Free Between You and Me by Mike Wallace Page A

other during her eight years in Washington, it was mutually understood that our telephone conversations were strictly off the record; even now it would not be proper for me to violate that confidence. I can say, however, that she was a very savvy politician in her own right, and she had firm—often critical—opinions about some of the president’s top advisers. But much to my regret, not once did she steer me toward an inside story that I could report on 60 Minutes.
    Most of the time we simply nattered on in the familiar manner of two friends who’d known each other for decades.
    More than anything else, perhaps, we talked about our kids.
    Nancy was somewhat estranged from her daughter, Patti, and son, Ron, and I tried to help her deal with that. Actually, she probably saw more of my son Chris in those days than she did her own children, because he was then covering the White House for NBC News, and doing a first-rate job on that beat. I know from what Chris told me that Nancy always greeted him warmly, but when it came to getting inside scoops about life and work in the White House, he had no better luck than I did.
    Over the past three decades, Chris has built up his own solid reputation as a television correspondent. I’m obviously proud of the fact
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    B E T W E E N Y O U A N D M E
    that he decided to pursue a career in broadcasting, even though it wasn’t his first choice. When he graduated from Harvard in 1969, his sights were set on print journalism, and he landed a job covering city hall for The Boston Globe. After some gentle prodding from me and his stepfather, my good friend and longtime colleague Bill Leonard (who later became president of CBS News), Chris crossed over to our branch of the media. Following the usual path, he started out in local news and moved on to the networks, first NBC, then ABC, and, most recently, Rupert Murdoch’s domain, where, on FOX News Sunday, he demonstrates week in and week out that he’s better at anchoring a news show than I ever was.
    Getting back to Nancy, the difficulties she went through with her children were all the more poignant because they were in such sharp contrast to the warm and loving relationship she had with her own mother. Edie Davis died in 1987 at the age of ninety-one. I wrote a farewell tribute to her for The Washington Post, and in putting it together, I was struck by how fortunate my old friend had been. Not only had she enjoyed a long and full life, but during her golden years, she experienced the deep satisfaction of seeing her daughter live in the White House as First Lady to an extremely popular president who also happened to be a most devoted son-in-law. One of the joys of Edie’s life was that every year on her daughter’s birthday, Reagan would send her flowers to thank her for having given birth to Nancy.
    The last time I interviewed Reagan on 60 Minutes was in January 1989, just before his two-term reign came to an end. Among the questions I put to him on that occasion were several about decisions and policies that had provoked serious criticism and thus were apt to leave blemishes on his legacy. In particular, I brought up the Iran-Contra affair, the big-time scandal that shook up the White House power structure and even threatened to destroy his presidency. Rea-
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    F I R S T C O U P L E S
    gan acknowledged that 1987—the year the scandal dominated the political headlines—had been “a very tough year,” but he said he could not discuss the specifics of the elaborate deception because some of the legal cases had not yet been resolved. However, he did make a point of saying that “the whole Iran-Contra affair has been terribly distorted by the media up and down,” and he expressed confidence that the misadventure would have little or no lasting impact on his reputation.
    Self-confidence had often been cited as one of Reagan’s political strengths, so I asked him about the almost jaunty optimism and bon-homie he had