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Even before she decided that she could handle four more years, the First Lady had been exercising her formidable influence in the White House. Her clout is only rarely applied to substance or ideology in a direct way. Rather, her agenda is highly personalized. Nancy Reagan is single-minded in her intention "to protect Ronnie," and to that end she is a hard-eyed judge of the officials serving him. "Her first concern is the people around the President," says one of those people, Reagan Strategist Stuart Spencer, "because she knows that they are the ones who will make things happen." Again and again, she has used her leverage to effect important personnel changes right up to the Cabinet level. There is now a rather effective upstairs-downstairs alliance between her and the leading West Wing moderates, Deaver and Chief of Staff James Baker. "I've always been comfortable talking with Mike (Deaver)," she explains. "He's my oldest friend, and I'm sure that he knows that whatever I say, I say it with all good intentions, trying to be helpful. So there's not really a conspiracy on their part, plus me, to get messages to Ronnie."
Suggestions that Nancy is grabbing for power, determining policy like a modern-day Edith Wilson, make the President peevish. Says he: "A part of the false image-making has been to suggest that she is some dominant force behind the scenes." She is uncomfortable discussing the nature and extent of her influence. "I read that I make decisions and I'm the power behind the throne, and that I get people fired," she says. "I don't get people fired."
Not singlehanded, perhaps. But she has had a role in most of the Administration's important shake-ups. Back in early 1980, she was deeply involved in the departure of Campaign Manager John Sears and two of his assistants; she first tried to mediate the potentially embarrassing dispute between Reagan and the men, then made sure the aides' dismissal did not come before the crucial New Hampshire primary. Later that year, when it was time to choose the White House chief of staff, she, Deaver and Spencer successfully backed James Baker, then a newcomer to the Reagan ranks, over Edwin Meese, a Reaganite of 13 years' standing. After National Security Adviser Richard Allen became embroiled in a controversy involving $1,000 that a Japanese magazine had intended to give the First Lady in exchange for an interview, she joined the Deaver-led effort to purge him from the Administration. Alexander Haig believes that his ouster from Foggy Bottom came in large measure because Baker and Deaver persuaded her he should be replaced as Secretary of State and she in turn persuaded the President. In 1982, after William Clark had taken over for Allen, Clark got on her bad side. She favored his transfer from the White House to the Interior Department--a push that proved unnecessary, as it happened, when Clark volunteered to go. One disgruntled former Administration official called the trio of Nancy Reagan, Deaver and Baker "Mama and the Gold Dust Twins." But the First Lady does not always get her way. When Clark became Interior Secretary, she wanted Baker to replace Clark as National Security Adviser, with Deaver becoming White House chief of staff. The plan foundered, however, when it was opposed by Administration conservatives, particularly Meese and CIA Director William Casey, who mistrust the highly flexible pragmatism of Baker and Deaver.