Word: deaver
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...within earshot of reporters, which the President then repeated as his own. (Both Reagans claim that she was just talking to herself, not intending to cue him at all.) In her serious intramural forays at the White House, she is fairly subtle, talking up ideas from Baker and Deaver to her husband, as well as transmitting intelligence about the President back to the West Wing. For example, she explains, "I pick up on something that he's unhappy with . . . He may make some comments that I think would be helpful for Mike (Deaver) to know, and might facilitate a situation...
Nancy Reagan's nudges have, if anything, served to move the President from the far right toward the political center. Within the Administration, she has consistently allied herself with the moderates against the conservative ideologues. It is not that she is a crypto-liberal. Rather, like Deaver and Baker, she has instincts attuned more to public relations than to undiluted principle. More than anything else, she wants the public to continue adoring her husband. Maintaining consensus has inevitably meant a tempering of the original Reaganite agenda: the New Right's fractious social issues have been down-played at the White...
...dozen phone conversations a day, usually at least one each with Deaver and Press Secretary Sheila Tate. She must oversee White House Chef Henry Haller and his helpers, as well as her personal staff of 24. Among those two dozen are six top aides, who generally meet with her every week as a group: Chief of Staff James Rosebush, Tate, Social Secretary Gahl Hodges, Personal Assistant Elaine Crispen, Projects Director Ann Wrobleski and Marty Coyne, director of her advance team...
...boss, the First Lady is a stern taskmaster. Behind her back, some underlings mockingly call her Nana. When traveling, she has members of the entourage paged at restaurants to ask trivial questions, and phones them at home with petty requests. Even Deaver is cowed by the First Lady: last year, having incompletely quit smoking, he felt obliged to hide his cigarettes from her. A West Wing official who gets along well with her admits that she is sometimes charmless with her subordinates. "She is a demanding person in that she knows what she wants, she wants the best...