Patti davis political party
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Column: For years, the Reagans’ daughter regretted some things she wrote. Now she’s at peace
On the Shelf
Dear Mom and Dad
By Patti Davis
Liveright: 192 pages, $22
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Being the child of our parents is, on an existential level, everyone’s life‘s work. We are all shaped by the people who gave us life, their presence or their absence, their loving support or pathological abuse and all the myriad types of influence in between.
For Patti Davis, however, that life’s work has been quite literal.
She began chronicling her singular life as the only daughter and oldest child of Ronald and Nancy Reagan in 1986 with the roman a clef “Home Front.” She followed it in 1992 with the tell-all “The Way I See It: An Autobiography,” a book that was, depending on the politics of the reader, both wildly praised and viciously criticized and for which she has spent the last two decades expressing regret.
Her subsequent books have been kinder: “Angels Don’t Die
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Patti Davis (born Patricia Ann Reagan on October 21, 1952, in Los Angeles, California) is known as the black sheep of the Reagan family. She is famous for her pro-choice viewpoint on abortion and for being against nuclear weapons, and she had a highly-publicized rift between her and her parents, former president Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan.
She wrote accounts of her life that did not portray her family in a positive light, and the autobiography "The Way I See It," which contained the revelations that her father was cold, distant, and aloof to everyone except Nancy. It also contained accusations of physical abuse by her mother.
Patti was romantically involved with Bernie Leadon of Eagles for a time in the 1970s and co-wrote with him the song "I Wish You Peace," which appeared on The Eagles' "One of These Nights" album.
In 1984, she married her yoga instructor Paul Grilley, but they divorced in 1990.
In the 1990s, she posed nude for Playboy Magazine and filmed the video Playboy Celebrity Centerfold: Patti Davis (1995).
Later, Patti reco
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Patti Davis: How My Father’s Assassination Attempt Shaped His Legacy
When I walked into my father’s hospital room the day after he was shot, one of the first things I noticed – other than his paleness, his weakness – was a different look in his eyes. There was a light there that drew me, mystified me; I thought then, and still think, that at some point he crossed over, left this life and returned. There is nothing clinical to support this. He never coded, he did not have to be revived after flat-lining. But I still believe that, for an instant at least, he left and returned. I flew back to Washington a couple of weeks later when he was released from the hospital and I still saw that look in his eyes, although not quite as dramatically. When I had a moment alone with him, I tried to ask about it, measuring my words. I asked if he saw anything when he was fighting for his life. He didn’t answer my question, and I told myself that it was between him and God.
Einstein said this about God: “I want to know His thoughts – the rest are just details.”
More often than not, when someone
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