Lyn Nofziger

California newspaperman Lyn Nofziger signed on as the press secretary for gubernatorial candidate Ronald Reagan in February 1966, and though he periodically jumped (or was nudged) from the Reagan wagon train, for most of the next two decades he rode prominently on its right flank. Rumpled, wry, and blunt, Nofziger is from the pre-focus-group school of political operatives. Though he still dabbles in politics as an advisor to such figures as presidential candidate Steve Forbes and New Jersey Governor Christie Todd Whitman, Nofziger’s second career is as a writer of Western novels featuring cowboy hero Del Tackett. The fifth in the series, The Tacketts, has just been published. TAE associate editor Bill Kauffman interviewed Lyn Nofziger in Washington.  

TAE: In Dutch, his recent biography of Reagan, Edmund Morris described you as “looking like a used sleeping bag.” Would you care to characterize Morris’s appearance?

NOFZIGER: No. I’ve always been amused at people who feel it necessary to describe my physical appearance in one way or another. That sleeping bag was a new one.

I don’t think Edmund Morris is anybody’s raving beauty, but we’ll let it go at that. His wife apparently likes him.

TAE: Have you read Morris’ book?

NOFZIGER: About two-thirds of it. It’s a very difficult book for me to read because he bounces around from fact to fiction. He and his fictional characters are so much involved in the book that it takes away from the biographical part of it. There are parts that are very good when he is just purely biography.

TAE: Why the animus against Morris among the Reaganites? It’s hard to imagine another eminent historian producing so favorable a biography of Reagan.

TAE: A lot of people were critical before they read the book. And there are some things about the book that I think are unfortunate and unfair.

If it weren’t for Nancy Reagan, he would never have been allowed to do this. Nancy—and he would know this—has always been very sensitive about Jane Wyman, and to dedicate the book to the dead baby Wyman and Reagan had was a deliberate affront to Nancy. I can’t see any other reason for it.

He gives an awful lot of attention to Jane Wyman, more than he needed to, especially when she wouldn’t talk to him. I will say this for Jane Wyman: Nobody could have handled themselves better over the last 30-odd years than she did. She never talked to the press about her ex-husband.

You could look all you want, you wouldn’t find one remark that Jane Wyman made negative about Ron. Or positive. She just refused to talk, and that showed me a lot of class.

TAE: The Clintons are often criticized for using people and then discarding them without a second thought. Is the same true of the Reagans?

NOFZIGER: To a certain extent it’s true of almost any person who reaches a high level in politics. But I don’t think that Reagan really discarded people. Reagan was never intentionally mean or indifferent to people.

TAE: In your memoir you suggest he was not the sort of boss who thanked his subordinates.

NOFZIGER: He never went out of his way to thank. He kind of assumed that, hey, you’re there to do a job, and you’ve done the job, and that’s fine. And I think he always assumed that we knew that he appreciated it.

TAE: You stopped working for Reagan four times: Sometimes by choice, sometimes not. Why did you keep coming back?

NOFZIGER: There’s this great misconception that I was forced out, and that is really only true once. I left because I just get tired of government. I do not like government.

I was forced out of the 1980 campaign. [Campaign manager] John Sears and I didn’t see eye to eye, and he clearly didn’t want me around.

TAE: You got your revenge in your Western novel Tackett, but you make “Jack Sears” a good guy by the end of the book.

NOFZIGER: Yes, but go look at Tackett III. I killed him! (Laughter.)

TAE: It was always reported that Nancy Reagan disliked you.

NOFZIGER: Nancy and I have had our good times and our bad times. I was not her idea of a proper Reaganite. It wasn’t my beliefs or anything, but my attitude and perhaps my dress.

TAE: I’ve read about your sartorial style, but you look positively natty to me. I figured you’d be wearing a T-shirt.

NOFZIGER: Oh, no, I never did that. But these Reagan guys, they were pretty buttoned-down. They wore coats and ties and were a pretty sober bunch, and I never quite fit that.

Somebody asked me one time, “Do you socialize with the Reagans?” And I said, “No, they don’t drink enough for me.” Nancy spoke to me gently about that. I don’t know how to say it because I don’t want to demean myself or in any way to derogate her, but Nancy would like to be…upper class.

I remember the first time I ever had a salad served to me after the main course. You know, usually we Westerners get a salad first. But I was invited to lunch at their house after the gubernatorial campaign of ’66. And we had everything, and then all of a sudden they bring me this damn salad. What the heck is this thing doing here? I learned that that’s the way the upper classes do these things.

I just never quite fit into that, and that’s not her problem and it’s not my problem. It’s just the way things were.

In recent years, Nancy and I have gotten along just fine. I have a lot of respect and admiration for her. She’s handled a very miserable situation in a very classy way. I’m convinced and always have been that he wouldn’t have been President if it weren’t for her. So I think the country owes her a lot.

TAE: Did Reagan change as a person between the mid-’60s and the mid-’80s?

