Word: barretts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Unlike many other news organizations, TIME does not divide its coverage of the White House along West Wing-East Wing lines, that is, between the President's activities and those of the First Lady. So White House Correspondent Laurence Barrett has reported on Nancy Reagan as long as he has on her husband: five years this month...
...Barrett and Mrs. Reagan quickly found they had something in common: a son trying to make it in professional ballet. "Nancy Reagan became a frequent and helpful source," Barrett says. "Though she is sensitive to criticism, she is also able to take negative comments in stride, more or less, provided that the observations are factual. When I reported in 1980 that she tended to carry a grudge, she laughingly complained, then joked that she would remember that sentence for only a few years. She has a sense of humor as well as a sense of politics...
...Barrett, who has followed the Reagans since the opening stages of the 1980 campaign, reaped dividends from his acquaintance early on. After the March 1981 assassination attempt on the President, Barrett was the only reporter to be granted an interview with Nancy Reagan. For this week's cover story, Barrett met with Mrs. Reagan three times, twice in the White House and once over lunch in a Washington restaurant. He talked with White House and political sources, some of the First Lady's personal friends and the President's two older children, Maureen and Michael. In addition, Barrett spent...
Both Halstead and Barrett noted that Nancy Reagan, a very shy and private person, had developed greater assurance during Reagan's presidency. "I find her more self-confident today and more at peace with her role as First Lady," says Barrett. "She is now somewhat more willing to acknowledge her influence on certain aspects of her husband's political and administrative affairs." As Associate Editor Kurt Andersen's cover story reports, Nancy Reagan's combination of stylishness and savvy, social poise and shrewd political instincts is creating a new model for the exercise of a First Lady's special influence...
Reported by Barrett Seaman/Washington and Dick Thompson/San Francisco...