The Triumph of Nancy Reagan explores former first ladys influence in the White House

Karen Tumulty:

She would say: Oh, I'm just — I don't I don't deal with policy. I just deal with people.

Well, of course. I mean, Judy, anybody who's been in Washington five minutes knows that people issues are policy issues. And I open the book on something George Shultz told me about, which is a moment where she arranges a little dinner for four, the two couples.

The whole purpose of the dinner is to get George Shultz away from her husband's hard-line, hawkish advisers and give him an opportunity to speak to Ronald Reagan directly. And it is at that moment, Shultz told me, that he began to realize that, for all of Ronald Reagan's anti-communist rhetoric, despite the fact that he was presiding over the biggest peacetime military buildup in history, this is a guy who actually wants to reach out to the Soviet Union.

And, certainly, Nancy Reagan believed that this should be her husband's place in history, as a peacemaker and not a warmonger.

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