| 1981: | In response to social secretary Muffie Brandon's statement that the White House is suffering "a terrible tablecloth crisis," Nancy Reagan's press secretary Sheila Tate says, "I don't think that we have a crisis here. I think we'll manage. I don't see this as a frightening thing." |
| 1981: | Reagan, speaking to a GOP fundraiser ($2500 a plate) claims to have received a letter: "He wrote in Braille to tell me that if cutting his pension would help get this country back on its feet, he'd like to have me cut his pension." The letter-writer's identity is not revealed. |
| 1982: | President Reagan invokes executive privilege to keep Congress from seeing subpoenaed Environmental Protection Agency documents. Reagan later states that he would never use executive privilege that way, but his staff soon explains that he didn't mean that the way it sounded, and the documents in question will be only selectively revealed. |
| 1987: | Reagan denies that he resents Mikhail Gorbachev's popularity. "Good Lord, I starred with Errol Flynn once." |
| 1987: | Michael Deaver's book BEHIND THE SCENES is excerpted in LIFE magazine. In one anecdote, the Reagans are participating in a communion service. "Mike," hissed Nancy, "Are those people drinking out of the same cup?" Then she accidentally dropped her wafer into the chalice. Ron had had been told to follow her lead so he dropped his in too, and left "satisfied that the service had gone quite well." |
| 1988: | Dan Quayle says that one lesson he has learned in the campaign is that "Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things." |