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”. Plotting her next move, she compiled a list of eligible bachelors, on which Ronald Reagan was placed first. Nancy and Ronald Reagan with Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev at the Reagans’ California ranch, May 1990. Tumulty’s book makes bold claims for Nancy’s influence, which supposedly went beyond that “of any first lady before or since”. Given Tumulty’s historical short-sightedness, I don’t understand what she means by her heroine’s “triumph”: a better title for her book might have been The Trauma of Nancy Reagan.

Source: The Guardian May 30, 2021 06:00 UTC