Photo: Dirck Halstead/Liaison; Pam Francis/Getty
The culprit?
A new biography on Mrs. Bush, Susan Page’sThe Matriarch, doesn’t give a definitive answer but notes “the universe of those empowered to do so wouldn’t extend much past the president and the First Lady” — andNancy Reaganand Mrs. Bush had never been friends.
“She hated us,” Mrs. Bush told Page for her book. “I don’t know why, but she really hated us.”
In her book, Page writes that while protocol dictated the Bushes be invited to state dinners, it seems that was all Mrs. Reagan would allow them.
“During their eight years of residency at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the Reagans invited the Bushes upstairs to the private family quarters of the White House only a time or two before Bush had been elected to the presidency himself. They never invited the Bushes to accompany them to Camp David,” Page writes.
And then there was the Nov. 9, 1985, dinner for Princess Diana and her husband — “one of the most sought-after invitations of Reagan’s presidency,” according to Page. And one that someone took pains to keep out of reach for the Bushes.
Princess Diana and President Ronald Reagan at a White House dinner on Nov. 9, 1985.REX/Shutterstock
From left: John Travolta and Princess Diana at the White House dinner.AP/REX/Shutterstock
Prince Charles and Princess Diana with President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan at a White House dinner on Nov. 9, 1985.Bettmann/Getty
The Bushes appeared only under a “Suggested additions” section on the second and third invite lists, according to Page.
The snub did not go unnoticed, Page writes: “When deputy White House chief of staff Michael Deaver cautioned Nancy Reagan against excluding the vice president and his wife from the dinner, saying it would be a breach of protocol, she reportedly responded, ‘Just watch me.’ ”
The dinner — which memorably saw John Travolta take to the dance floor with Diana, who was wearing a velvet dress of deepest blue — was not exactly small. Guests included “an astronaut, a ballerina, an artist, an architect, the commissioner of baseball” and Mrs. Reagan’s stepdaughter, Page writes. But not the Bushes.
Years later, President Bush gave a brief answer when Page asked him why it seemed Mrs. Reagan had so disliked his wife.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.”
Mrs. Reagan could feel insecure around Mrs. Bush, who was “part of a New England aristocracy that dated its direct ancestry to theMayflower,” according to Page.
But Mrs. Reagan felt she was afforded no such welcome to America’s highest ranks. “Nancy was always viewed as a social-climbing parvenu,” PEOPLE reported in 1990.
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“Nancy was disdainful of Barbara for her sturdy figure, her matronly clothes, and her blunt manner,” Page writes. (Some White House staffers told Page that Mrs. Bush could seem “imperious at times.”) For her part, “Barbara was disdainful of Nancy as brittle and shallow, and as a mother who had failed to forge a close or even functional relationship with her children.”
But their views on one another were hardly one-dimensional, according to Page’s book.
“Nancy … was envious of Barbara’s self-confidence, her social standing, and her close-knit family,” while the latter “admired Nancy’s slender figure, the grace with which she wore stylish fashions, and the open devotion she commanded from an adoring husband.”
It was that deep love that Mrs. Bush extolled in a brief statement when Mrs. Reagan died in March 2016, at 94.
She said then, in part: “Nancy Reagan was totally devoted to President Reagan, and we take comfort that they will be reunited once more.”
Privately, Mrs. Bush remembered her predecessor for other reasons, according to Page. In the lead-up to her husband’s inauguration, she wrote in her diary that “I will not treat her [incoming Second Lady Marilyn Quayle] as Nancy Reagan has treated me.”
Susan Page’sThe Matriarchwill be released Tuesday.
source: people.com
