My Remarkable Journey (27 page)

The Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is a beautiful three-sided building. When the comedian Mark Russell was asked what
he thought of it he replied, “Well, Ford only served three years.”

Ford took office at a pivotal time, though. Watergate was an incomparable event—the president breaking the law. Ford gave
Nixon a full pardon a month after he assumed office. I’ll never forget his line. “Our long national nightmare is over…” The
pardon came with a cost. The country was divided. It was such an intense time. Ford’s own press secretary quit over the pardon.
There were people who believed the pardon was one of the reasons Ford lost the election in 1976.

But when I asked him about it years later, Ford said that he was even more convinced that it was the right thing to do. The
way he explained it certainly made sense. If he wanted to spend 100 percent of his time working on the country’s problems,
he needed to get the Nixon problem off his desk. He believed the public came to understand that as the years passed.

Ford was the most regular guy ever to be president in my lifetime. He never would have had the ambition to run for president.
He was a true congressman—the kind of guy you wanted to call if your Social Security check hadn’t arrived. Gerald Ford would
make sure you got it.

He was parodied as an uncoordinated bumpkin after he fell down steps coming off an airplane. The famous line was that he had
played football without a helmet. But he had high grades in school. He was very likable, an easy guy to be around. He was
much less conservative in the White House than he’d been in Congress. But that happens to a lot of people when they become
president. The country takes them to the center. When you’re the representative from Michigan, you’re the representative of
the people of Michigan. When you’re the president, you’re the representative of everybody.

Ford was hurt when Ronald Reagan tried to get the nomination from him in 1980. But his big blunder came in the debate against
Jimmy Carter when he said that Eastern Europe wasn’t under Soviet domination. That was another reason why he lost.

In the end, the legacy of Ford and his wife, Betty, will be as healers. Ford tried to bring the country together after Nixon’s
resignation. And I can remember him talking about the family intervention at Betty’s bedside to stop her addiction to alcohol
and painkillers. Betty became synonymous with rehabilitation. When you think about rehab, you think about the Betty Ford Center.
It’s as if there weren’t any rehab centers before it. The comedian Albert Brooks had a great line. He said, “Where did Betty
Ford go?”

Gerald Ford became very friendly with Jimmy Carter after they were both out of office. They were both sent by Ronald Reagan
to represent the United States at Anwar Sadat’s funeral. Richard Nixon went, too. Nixon came home quickly afterward. Ford
and Carter flew back together and they really bonded.

It was a little sad for Ford to watch the Republican Party move toward the extreme right as time passed. I was at the Republican
Convention in ’92 when George Bush was renominated. Rush Limbaugh had an honored box at that convention. Pat Buchanan made
a prime-time speech. Ford turned to me and said, “What happened to my party?”

Jimmy Carter was a guy who was ahead of his time. He saw the possibility of peace in the Middle East. I didn’t know this until
recently, but he had solar panels installed on the White House back in the ’70s. It may sound trivial, but there are women
in the Alfalfa Club now because of Jimmy Carter.

The Alfalfa Club was named for the alfalfa plant. The plant doesn’t do anything and neither does the club. It doesn’t do charity
work. It has a dinner. That’s it. The Alfalfa Club goes back to something like 1913. At the annual dinner, you’re in a room
filled with unbelievable power. Presidents, the top cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, ambassadors, captains of industry.
I remember one dinner, talking to David Rockefeller.
David Rockefeller
said to me, “Do you believe the people in this room? This is really something.” When he was president, Jimmy Carter would
not attend an Alfalfa Club dinner because women were not permitted. It’s because of Jimmy Carter that women are now allowed.

Carter could come off very moral—he was a lay preacher—even boring. My friend Herbie used to joke about the peace agreement
that Carter made between Egypt and Israel. He said, “You know the reason Carter succeeded with Sadat and Begin during those
talks. He bored them to death. They stayed in two different cabins at Camp David. And Carter would say, ‘Why don’t we take
another six hours to discuss this?’ And these guys would say, ‘Another six hours. Oy! I’ll sign anything, bring it over.’”