NOFZIGER: No, the wonderful thing about Ronald Reagan is that he never changed as a person. He got to be a smarter politician. He went from being a citizen-politician to being a politician. But he was a nice man when I met him, and he was a nice man when he left office. He never got a big head. He never got to thinking that he was better than anyone else or that he didn’t need to listen to anybody else. You could still kid with him. He never put on airs.

TAE: You’ve written, “Ronald Reagan used to be one of us”—meaning anti-big government people—“but by the time he left the presidency, he also had left us.” Why?

NOFZIGER: It happens with everybody who’s in the presidency. He probably was not as conservative when he left office as when he went into office. You have to understand that it’s one thing to be a conservative before you get into office; it’s another thing when you have to deal with the Congress and with the affairs of the world. You change. It’s easy for people like me to retain the same conservative approach that I had 20 years ago: I’ve never had to make those decisions.

TAE: When was your last contact with Reagan?

NOFZIGER: It was shortly before he announced that he had Alzheimer’s. I tried to see him a couple times afterwards and it didn’t work out, and then I got to thinking I really don’t want to see him. He won’t know me. It’s better to remember him as he was rather than as he is.

TAE: Was it a satisfactory good-bye?

NOFZIGER: I didn’t realize at the time that it was a good-bye. It was a pleasant meeting, but you could tell at the time that he was fading. He took me around the office and showed me all his mementos and explained them to me. I knew them all anyway. He had reached the point where he could not remember that I would know those things.

TAE: You broke up the “homosexual ring” in Reagan’s office during his first term as governor. If such a ring existed today in a California’s governor’s office, would anyone care?

NOFZIGER: Probably not. But this was 1967; a lot of attitudes have changed in the last 33 years. The thing that always concerned me was that Reagan was a Hollywood actor, and you had to be extra careful that the worst aspects of Hollywood did not rub off on him. You had to be more careful with Reagan because of his Hollywood background than you would with some guy who would have come out of the aircraft industry.

TAE: Jack Kemp was involved in that ring only as an object of desire, right?

NOFZIGER: I think so. That’s an unfortunate chapter in all of our lives. There was nothing there, but he got caught up in something, and it really got to him. It’s too bad because Jack’s a very decent guy.

TAE: What kind of vice presidential candidate was Kemp in 1996?

NOFZIGER: When they picked him, I thought, “Hurray! Jack’s got a lot of enthusiasm, and he’ll really add some spark to this campaign.” But Jack would not go on the attack, and it’s the nominee’s job as Vice President to be the attack man. The other thing was I don’t think he prepared well for that debate.

TAE: You’ve said, “At times I wish I were a Libertarian because Republicans are too much like Democrats.” Are Bush and McCain driving you further towards the Libertarian Party?

NOFZIGER: I will vote for the Republican nominee because I think it’s important to defeat either Bradley or Gore. But I would be a lot happier with people who wanted to tax us less and keep out of our lives more. I would be happier with George W. Bush if I weren’t fearful that the people who were around his father will move back in on his administration.

TAE: Would Bush Jr. be a better or worse President than his father?

NOFZIGER: Better. I think he’s learned from his father. He’s more conservative than his father was. I don’t think he’s dumb. I don’t think he’s a genius, but I didn’t think Reagan was a genius. You can be too smart in that job.

TAE: Why has McCain so enchanted the establishment media?

NOFZIGER: Because, first of all, he is a genuine American hero out of a war that most of these guys have a guilt complex about, because they mostly didn’t go, and here’s a chance to assuage their feelings.

Second, he’s a big-government man: He wants to increase cigarette taxes and his campaign finance reform is not really reform. When you start taking away people’s freedom of speech, you’re not making anything better.

TAE: You were a Buchanan supporter and then jumped to Forbes.

NOFZIGER: Let’s not put it that way. I told Pat that if he went third party I would leave. I’m a Republican, and I intend to stay a Republican. But I didn’t jump to Forbes. Buchanan jumped to the Reform Party.

TAE: But Pat is an anti-war protectionist while Forbes is an interventionist free-trader. It’s odd to go from one to the other.

NOFZIGER: I feel a lot more comfortable with Pat’s point of view on trade, but there are other things beyond that. Of the candidates out there who I thought had a reasonable chance, Forbes fits me better than the other guys do. You can’t ever agree with a candidate 100 percent; if you do there’s something wrong with you or him.

TAE: Forbes seems to have become worse as a campaigner over the last four years. Can you explain that?

NOFZIGER: Forbes’ problem is that he should have been a professor instead of a politician. Go back to that Iowa debate where they asked him who his favorite political philosopher was. I thought, “Say Ronald Reagan, say Ronald Reagan”—and he said, “John Locke.” I cried, “Don Locke, the old centerfielder for the Washington Senators?”

And then when he had a chance to ask a question, he asked a question about the IMF. Well, nobody’s heard of the IMF in Iowa. It stands for the Iowa Multiplication whatever.

He’s intelligent, he’s a fine patriot. His political instincts are not all that I would wish for.

TAE: Would you prefer President Gore or President Bradley?

NOFZIGER: I would prefer to see Gore as the nominee because I think he’s easier to beat. If I had to choose one of them for President, I would rather have Bradley because I think he’s a more honorable man.

