‘Warm and wonderful’

Press, 15 March 1982, Page 16

‘Warm and wonderful’

By

WILLIAM SCOBIE,

in Los Angeles

The White House, anxious to combat a persistent notion in American minds that Nancy Reagan, 58. is a cold and costly First Lady more intrigued by porcelain patterns than people, has launched a drive to correct what aides indelicately refer to as “Nancy’s image' problem.” “My wife." President Reagan said recently, "has gotten a bum rap. There's been a concentrated campaign to portray her as living an extravagent jet-set life, while all the other things she’s devoted to, the Foster Grandparents Programme and so on, are ignored." So, with her gung-ho, $58,000-a-year chief-of-staff, James Rosebush, masterminding the effort. Mrs Reagan has plunged into a maelstrom of charitable activity. Fresh from similar tours in Florida and Texas, she forayed forth this week in a sober blue knit suit from Los Angeles Century Plaza Hotel for day-long visits to drug rehabilitation centres, can-cer-stricken children in hospital. and dinners with political wives who were asked to help her programmes.

“It's time," said James Rosebush, aged 32, "that more Americans realise what a warm, caring, wonderful woman she is.” Mr Rosebush, the First Lady’s chief-of-staff since February, “carries a box of Kleenex on field trips in. case she bursts into tears.” ‘ .

He and his staff are telling anyone who will listen that polls placing Mrs Reagan’s personal popularity lower than any other First Lady’s are all wrong. George Gallup found recently that 62 per cent of Americans feel Nancy Reagan “puts too much emphasis on style and elegance during a time of economic hardship.” Mr Rosebush says White House mail tells a different story. ■ Of the 60.000 letters Mrs Reagan receives annually, 90 per cent are “supportive or inquisitive.” A controversial dress loan' episode drew a mere 50 letters, "not all critical.” Mrs Reagan (“I was misunderstood”) recently stopped accepting $5OOO designer gowns as gifts, for later presentation to museums. , The revelation that the President buys his suits a dozen at a time for up to $2OOO a suit from Beverly Hills’ costliest tailor has, however raised some local eyebrows. On Mrs Reagan’s $200,000 purchase of new china for

the White House, the mail ran three-to-one in her favour. About her $70,000 refurbishing of the same establishment with money from her millionaire friends, approval hit 10-to-one. “She wants to show the best of America." said one of her staff, who went on to recount the story of a lady from poverty-stricken Bangladesh who' was so overcome by the “magic glow” of a White House dinner, hosted by Mrs Reagan that she broke into tears.

In the present recession, there are soup kitchen lines in Los Angeles, as elsewhere. The Salvation Army and other charities report up to five times the usual number of people seeking emergency shelter and food. Aides with the Reagan entourage here privately admit that improving Nancy's poll ratings is an uphill struggle. But “she’s giving it her best shot.” At a recent dinner for the wives of 42 state governors she earned high marks for personal charm and her plans to fight teenage drug abuse through privately financed programmes in 15 states.

It was pointed out that Mrs Reagan's determination to speak only to wives had prevented her message from reaching the governor of her own state. Governor Jerry Brown, of'California, which has the country’s gravest “drug problem, is a bachelor. , Joan Mpndale, wife of the former Vice-President, wondered aloud why Mrs Reagan had waited so long to “use her position” to benefit worthy causes — apart from the fashion industry, that is. Mrs Reagan herself sometimes compounds her image problem by revealing a sharp tongue. On her last stay at the Century Plaza, the manager was publicly dressed down for some inadequacy in the presidential suite.

A convention of diamond merchants occupied the hotel.

“We’d get better treatment,” she snapped, “if my husband were a diamond salesman.” And recently, when someone at the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital observed that Reaganomic budget cuts might close the place down, she sniffed icily: “I’m here to talk about children, not budgets.” Across town, President Reagan was talking budgets, while 500 demonstrators, one bearing a banner reading “Jane Wyman was right” mhrched in the rain outside. (Wyman divorced Reagan in the 1950 s because of their political differences).

On the 30th anniversary of their marriage, recently, the First Couple flew by helicopter to their beloved "Rancho del Cielo" in the mountains

north of Los Angeles for a five-day vacation, and a barbecue with 300 of their wealthy friends. Copyright — London “Observer” Service.