Word: deaver
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...upset because I know my husband, I know what he knows and how he works best. Intellectually, people tend to underestimate him. After the debate I talked to Mike (Deaver, deputy White House chief of staff). He's my oldest friend, and I'm sure that he knows that whatever I say, I say it with all good intentions. I just said I thought what they did in the preparation was all wrong, and let's not have it happen again...
...course, wives have pull with husbands. In the Reagans' case, her impact & may be greater because the bond is stronger. After 33 years together, they are, by all accounts, rapturously fond of each other. "She has always had more influence than people generally realize," says Michael Deaver, the departing White House deputy chief of staff and long her principal ally in the Administration. Even when she does not make her position known on an issue, Administration officials have learned to anticipate her potential support or opposition and proceed accordingly. "The threat of her influence," says one White House aide...
...because she knows that they are the ones who will make things happen." Again and again, she has used her leverage to effect important personnel changes right up to the Cabinet level. There is now a rather effective upstairs-downstairs alliance between her and the leading West Wing moderates, Deaver and Chief of Staff James Baker. "I've always been comfortable talking with Mike (Deaver)," she explains. "He's my oldest friend, and I'm sure that he knows that whatever I say, I say it with all good intentions, trying to be helpful. So there's not really...
...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...