The Week of the Dragon

The Dragon Lady in the now defunct comic strip Terry and the Pirates was voluptuous and deadly. Neither of those adjectives applies to Nancy Reagan. But after she was widely credited with organizing a coup by telephone against former White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan, the First Lady was depicted last week as a power-hungry manipulator more devious than any cartoon creature.

The most vitriolic attack came from New York Times Columnist William Safire. He wrote of Mrs. Reagan's "extraordinary vindictiveness" in dumping Regan and called her an "incipient Edith Wilson," referring to Mrs. Woodrow Wilson's control of the White...

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