When Nancy Reagan passed away several days ago at age 94 yet another opportunity was created to haul out all the mythology of the Reagan administration. The wife of Saint Ronnie was given full political honors, lying in state, and treated to encomiums as the last connection—the Reagan offspring being what they are— to what, thankfully, was never going to be a Reagan dynasty.
All the falsity of the Reagan years was hauled out: how Ronnie brought down the USSR, how he didn’t know about the Iran-Contra deal. But that he raised taxes eleven times and left a huge deficit, and once claimed that he helped liberate concentration camps (when his WWII service consisted of posing in military uniforms) were conveniently avoided.
Ronnie was pretty much an amiable simpleton whose brain was probably further compromised by the onset of Alzheimer’s early in his presidency. Nancy no doubt recognized that; hence her protectiveness.
One is not sure what Nancy Reagan is most remembered for, her predilection for advising her husband’s political decisions with the assistance of astrology (something Ronnie also believed in), “Just say no” to drugs, or getting anyone fired who could threaten her beloved. For some reason, this record now seems superseded, as was reported in a recent article that exhumed from the memoir of contemporaneous actor Peter Lawford, “that Nancy gave the best blowjobs in Hollywood.”
Oh, oh, “Just say no.”