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Michael, 35, is the settled sibling, the family square, and the low-key member of the quartet. Married for six years (to Colleen Sterns, an interior decorator), the father of the only Reagan grandchild (Cameron, 2), the owner of a house in the suburbs (Sherman Oaks, Calif.), he was a cheerful, popular and politically compatible weekend campaigner for his father. He admits, however: "It was a while before I found a direction." A preschool tot when Reagan and Wyman were divorced, Mike was bounced around three secondary schools. He played quarterback well enough to be offered a scholarship by Arizona State, but turned it down after deciding the college squad took football too seriously: "They were all 275-lb. Mean Joe Greene types." Instead, Mike turned to speedboating. He was married, and divorced, in less than a year, and meandered — working briefly as a trucker's assistant — before becoming a salesman of yachts and other pleasure craft in 1971. Last year he started a firm that markets gasohol equipment for farmers. More recently, Mike has become a stockholding senior vice president of the Southern Pacific Title Co., a Santa Ana firm that sells real estate title insurance, and is now negotiating to do a radio commentary show on current affairs. During the campaign, Mike sometimes critiqued the elder Reagan's style: "I'd tell him that he should come across strong more often." In turn, Reagan has given Mike some fatherly advice, warning him not to be exploited by those currying First Family favors.
Patricia, 28, has strayed furthest from the parental nest. Tall (5 ft. 8 in.), slender and quiet in manner, she not only dropped out of Northwestern University but also the lives of her parents in the early '70s. She lived with Rock Musician Bernie Leadon of the Eagles, opposed the Viet Nam War and, for a time, ceased communication with the elder Reagans. "I was very rebellious and very feisty," she once explained. "The one place I wanted to go to was Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco." Patti did not go to the counterculture capital, but to Hollywood. There, using the professional name Patti Davis, she has won small roles in the likes of TV's Love Boat. Though she took no part in her father's campaign ("I'm antipolitical"), she is now reconciled with her parents: she appeared at Reagan's nomination, has bought a Dior gown for the Inauguration, and even returned to the family's Pacific Palisades home for a while before finding her own beachside apartment a few miles away. The election, admits Patti, "has done wonders for my career." TV and film offers are turning up, she has signed with the high-powered William Morris Agency, and last month she negotiated a one-year contract with NBC for an undisclosed six-figure sum. Now, she says, "I'm hoping for more dramatic roles," but not in real-life politics.