Regan Says Nancy Reagan’s Book Hurts Her Husband

WASHINGTON —  Donald T. Regan got in his licks Monday in his feud with Nancy Reagan, reviewing the book by his ex-boss’ wife and saying that she and ghostwriter William Novak “have produced a classic of inadvertent confession.”

The former White House chief of staff said in the Washingtonian magazine review that Mrs. Reagan “seems incapable of understanding how her words and deeds might seem selfish, hypocritical and, indeed, even frightening to those on the outside.

“Very sadly, and most of all, this book gives aid and comfort to those who still believe that Ronald Reagan never should have been elected President in the first place,” Regan said.

In May, 1988, Regan published memoirs picturing Mrs. Reagan as a scheming, “shadowy, distaff presidency” and disclosing her use of astrologer Joan Quigley.

Last month, in her book “My Turn,” Mrs. Reagan wrote that Regan had often “acted as if he were President” and deserved to be fired because the Iran-Contra affair occurred “on his watch.”

Taking his turn, Regan said: “I wrote about astrology because it was an essential truth about the way the Reagans operated. It was a daily, sometimes hourly, factor in every decision affecting the President’s schedule . . . . He--or in this case she--who controls the President’s schedule controls the workings of the presidency.”

Regan asserted that Mrs. Reagan--in acidly criticizing many of her husband’s closest advisers, “damages her husband and his presidency.” “After all,” he wrote, “these were Ronald Reagan’s choices, made after close consultation with his financial and political supporters and friends in California; he must have thought that they met his own standards.”