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The anecdote comes from Sheldon Davis, Bloomingdale's former executive assistant, who claims Bloomingdale related the incident in the office the following Monday. Only in the notes at the end of the book does Kelley admit she tried in vain to corroborate the story. Three friends of the Bloomingdales are quoted; all say they never heard the story. Few newspapers would print a charge on such flimsy evidence. (Betsy Bloomingdale last week called the story "unbelievable. It of course never happened.")
Use quotes selectively. Kelley frequently rehashes material that has been published elsewhere -- in itself no crime. But her selection of which parts to quote and which to leave out reveal her motives. For example, she describes an episode in which Nancy, after an angry encounter with her stepson Michael, then 16, callously told him he had been born out of wedlock to an army sergeant who had gone overseas and never returned. Writes Kelley: "Michael said he was rocked by the heartless way he received the news . . . 'I guess I expected Nancy to be more sympathetic,' he said years later."
The account is taken entirely from Michael Reagan's own memoir, On the Outside Looking In. Yet Kelley leaves out the sentences that show his more complex feelings about the incident. "For years I resented Nancy for telling me the truth about my blood parents," Reagan wrote. "Looking back, I really can't blame her. I had provoked and pushed her to the breaking point." Michael Reagan considers Kelley's account distorted: "She shows just one side of the story and doesn't tie it all in to what else was happening back then."
Exaggerate and oversimplify. Kelley hammers home the widespread view that Nancy Reagan wielded great power behind the scenes at the White House. Yet she damages her credibility as a political observer with hyperbole and distortions. At one point she provides a list of "Nancy-inspired firings and forced resignations" among top Reagan officials. Along with a few Nancy Reagan did indeed play a role in removing (like former chief of staff Donald Regan) are a number she had little or nothing to do with, such as former Secretary of State Alexander Haig. What's more, Kelley fails to note that much of Nancy's advice had little effect on her husband. She started pushing for the ouster of Edwin Meese as early as 1982, for example, but Reagan stubbornly held on to his longtime adviser until Meese resigned in 1988.
Kelley shows little grasp of Nancy Reagan's real contributions to the Administration. The First Lady was an astute political adviser on many matters. She played an important role, for instance, in getting Reagan to realize the severity of the trouble his presidency was in over the Iran-contra scandal.
Yet Kelley wrongly implies Nancy Reagan had a major hand in shaping foreign policy. In one encounter described in the book, President Reagan's aides showed him an agenda for his Geneva summit with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985. The President asked whether the agenda had been shown to Nancy yet. No, he was told. "Get back to me after she's passed on it," he said. The reason for his concern was almost certainly Nancy's obsession with coordinating his schedule with the astrological charts -- a revelation that came out years ago. But Kelley uses the incident to imply, misleadingly, that the First Lady was involved in substantive planning of the summit's agenda.