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The spangly, fairy-tale part of the First Lady's role may reach its apotheosis in the State Dining Room. Yet even state dinners are, to Nancy Reagan, an agglomeration of hundreds of prosaic checklist items. She approves and tastes beforehand virtually every item on every menu. During the first term, she spent roughly 450 hours planning 30-odd state dinners. She presided at nearly as many other official dinners, as well as an additional 250 official White House functions, the picture-perfect but surely enervating flurry of luncheons, teas, receptions. Such occasions require a deep well of small talk and unwavering poise. Last month, at a dinner in honor of Venezuelan President Jaime Lusinchi (chicken breast Sandeman, poached salmon, radicchio salad and glazed pear), Nancy Reagan sat dutifully on the visitor's left--and when Lusinchi's bow tie slid askew, she smiled, reached over, and refastened the clip-on without skipping a beat.
The First Lady and her p.r.-conscious operatives have tried to down-play galas in favor of uplifting public forays. Lately the coverage has tilted more toward the latter. Last Christmastime, the President's wife spent three hours at Washington's Children's Hospital doling out toys. The visit provided a particularly emblematic First Lady image: Nancy Reagan in her red-and-black pumps, black knit Adolfo jacket and plaid Adolfo skirt, kneeling on a linoleum ward floor to coddle an infant. Impeccably turned out, uncomplainingly doing her social duty.
As the Governor's wife more than a decade ago in California, she began promoting the Foster Grandparents Program, in which older volunteers befriend orphaned or handicapped children. She has continued some work on behalf of the organization as First Lady. Yet for the past two years, that cause has been eclipsed by a more aggressive, hard-edged campaign intended to discourage drug use among young people. Her advisers encouraged the shift in emphasis: speaking out against marijuana and narcotics use in the schools, they felt, would have greater urgency and political appeal. The serious-minded displays of the First Lady's social consciousness have been shaped mainly by Rosebush and Wrobleski as part of an overall effort to make her appear more caring, less frivolous. The timing and destinations of her antidrug excursions last year were coordinated with Reagan-Bush campaign officials to satisfy their particular political needs. But the image molders learned they were dealing with a social problem that actually mattered to Nancy Reagan.
The First Lady has taken to the antidrug campaign with energy and evident feeling. The crusade made serious demands on her time last year: 110 appearances. "The kids relate to me and I to them," she says. One measure of her burgeoning self-confidence was a new willingness to deliver public addresses; last year she gave 14 antidrug speeches, double the number of the year before. The First Lady played herself on an episode of the situation comedy Diff'rent Strokes, was co-host of the two-hour talk show Good Morning America and narrated an antidrug documentary for PBS, The Chemical People. She is about to announce an unusual high-profile variation on the theme, inviting the spouses of two dozen heads of state to the U.S. for a three-day antidrug forum in Washington and Atlanta.