TAE: Orrin Hatch said that your man Forbes had done more than anyone else to promote human acceptance of robotics. How do you explain the Hatch candidacy?

NOFZIGER: I don’t. I guess a certain amount of ego. I can’t visualize a reasonably smart man like Orrin Hatch saying he has a chance to win this election or win this nomination.

Maybe he thinks God will reach down and pluck him out of the crowd. I don’t think God’s going to do that.

TAE: What sort of character would presidential candidate Gary Bauer play in one of your Tackett novels?

NOFZIGER: An unfortunate remark comes to mind that I will not make. (Laughter.) I think he would play a minor good-guy role. It’s hard to make a hero out of Gary because of his stature and that’s unfortunate.

TAE: Any opinion of Alan Keyes?

NOFZIGER: Alan Keyes is the smartest of all those people. He’s the most articulate. He understands where he’s coming from better than most of these guys understand themselves. If he could raise a substantial sum of money, he might be a serious candidate.

TAE: You’re from Bakersfield, California, one of the great colorful American cities, and you wind up in suburban Falls Church, Virginia. Is this like going from Heaven to Hell?

NOFZIGER: No, it’s like going from Hell to Heaven. (Laughter.) Bakersfield is not the best place in the world to live, but not the worst by a long shot.

TAE: Fifty years from now, would you rather be remembered as a Reagan political operative or a Western novelist?

NOFZIGER: Fifty years from now I will be thoroughly forgotten. I’d rather be remembered as a writer. It isn’t going to happen, but that would be more fun.

TAE: Despite your modest disclaimer that your Westerns are pulps, you’re obviously very serious about these novels. They’re not just larks to dash off between campaign consultations.

NOFZIGER: I’m not sure I’m capable of serious writing. I don’t plot them in advance; I use what I refer to as the Thorne Smith method. Smith wrote the Topper books and somebody asked him, “How do you go about writing your novels?” He said, “Well, I wander into them, wander around for a while, and wander out again.”

TAE: Why Westerns?

NOFZIGER: I grew up on pulp-fiction magazines. Street and Smith’s Wild West Weekly and stuff like that that cost a dime or 15 cents.

I was running Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign in California in 1972, and a man came in and said, “I can help you win the election.” Well, people came in every day and said that.

I said, “How?” And he said, “If President Nixon will get his picture taken with Louis L’Amour, this will help him with all of L’Amour’s readers.” And I said, “Who is Louis L’Amour?” which shocked and I suppose aggravated him.

He said, “He’s the best-selling Western writer of all time.” I said, “Is he better than Max Brand or Zane Grey?”

“Oh, yes.” So I said, “Will Mr. L’Amour endorse President Nixon if he gets his picture taken with him?”

“Oh, no, he couldn’t do that.”

I said, “Well, no endorsement, no picture.” He understood.

But he invited me over a week later to have lunch with Louis in the Beverly Hills Hotel. Louis was a nice man, very quiet, has a very lovely wife, and I got to know him a little bit over the years.

Anyway, after the campaign was over, my wife and I went up to Death Valley, because I told her I wanted to go someplace that’s warm. Well, Death Valley was colder than hell that early December; so we spent a lot of time in our room, which had a fireplace.

The little knickknack store had a whole shelf full of Louis L’Amour novels. I read them all during that week. I got in the habit of reading L’Amour novels. One day several years ago I was sitting around and I said, “Well, shucks, I can write that kind of stuff.” So I sat down and wrote the first one.

TAE: Was L’Amour political?

NOFZIGER: No, not at all. Reagan started reading him, too. We got to be pretty good friends, and I think that I was at least partly responsible for him eventually getting the Medal of Freedom, because I had recommended him and pushed it a little.

Louis’ stuff was fit for your kids to read. There was no vulgarity, no overt sex. The good guys won and the bad guys lost. And that’s the way it is with mine.

TAE: Except for some vulgar language and hints of lesbianism.

NOFZIGER: But not very much. A kid can read that without understanding it. It’s not overt stuff.

TAE: You describe Del Tackett as “a knight errant in Western garb.” Is that how you see yourself?

NOFZIGER: No, no, not at all.

TAE: He’s not your alter ego?

NOFZIGER: Certainly not. I know I’m not as good a guy as Del Tackett. I’m shorter, fatter, have a beard. I’ve never rescued a damsel in distress.

TAE: In The Tacketts, your heroes are gun-controllers and feminists. Have you been hanging around with Christie Todd Whitman too much?

NOFZIGER: (Laughter.) Oh, they’re not real gun-controllers.

I’m a kind of feminist at heart. Women are good people. I’m a great admirer of Margaret Thatcher. There are a lot of strong women out there: Calamity Jane.…

TAE: Does Whitman have any political future?

NOFZIGER: Not as a candidate. I don’t think she’s given up on her political career, but I think she’s hoping that a Republican will be elected President. Then there’s Cabinet offices, ambassadorships, stuff like that.

One thing about Christie: She has always gone out and campaigned for Republicans across the country, whether or not they agreed with her on abortion. She’s a party Republican—which makes it a lot easier for somebody like me to help her.