Queen Nancy is a dowager now. Nancy Reagan, the former first lady who was praised for bringing Kennedy-esque glamour back to the White House but criticized for her lavish spending, is 86, and the world that made her its center during the Reagan era is fading. In the weeks following a sit-down interview at the Hotel Bel-Air—Reagan's regular meeting place since she and the 40th president settled nearby in 1989—her confidant Merv Griffin succumbed to prostate cancer; her old friend Brooke Astor, who hosted lunches for the first lady at her New York apartment and presented her with a Council of Fashion Designers of America lifetime achievement award in 1988, passed away at age 105; and former White House deputy chief of staff Michael Deaver, one of the Reagans' most trusted advisers throughout their political lives, also died.
Reagan's greatest loss, of course, was the death of her husband in 2004, after 52 years of marriage. She keeps about her—on her person—mementos of him: The bird-shaped brooch on her lapel was a gift from "Ronnie," and the gold watch on her left wrist was the president's own.
As she moves slowly to a sofa in the hotel's Grace Kelly suite, Reagan's former debutante posture is somewhat bent, and she keeps her oversize reading glasses, necessary because of glaucoma, close at hand. But in other ways, she is still the perfectionist political wife whose elegant personal style was the ideal complement to her husband's economic optimism and conservative ideology. Her appearance is as meticulous as ever, and her conversation reveals the same disciplined self-possession that made her a force in the White House's East and West Wings. And as ever, Reagan portrays herself as merely the supportive wife of a man fated for political achievement—a stance that Reagan biographers have shown to be false modesty at the very least.
"Ronnie could have done anything," insists Reagan when asked about the common belief that her political instincts outstripped her husband's. "I hope I helped him. But he wanted to be president, then he became president."
Though she speaks clearly and her memory seems firm, Reagan—who is sitting for an interview to promote an upcoming exhibition at the Reagan Library, "Nancy Reagan: A First Lady's Style"—proves to be a rather reluctant subject. Unlike the Great Communicator, she is a woman of few words. Friends explain that she is shy around new people but warm and funny in the company of those she trusts. Perhaps. Another explanation may be that after a lifetime in the political arena, Reagan has mastered the subtler arts of diplomacy: evasion and ellipsis. Her responses tend to be intentionally vague, with true meaning often found in what she leaves unsaid. She gives a dozen shades of nuance to the word "no," for example. Take her response when asked if folksy Rosalynn Carter had any tips to impart during the 1981 transition: "No," she says decidedly, suppressing a smile that suggests she would just love to air her true opinion of the first lady who preceded her but knows better than to dare. (She does let on that the White House was in "shabby" condition when she first saw it in 1981.)
