| 1986: | Reagan describes his daughter Patti Davis's roman-a-clef novel THE HOME FRONT as "interesting fiction." He will use the same description for a number of books by White House staffers in the next few years. |
| 1986: | Jack Kemp, one of the main backers of Reagan's "supply side" economic policy, denies "categorically" and "absolutely" on the TODAY show that he has had a long history of homosexual encounters. Such rumors have followed him since the days when he worked for Governor Reagan in the 1960s. By 1986 some rumors describe big orgies captured on videotape. In 1988, an old statement to her lawyers by lobbyist Paula Parkinson, who is alleged to have videotaped a number of congressmen in her bed, is leaked: though most attention is on the question of whether she had sex with Dan Quayle (apparently not, but not because he wasn't panting for it), she lists Kemp as one she did sleep with. |
| 1986: | Former Secretary of Education T.H. Bell says that his four years in office were a constant battle against a right wing "lunatic fringe" that didn't want to spend a dime on education. |
| 1986: | The Senate turns down a Reagan appointee to the federal judicial bench for the first time, when nominee Jefferson B. Sessions says he "meant no harm by" saying the NAACP was "un-American or communist", and by saying that he thought the Ku Klux Klan was "okay" until he found that some members were pot smokers. |