Co-Starring At the White House

Nancy Reagan's clout and causes bring new respect

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Around the time of the 1982 congressional elections, Nancy told the President he needed to clear away the deadwood in his Administration, but he . disagreed. Last fall she once again recommended a purge. "After this election," she admits, "I said the same thing--it was the obvious time to make changes. I was talking generally, not just the White House staff." Her hypothetical list might have included Casey, Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan and Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler, but Reagan, as in 1982, declined to go along. "You know him," his wife says. "It's very difficult for him to do such a thing." She calls the President "a soft touch," and believes he is excessively indulgent concerning personnel problems. Said she in 1982: "I think it's the eternal optimist in him, his attitude that if you let something go, it will eventually work itself out. Well, that isn't always so." Her son and favored child confirms that she is a natural, unsentimental manager. Her political instincts, says young Ron Reagan, "are better than my father's in a narrow sense. He has great instincts on a whole-country kind of level, the big picture. She's got great instincts when it comes to individuals and small groups. That's why she's involved in the inner workings of the staff at the White House."

The First Lady's interventions are not limited to the President's Cabinet and staff. She has had White House schedulers cut back on her husband's travel. Last summer, when campaign officials were sounding overconfident of winning the election, she made her displeasure clear to Baker, who in turn warned the premature celebrators, "This is causing me serious problems in the East Wing." During the fall campaign she decided that the White House speechwriters were cranking out too many different versions, and that Reagan was being overtaxed and confused as a result. She told Deaver that the President should resume his practice of delivering variations on a single speech. "Ronnie was complaining about all these speeches that were coming up. I said to Mike, 'Why don't we go back to what he did before? What was wrong with that?' " When Reagan badly muffed his first debate with Walter Mondale, the First Lady blamed his White House handlers for cramming him with too many facts. She raised hell. "I thought they went about it all wrong," she says now. "All I knew was what I was hearing from Ronnie when he came home after the sessions. And the way he was studying and the papers that would come up --my Lord! That was not the way to do it."

She has, in some instances, involved herself in the substance of national policy. Clark's allegiance to Pentagon hard-liners, for example, contributed to his fall from her favor, since she has been especially sensitive to suggestions that the President is a saber-rattling militarist. Before Reagan moderated his anti-Soviet rhetoric last year, she encouraged him to show his peaceful intentions. "I would say, you know, 'This is unfair. It's not right. You are not trigger-happy.' "

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