The reality was quite different. It was painstaking to work that agreement out. Menachem Begin was a very tough guy to deal
with. Anwar Sadat was much easier. Begin dotted every
i
and crossed every
t
. He read everything over and over and over because he was mistrustful. He’d say to Carter, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
What exactly does this mean? Let’s change this
the
to
a
.”

Carter told me, “Every time I got frustrated with him, I thought to myself,
Was my family killed in the Holocaust? I’m supposed to tell him he shouldn’t be so methodical? I’m telling him to trust?
” There were tears in his eyes when he said that. In the end, the accord between Egypt and Israel has held up. People can
travel back and forth to this day.

Someone once said that Carter would be great as a saint, but he was lousy as a president. I don’t think
lousy
is the right term. Events took over. The hostages were taken by Iran and he just handled it poorly. He was not weak, and
he was not naive. People tend to forget that Carter graduated from the Naval Academy and commanded a nuclear submarine.

It’s just that his skills played out better postpresidency. He’s had a great postpresidency. I’ve never seen a postpresidency
quite like it. He goes all around the world. He oversees elections. He settles peace issues. He writes novels, poems, and
children’s books. He gives the money from his books to his center. He and Rosalynn build homes for those in need with Habitat
for Humanity. He won the Nobel Peace Prize. You may not agree with all his philosophies, but is he a special person? Yes.

There’s a great story about Ronald Reagan that goes back to his Hollywood agents. While he was an actor, Reagan was represented
by Sonny Werblin, who would go on to own the New York Jets and run Madison Square Garden, and also by Lew Wasserman. At his
presidential inauguration, Reagan said to them, “If you guys had been better at your jobs, I wouldn’t be here.”

Being an actor helped Reagan when he was in the White House. He was a great communicator. People liked him. That’s something
money can’t buy. There are some people who criticized Reagan for being too much like an actor. But I don’t blame him for that.
That’s what he was. I’m a broadcaster. If I were running, I’d sound like a broadcaster.

So much in life is based on timing. Herbie put it well. He said the reason the Iranians released the hostages in the final
moments of the Carter administration was that they saw Reagan coming in on a white horse like the Lone Ranger. They didn’t
know what to expect. Would Reagan invade? They couldn’t be sure.

There were a lot of pluses to Reagan. He befriended Gorbachev and told him to take down the Berlin Wall. That was huge.

Reagan had a simple outlook on things. There was no deep, hidden agenda. My brother liked him because he was able to absorb
information from people who were smarter than him on a certain subject and then make the right decision. The thing about Reagan
that surprised Marty was how big he was physically. Reagan was six-foot-two, and he was wide. Marty remembers that when Reagan
came over to shake his hand, his frame blocked out the window. He gave off the appearance of being large, in body and in spirit,
and he had respect for his office. Reagan never took off his jacket when he was in the Oval Office. But a lot of people on
the extreme right would be surprised to know that he told dirty jokes.

Another thing about Reagan was that he didn’t hold a grudge. Reagan had a great relationship with Tip O’Neill, the speaker
of the House. Tip told me this story: “One day, I blasted Reagan on the floor of the House. I went back to my office and the
secretary said, ‘Telephone call. The president.’”

Oh jeez
, Tip was thinking as he reached for the phone. “Hello, Mr. President…”

“Tip, did you hear the one about…”

You couldn’t help but smile around Reagan. He put me on the Council on Physical Fitness when I was twenty pounds overweight
and smoking three packs a day. I showed up at a reception in the Rose Room. When Reagan saw me, he said, “Are you the poster
boy?”

I didn’t agree with Reagan on a lot of issues. I thought trickle-down economics was a terrible idea. I prefer what the guy
on the bottom says: “Give it to me now. I’ll trickle up.”

The Iran-Contra scandal was a minus. That could only have occurred under a president who was not paying attention. Reagan
left office tarnished by Iran-Contra. But he remained liked as a guy, and his vice president won the next election.

