Nancy Reagan (1921 - 2016)

Nancy Reagan, who was born Anne Francis Robbins but went by the stage name Nancy Davis, has died at age 94. From the New York Times obituary:

Mrs. Reagan was a fierce guardian of her husband’s image, sometimes at the expense of her own, and during Mr. Reagan’s improbable climb from a Hollywood acting career to the governorship of California and ultimately the White House, she was a trusted adviser.

“Without Nancy, there would have been no Governor Reagan, no President Reagan,” said Michael K. Deaver, the longtime aide and close friend of the Reagans who died in 2007.

Mrs. Reagan helped hire and fire the political consultants who ran her husband’s near-miss campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976 and his successful campaign for the presidency in 1980. She played a seminal role in the 1987 ouster of the White House chief of staff, Donald T. Regan, whom Mrs. Reagan blamed for ineptness after it was disclosed that Mr. Reagan had secretly approved arms sales to Iran.

Behind the scenes, Mrs. Reagan was the prime mover in Mr. Reagan’s efforts to recover from the scandal, which was known as Iran-contra because some of the proceeds from the sale had been diverted to the contras opposing the leftist government of Nicaragua. While trying to persuade her stubborn husband to apologize for the arms deal, Mrs. Reagan brought political figures into the White House, among them the Democratic power broker Robert S. Strauss, to argue her case to the president.

Mr. Reagan eventually conceded that she was right. On March 4, 1987, the president made a distanced apology for the arms sale in a nationally televised address that dramatically improved his slumping public approval ratings.

His wife, typically, neither sought nor received credit for the turnaround. Mrs. Reagan did not wish to detract from her husband’s luster by appearing to be a power behind the presidential throne.

In public, she gazed at him adoringly and portrayed herself as a contented wife who had willingly given up a Hollywood acting career of her own to devote herself to her husband’s career. “He was all I had ever wanted in a man, and more,” she wrote in “My Turn: The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan,” published in 1989.

He reciprocated in kind. “How do you describe coming into a warm room from out of the cold?” he once said. “Never waking up bored? The only thing wrong is, she’s made a coward out of me. Whenever she’s out of sight, I’m a worrier about her.”"

In truth, she was the worrier. Mrs. Reagan wrote in her memoirs that she sometimes became angry with her husband because of his relentless optimism. He didn’t worry at all, she wrote, “and I seem to do the worrying for both of us.”

I always thought it was a little unfair how much she was made fun of for her "just say no" campaign against drugs. I actually think the reminder that you can always just say no can be pretty effective.

Here's Nancy Reagan on 60 Minutes in 2002, talking about living with a husband who has Alzheimer's disease:




The New York Times notes that Nancy helped Ronald write his poignant statement to the public about Alzheimer's:

I have recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease. . . .

At the moment I feel just fine. I intend to live the remainder of the years God gives me on this earth doing the things I have always done. I will continue to share life's journey with my beloved Nancy and my family. I plan to enjoy the great outdoors and stay in touch with my friends and supporters.

Unfortunately, as Alzheimer's disease progresses, the family often bears a heavy burden. I only wish there was some way I could spare Nancy from this painful experience. . . .

I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.

The wife of the Prime Minister of India

WaPo reports:

She’s waiting for him, as she has been all her life. But when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi dined with Barack and Michelle Obama at a glittering banquet Sunday night, his wife wasn’t by his side. Modi, 64, kept his teenage marriage a secret for decades during his political ascent and only last year admitted that his wife exists.

The wife, Jashodaben Chimanlal Modi, is a retired teacher who lives in a small town in Modi’s home state of Gujarat. Although she had not heard from her husband in years, she says she still hopes to join him one day in the capital as his spouse.

“If he calls me, I will go,” she said in an interview. “I hear all his speeches on TV. I feel very good when I hear him speak. I want him to fulfill all his promises to the people. That’s my prayer to God.”

Narendra Modi, the son of a man who sold tea in a railway station, comes from a lower caste called Ghanchi. He and his wife were promised to each other as young adolescents in keeping with the traditions of their community. They were then married in a small ceremony when she was 17 and he was 18. . . .

Nearly a dozen guards watch her around the clock and follow her in a shiny car as she takes auto rickshaws and public transportation, they say. When she visits friends or relatives, they have to cook for the guards, she said.

“The security travels in an air-conditioned car. But my sister takes buses, trains and auto rickshaws. What kind of justice is this? Should a prime minister's wife not get a car?” her brother asked.

The Obamas on their "racist experiences"

Actually, these are not necessarily "racist experiences." The reason a woman asked Michelle Obama to hand her something from a shelf in a store is that Michelle Obama was much taller than the woman. Michelle Obama is apparently 5'11" — an inch taller than me — and I often get asked by other customers in stores to get things from the high shelves. This is not because of prejudice against me; it's because I happen to be of average height for a man. Relatively tall people like us are advantaged by having an easier time reaching products in stores; how can we complain about occasionally being asked for help by someone who's too short to comfortably reach some of the products?

I've also been mistaken for a store clerk. I've also been closely followed by store clerks, and interrogated while trying to leave a store without buying anything. I've also been refused entry into my own workplace, when I was wearing a suit and tie and had been working there for a long time, because the security guard (a white man) didn't believe I worked there. (I should mention that this was not at my current job.) Yes these things are annoying, but they happen to people of all races.

Many of the Obamas' examples reflect a certain classism: Don't you know who I am?! How could you possibly mistake me for a lowly waiter?!

There's something unseemly about the most famous, powerful couple in America expressing dismay that a random citizen would ever fail to recognize how important they are.

UPDATE (December 21): I was looking around for help in a clothing store today, and it wasn't totally clear who was a customer and who was an employee. The employees had no obvious dress code or name tags, and some of them walked around nonchalantly in a way that blended in with the customers (which could be a good sales technique). It occurred to me that if I had taken seriously what Michelle Obama said about racist microaggression, I should have avoided asking any of the black or Hispanic employees for help, and sought out the white employees instead. But that would mostly help whites and hurt minorities! They're all working for commissions, and they can benefit from the sales experience of interacting with me even if they don't make a sale. That seems to be a worse "microaggression" than occasionally mixing up a customer with a store employee, which isn't going to prevent anyone from making money.