn't do that.

But she was very aware of her husband and his -- wanted him to be successful and was ready to act, to make sure of that, to make sure that the people around him were serving his best interests and letting him be, as she put it, the best person that he could be. And in that way, she exerted enormous influence, because she would move a mountain to make sure that her husband was protected.

SWAIN: You called Ronald Reagan a movement president -- a movement politician, so how should the public view Nancy Reagan's term as first lady, two terms as first lady?

CANNON: Well, think of this. Stu Spencer says she was really the personnel chief. OK, but no personnel chief -- White House personnel chief has actually ever slept with the president, and this one did, and so she has -- she has more influence. She has the old kind of influence and a new kind of influence. She's a very modern first lady in that sense.

Ron Reagan, their son, told Judy in that excellent film that PBS did that she did her best to make sure he could do his best. And I was thinking about that this morning. She once said that she -- that Reagan preferred heights to valleys. And so she would make sure that he would be -- could go up to Rancho del Cielo up in the mountains. There's nothing for her to do up there, but she made sure he could there as often as she could, and she went with him.

And she did it metaphorically, too. She was a height, not a valley in his life. And by doing that, she lightened his mood and she helped him make a mark on a country that needed bucking up.

SWAIN: Well, as we close here, we're going to actually listen to President Reagan's answer to that question. In a 1988 tribute to Nancy Reagan that happened in conjunction with the GOP convention in that year, he talked about her, and that's how we're going to close our program. And since we're closing with video, before we do so, let me say thanks to both you for being her tonight to help tell the story of Nancy Reagan. We appreciate it.

WOODRUFF: Thank you, Susan.

CANNON: It's been a pleasure, Susan.

SWAIN: And now President Reagan in his own words, his thoughts about Nancy Reagan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RONALD REAGAN: But what do you say about someone who gives your life meaning? What do you say about someone who's always there with support and understanding, someone who makes sacrifices so that your life will be easier and more successful? Well, what you say is that you love that person and treasure her.

(APPLAUSE)

I simply can't imagine the last eight years without Nancy. The presidency wouldn't have been the joy it's been for me without her there beside me. And that second-floor living quarters in the White House would have seemed a big and lonely spot without her waiting for me every day at the end of the day.

You know, she once said that a president has all kinds of advisers and experts who look after his interests when it comes to foreign policy or the economy or whatever, but no one who looks after his needs as a human being. Well, Nancy has done that for me through recuperations and crises. Every president should be so lucky. I think...

(APPLAUSE)

I think it's all too common in marriages that no matter how much partners love each other, they don't thank each other enough. And I suppose I don't thank Nancy enough for all that she does for me.

So, Nancy, in front of all your friends here today, let me say thank you for all you do, thank you for your love, and thank you for just being you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

END