Nancy Reagan, up close and impersonal

(I was invited because I’d written the magazine profile that accompanied Annenberg’s award. Although the award focused on Annenberg’s then-extraordinary $50 million gift to the previously obscure United Negro College Fund, not a single black face could be found in the room. But I digress.)

The Reagans arrived during the pre-luncheon reception, Nancy pulling her husband — less than two years out of the White House — by the hand into the ballroom of the Beverly Hills Hotel, much like a mother with a small and bewildered child in tow. At that moment I was making small talk in a clump of some half-dozen people. Our clump was closest to the door, and Nancy immediately spotted her good friend Leonore Annenberg among us. So rather than project uncertainty or hesitation, Nancy dragged her husband directly toward our group and plunged into the conversation.

But it quickly became apparent that Reagan’s hearing problem precluded him from conversing in a crowded, noisy room. Instead the former president fell back on his default posture: ironic folksy smile, head tilted to one side, palms outward, as if to say, “Don’t this beat all?”

Body language

Unfortunately for this strategy, the central person in our particular clump — the previous year’s honoree, the philanthropist Gordon Gund — was blind. So the nuances of facial expressions and body language at which Reagan excelled were useless here; only verbal communication would suffice. In her eagerness to engage with Gund, Nancy Reagan momentarily parked her husband on the edge of the clump, and for perhaps a minute the former president of the United States was left to stand there awkwardly with . . . me.

What did we say to each other? You can guess: Reagan smiled at me ironically, head tilted to one side, palms outward, etc. And I — perceiving that he couldn’t hear anything I said anyway — simply responded in kind.

At that moment Ronald Reagan seemed completely out of it, and perhaps he was. (His Alzheimer’s diagnosis was announced four years later.) Yet during the lunch, like the dependable performer he was, Reagan wound himself up and delivered a smooth (albeit mechanical) five-minute tribute to Walter Annenberg before resuming his seat and his silence.

After the lunch, Nancy confronted another logistical challenge. She wanted to bid goodbye to Leonore Annenberg, who was departing from the far side of the room. But Nancy didn’t dare leave her immovable husband. And protocol demanded that the Annenbergs come say goodbye to the Reagans, not vice versa. So the guests witnessed the dubious spectacle of Nancy Reagan clutching her husband’s hand while shouting, “Lee! Lee!” repeatedly at the top of her voice.

By comparison, Teresa Kerry . . .

Some people devote their lives to their work, their family, or their community. Some just like to hang out with their partners and follow whatever path love puts them on. Nancy Reagan, who died last week, left nothing to chance. She devoted her life almost entirely to the promotion and protection of her husband. She was at his side constantly, lest he deviate from her script. When he gave a speech, she listened with rapt attention, by her example encouraging everyone else in the audience to do likewise. When he told a joke, she laughed uproariously as if she’d never heard it before.

(By contrast, when John Kerry campaigned for president in 2004, his wife Teresa rarely accompanied him — she had a life of her own, she explained. And when she did show up at her husband’s speeches, she tended to hang out at the back of the room conducting her own competing conversation. Kerry lost the election.)

Those who scratched beneath the surface of Nancy Reagan invariably discovered that, as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, there wasn’t much there there. No doubt Nancy hitched her wagon to Ronald Reagan’s star precisely for that reason. Today the notion of a woman defining herself entirely through her husband seems ludicrously anachronistic, but in her own transparently artificial way, Nancy Reagan demonstrated just how much one individual can achieve by investing herself single-mindedly in someone else.

In Nancy Reagan’s case, she took a charming but seemingly limited actor and pushed him to into an entirely new career as a global leader who, for better or worse, transformed the way Americans (and foreigners too) think about the role of government in their lives. Nancy saw possibilities in Ronald Reagan that, I suspect, he never perceived in himself.

Mary Lincoln’s role

Their marriage was hardly the first to demonstrate the benefits of a lifelong marital commitment. John Adams and James Madison owed their success as statesmen in large measure to the intellectual and emotional support they received from Abigail and Dolley, respectively. And then there is Abraham Lincoln and his much-maligned wife, Mary.

In 1854, when Lincoln was an obscure country lawyer in Illinois, he remarked to a colleague, “My wife thinks I’m going to be president of the United States. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous?” Mary may have been rightly derided for her social ambitions, but she demonstrated more faith in her husband’s future than he did. To the extent that Lincoln saved the Union — and, by extension, the concept of government of, by, and for the people — everyone walking this planet today is in Mary’s debt.

More than 50 years ago, when I informed my parents that I intended to get married, my mother declared, “This is the most important decision you will ever make.” I don’t recall how I replied, but I do remember consciously thinking: What a bourgeois thing to say! I’m going to be a journalist! I’m going to cover the great events our time! I’m going to write books and edit publications! Next to the magnitude of such endeavors, my choice of a spouse is merely a minor consideration.

In retrospect, of course, Mom was right on the money: Choosing the right life partner made everything else possible.

That said, I’m grateful that Nancy Davis Reagan chose to devote her life to Ronald Reagan and not to me.