A major myth now swirling around former first lady Nancy Reagan — who died on Sunday at the age of 94 — must be cleared up, President Ronald Reagan's biographer Craig Shirley tells
Newsmax TV.
"I've noticed in the last couple of hours this myth has been cropping up that she somehow had a hand in winning the Cold War. That she was much more liberal than he was on abortion and on homosexual marriage and other things like that," Shirley said Monday on "The Steve Malzberg Show."
"The fact is she was pretty conservative. She wasn't as conservative probably as he was, but she understood her role, she understood the role of first lady."
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Shirley said Reagan, a Hollywood actress in the '40s and '50s in such films as "Donovan's Brain" and "Hellcats of the Navy," would likely see herself as "somewhere between" President Franklin Roosevelt's wife, Eleanor, and President Dwight Eisenhower's wife, Mamie.
"She was an activist but she also brought tradition back to the White House. Something that fell by the wayside during the [Jimmy] Carter years," Shirley said.
"She was an activist … but also she understood her job was to be the first lady and to help the president be the best president he can be."
Shirley — author of
"Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan," published by Thomas Nelson — told Malzberg he was dismayed, but not surprised, by the negative tone of the Washington Post's obituary.
"Nancy Reagan had an undeniable knack for inviting controversy," The Post's Lois Romano wrote.
"There were her extravagant spending habits at a time of double-digit unemployment, a chaotic relationship with her children and stepchildren that could rival a soap opera plot, and the jaw-dropping news that she had insisted the White House abide by an astrologer when planning the president's schedule."
"The Washington Post … [has] had it in, quite frankly, for the Reagans since the day they walked into Washington in January of 1981," Shirley said.
"The week that [Ronald Reagan] died, the style section wrote awful things about the state of their marriage, about whether or not he proposed to another woman, about whether or not he was a good actor or a bad actor, that he was a lousy football player. The Washington Post is part of a dominant liberal culture that always despised the Reagans."
In a separate interview with J.D. Hayworth on "Newsmax Prime," Shirley described Nancy Reagan as a first lady who was "meticulous in her manners."
"She was the epitome of style and class and elegance. It's obvious to see why Ronald Reagan was so madly in love with her for over 50 years. She was smart, she was very, very beautiful. She was a great conversationalist. She was charming. She was tough," Shirley said.
"She was everything in a woman that he wanted when he was looking in the late 40s after his unwanted divorce from Jane Wyman. He was very down. His movie career had hit the skids … He had been badly injured in a charity softball game.
"She nourished him psychologically and physically and every other way to health … It was really one of the great love stories of the White House. Their marriage and their devotion to each other, their singular devotion rivals that of [John and Abigail] Adams."
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