TIME SAYS NANCY REAGAN ACQUIRES POLITICAL CLOUT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505380076-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 12, 2010
• Sequence Number: 76
• Publication Date: January 7, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/12 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000505380076-9 STAT
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
7 January 1985
TIME SAYS NANCY REAGAN ACQUIRES POLITICAL CLOUT
WASHINGTON
Nancy.Reagan has acquired political clout and influence in her own right and
is no longer just President Reagan's wife, Time magazine said in a cover story
this week.
In a wide-ranging profile on the first lady, Time quoted Mrs. Reagan as
saying, "I have more self-confidence.''
'If you are here and you don't grow and don't learn, you are pretty dumb,''
Mrs. Reagan said. "I don't think I'm dumb.''
Time stressed her behind-the-scenes power in terms of the tenure and
influence of White House personnel. ''Lately she has begun to discuss her role
in White House policy-making more openly, " it said. ' Before (Interior ?
Secretary) William. Clark announced last week that he was leaving the government,
she told her West Wing confederates that she did not want him to return to the
White House.''
Time also credits Mrs. Reagan's intervention with the departure of former
Secretary of State Alexander Haig and former national security. affairs adviser
Richard Allen from the scene.
The magazine said that she was less sucessful in ousting a ''hypothetical
list'' that might have included CIA Director William Casey, Labor Scretary
Ravmon Donovan and Health and uman Services Secretes v Margaret Heckler because
Reagan declined to go along.
. "You know him,'' Mrs. Reagan said. ''It's very difficult for him to do such
a thing.''
She described her husband as ''a soft touch ... the eternal optimist'' whose
attitude it that ''if you let something go, it will eventually work itself
out."
Time also credits her with moving-Reagan away from hard-line anti-Soviet
idealogues and more toward being a peace advocate.
Protecting ''Ronnie'' remains her ''single-minded'' purpose, Time said. But
after a "terrible first year'' in which she was ''caricatured as a high-handed
queen of a new Gilded age' with her love of designer clothes and-other weathly
accoutrements, she has turned her image around with her ardent crusade against
teenage drug abuse.
"Nancy Reagan has quite deliberately altered the way she looks at Ronald
Reagan in public," .it said. ''Her worshipful staring during his speeches had
for years been regarded as prima-facie evidene of a Goodie Two-Shoes phoniness.
She claims it was not.a theatrical device, just her natural way of watching
anyone speak.
continued
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/12 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000505380076-9