An American Life by Ronald Reagan

Author:Ronald Reagan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Autobiography.Politics & Religon
ISBN: 9781451620733
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 1990-01-01T10:00:00+00:00

56

EVEN THOUGH I WAS constantly meeting new people and attending public events in the presence of thousands of people, I discovered a surprising dimension to the presidency—a bird-in-a-gilded-cage sense of isolation. More than once during the eight years I lived there, I stood at a window looking out across the big lawn of the White House, through its black iron fence at the people strolling along Pennsylvania Avenue, and found myself envying their freedom. I’d say to myself, “You know, I can’t even walk down to the drugstore and look over the magazine rack anymore. Will I ever be able to do it again?”

In 1981, before our first Valentine’s Day in Washington, I decided to buy a Valentine for Nancy and told the Secret Service agents that I wanted to leave the White House for a brief shopping excursion. Their response: a chorus of raised eyebrows. But I told them I had been buying a Valentine for Nancy for almost thirty years and didn’t want to stop now, so they drove me to a little gift store near the White House and I bought several cards for her.

Unbeknownst to me, Nancy had done the same thing, and we both surprised each other that night with our Valentines.

But that was just about my last shopping expedition outside the White House. It caused such a commotion that I never wanted to do that to a shopkeeper again.

Back in Hollywood, I had learned that having a familiar face can sometimes cause embarrassing attention when you are out in public. When I was governor, Nancy and I learned how security requirements could impose limits on our movements. We’d gotten used to that. But it was nothing compared with life in the White House, especially after the shooting at the Hilton.

No matter what we did or where we went, elaborate security arrangements were required, and usually had to be planned out weeks in advance. Every time we went out, it was in a caravan of five or six cars behind a blizzard of red lights and screaming sirens. Even if the Secret Service allowed us to go to church, we’d arrive there in a siren-screaming motorcade accompanied by legions of reporters and security people. No longer was going to church a pleasant Sunday morning experience, it was a news event: The other people in the church would have to pass through a magnetometer before they could get in; and once we were seated in church, Nancy and I often felt uncomfortable because so many people in the other pews were looking at us instead of listening to the sermon.

Things got worse after we started getting reports of terrorist hit squads. We were told that our going to church might result in an assassination attempt that could cause the deaths of many other people there. Very unhappily, we just had to stop going to church altogether, and we really missed it.

Even inside the White House, our movements were limited. I had to avoid getting too close

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