20. Ronald Reagan visited Camp David more than any other president to date
President Reagan visited Camp David for a total of 571 days during his two-term presidency, visiting the camp over 180 separate times. Reagan, unlike most of his predecessors and successors in office, preferred to visit the camp alone, accompanied only by his wife, Nancy. The Reagan’s preferred solitude at the camp, rather than relaxing with friends. A stable at the camp which went back to the Kennedy Administration supported the horses brought by the National Park Service, and the Reagans enjoyed riding on the weekends they visited the camp.
One exception was Great Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, who visited Camp David just before Christmas, 1984, after she had completed talks with the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev. The subject was Reagan’s cherished Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), known in popular parlance in the United States as Star Wars. Both Thatcher and Gorbachev were leery of the plan, which Reagan refused to give up as part of negotiations. “He was at his most idealistic”, Thatcher later wrote of the American president, adding, “He reaffirmed his long-term goal of getting rid of nuclear weapons entirely”. Neither that goal nor SDI has yet been achieved.