Right after he left the White House, the president and Nancy invited me to lunch at the Hotel Bel-Air. There was a wedding
going on when we arrived. The wedding party invited us in. We all walked down the aisle. Reagan and the father walked with
the bride. Funny, the things you remember. Reagan ate an ice cream sundae. He devoured that sundae like my nine-year-old son
would have. Whoa, did he love that sundae!

I’ve gotten to be good friends with Nancy over the years. Many people never knew the real Nancy. Nancy was very important
in that administration. Nancy is funny, shy, tough. She’s moderate, and she didn’t like the fanatics on the far right. If
she didn’t like you, you were out, because Ronnie was crazy about her.

I first sensed the Alzheimer’s setting in on the president when Reagan got the Medal of Freedom. Bush 41 presented it during
a reception at the White House. Reagan was standing underneath a painting of Lincoln. I was next to him with George Will and
a group of others. Reagan said, “I remember the first time I walked by this painting. Every time I come back and walk through
this room I get the same feeling.” A few minutes later, Reagan told the same story.

Nancy told me it was really hard at the end. She had to adjust the television to black-and-white. Colors can shock Alzheimer’s
patients. When they see colors, it’s like they’re seeing them for the first time.

It’s a puzzling disease. Many Alzheimer’s patients get angry and throw things for no reason. But Ronald Reagan didn’t get
angry. Even toward the end, if he was seated when a woman walked into the room, he would stand.

The best way I can describe George H. W. Bush to you is by relating a lunch conversation we had once. He said, “Hey, you know
my grandson, the one you had on the air at the convention. Funny kid. He’s applying to Georgetown.”

I said, “Oh, that’s great.”

He said, “You know anyone at Georgetown?”

I said, “Hey,
you’re
the president.”

And he said, “But it would be rude to use the presidency.”

I really admired that. That’s why so many people like him. I’ve become very close to George Bush and Bill Clinton over the
years, but I’m probably closest to Bush. I was supposed to jump out of a plane with him—go skydiving—but my doctor wouldn’t
let me.

Bush was an internationalist. I thought he showed strength and sensibility in his handling of the Gulf War. He assembled a
coalition, chased Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, and won the war in a hundred days with minimal casualties. He was wise enough
to stay out of Baghdad. He had some great advisers. Brent Scowcroft was strongly opposed to going into Baghdad. I doubt that
Bush agrees with the Iraq war his son got us into. I can’t tell you for sure. But you can see a lot in his body language.
Scowcroft was at the vacation house when I was there. An article about Scowcroft in
The New Yorker
had just appeared, and it was very critical about the war. So I asked Bush what his conversations about the war with Scowcroft
were like. He said, “We don’t discuss it.”

Bush must have had a 90 percent approval rating after the victory in the Gulf War. There were parades when the troops came
home. But the economy went into a downward spiral. If there had been no economic problems, the public would have looked at
Bush 41 very differently. But he got hurt when he didn’t know about electronic scanners at the supermarket checkout counter.
That showed his isolation from ordinary people. It’s very difficult to win an election when the people see an image like that.
Bush had to deal with the ultimate rejection—running for reelection and getting beaten by an upstart. That’s tough.

When I think of Bush, I think of a kind and considerate man. And he put me in one of the strangest diplomatic situations I’ve
ever run into when I emceed his eightieth birthday party. It was at Minute Maid Park—where the Astros play. The ceremony was
at second base. There was a big crowd. Five former world leaders were on hand to represent Israel, Canada, Mexico, England,
and Russia. They were all scheduled to speak.

All the early speakers were going on too long and the program was running really late. I tried to do my best, moving the event
along with some laughs. But it became clear to everyone there was no other choice but to cut the program short.

So I said to President Bush, “I’ll ask the world leaders to have one speaker represent all of them.”

Dan Quayle overheard this and said, “Not a good idea…”

But there really was no alternative. President Bush said, “OK, give it a try.”

So I gathered all the world leaders together and explained the situation, and they all seemed to understand. Brian Mulroney
of Canada was George Bush’s close friend. He said, “I’ll speak for all of us.”