Calling in to an NBC special report about the death of Nancy Reagan on Sunday, correspondent Andrea Mitchell was eager to use the former First Lady’s passing to attack the current crop of Republican presidential candidates: “...we know that she did not believe in extremes. That she believed in compromise. That she believed, as did her husband, in walking – in working across party lines....So I would think that she would be pretty concerned about the state of the Republican Party.”
Mitchell admitted that she hadn’t spoken to Mrs. Reagan in recent years “about what has happened in the Republican Party,” but assured viewers that “it would certainly be hard for her to imagine the kind of Republican debates that we saw in the last couple of times and the language that was used, because if nothing else, she was a classy lady.”
In conclusion, Mitchell lectured: “So I think that she would not approve of the language, if nothing else, that is being used in this campaign....I don't think she could have been happy, or would be happy, about the tone that’s being taken in these debates and in this campaign.”
Earlier in the hour-long special, Mitchell praised Nancy Reagan for encouraging diplomacy between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, however the chief foreign affairs correspondent also ripped into the Reagans over other foreign policy matters:
And there were military deployments, which were controversial. Intermediate range missiles were deployed in Europe, very controversial within Europe. The Green Party grew up, there were protests all over. His only ally there was Maggie thatcher. The leader in France was Francois Mitterrand , a socialist. The other leaders, Pierre Trudeau – the father, ironically, of Justin Trudeau, who is coming for a state visit to Washington just this week – the leader in Canada very frustrated with the Reagan policies in 1982 and 1983....
In other ways, she and her husband were more ridged. They had to be dragged into recognizing that in the Philippines, Ferdinand Marco, a dictator and his wife whom they got along with very well, were not the future. And that they had to think about democracy there, and it was Richard Luger, then a very prominent senator from Indiana on Foreign Relations, and others, and George Schultz, again the Secretary of State, who helped pull them along. Apartheid, they were very resistant to any changes in South Africa and any support of various boycotts in the United States against Apartheid.
Here are excerpts of Mitchell’s March 6 reporting:
12:05 PM ET
(...)
ALEX WITT: Joining us now, NBC’s chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell. And Andrea, as we were speaking earlier, she really had quite a profound influence on international politics and the policies that were developed by her husband's administration, didn't she?
ANDREA MITCHELL: She did. And most importantly, with the Soviet Union, what was then the Soviet Union, because there had been a series of Soviet leaders with whom Ronald Reagan had no communication, and there was potentially crisis after crisis, and she saw an opening when Mikhail Gorbachev, a younger generation Soviet leader came into power.
And she is one of the key figures – was one of the key figures who pushed for the first summit between Reagan and Gorbachev, and it was in 1985. And she helped with George Shultz, the then-secretary of state, and others in the administration, to promote an atmosphere at a guest house in Geneva that would create the possibility of a real conversation where they went for a walk about, where they then stopped, there was a fire set in a small room, and they then had their first one-on-one conversation without all of the others hanging on. And it became really the template for future talks, which some went well, some didn't. Reykjavik, Iceland was a terrible further summit, but the fact is they were on a glide path toward at least communication and negotiation for arms control.
And one forgets, during the Cold War, we were at times on a hair trigger with nuclear weapons aimed at each other. And all of that changed with the result of those conversations, those summits. A lot of other people, not only Shultz, but Jim Baker and others, who were interested in negotiations despite efforts at the Pentagon by the Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger and others in his close circle who tried time and time again to stop those engagements.
And there were military deployments, which were controversial. Intermediate range missiles were deployed in Europe, very controversial within Europe. The Green Party grew up, there were protests all over. His only ally there was Maggie thatcher. The leader in France was Francois Mitterrand , a socialist. The other leaders, Pierre Trudeau – the father, ironically, of Justin Trudeau, who is coming for a state visit to Washington just this week – the leader in Canada very frustrated with the Reagan policies in 1982 and 1983.
There was a summit in 1983 which went very badly in Williamsburg, Virginia, where Ronald Reagan for the first time hosted what was then the G-7 Summit and it was all about missile deployments in Europe and the controversy over whether or not there should be nuclear weapons and whether or not there should be a zero option of anti-nuclear weapons, but it was the first effort of Reagan and Gorbachev to start drawing down mutually these weapons that began to make Europe a safer place, America a safer place, and eventually led to better communication and to all of the changes we saw in what was then the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. So, major transformations on foreign policy.
In other ways, she and her husband were more ridged. They had to be dragged into recognizing that in the Philippines, Ferdinand Marco, a dictator and his wife whom they got along with very well, were not the future. And that they had to think about democracy there, and it was Richard Luger, then a very prominent senator from Indiana on Foreign Relations, and others, and George Schultz, again the Secretary of State, who helped pull them along. Apartheid, they were very resistant to any changes in South Africa and any support of various boycotts in the United States against Apartheid.
So there were pluses and minuses in foreign policy, but I think certainly, the biggest contribution was on east/west relations and what led to real negotiations to reduce nuclear weapons.
(...)
12:33 PM ET
WITT: And Andrea, as I welcome you back to the conversation, you’ve chronicled the incredible influence that our former first lady had on international politics, but I'm curious, your take on what she would think of the presidential campaigns that are underway today.
MITCHELL: Well, it would be hard – I wouldn't want to presume to say what she would think about it. But from just all of her history, we know that she did not believe in extremes. That she believed in compromise. That she believed, as did her husband, in walking – in working across party lines. We once heard him say when he compromised on taxes that, “That sound you heard was the concrete breaking around my feet.” So I would think that she would be pretty concerned about the state of the Republican Party. I did not speak to her in, you know, the last year or two about what has happened in the Republican Party, but it would certainly be hard for her to imagine the kind of Republican debates that we saw in the last couple of times and the language that was used, because if nothing else, she was a classy lady.... So I think that she would not approve of the language, if nothing else, that is being used in this campaign....I don't think she could have been happy, or would be happy, about the tone that’s being taken in these debates and in this campaign.
(...)
