Nancy Reagan: Shrewd Adviser, Devoted Wife, Committed Advocate

Shrewd adviser. Devoted wife. Committed advocate.

The legacy of Nancy Reagan, whose death at 94 was announced Sunday, is being remembered as a big and complex force that lasted long beyond her — or her husband's — eight years in the White House.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who served as a national security adviser under Ronald Reagan, recalled how he began working with the administration in the tumultuous aftermath of the Iran-contra scandal.

"She was looking to us as the force that would stabilize the White House," Powell told MSNBC-TV. "She made sure that's what we were doing."

Because the president didn't like "to face people head on and say, 'You're out,'" Powell said, "she would act."

In Powell's telling, it was a task Nancy Reagan accomplished deftly and with grace.

"She didn't shout at anybody," Powell said. "But if there was a dissatisfaction anywhere in the White House, it was made known to us, and we fixed it."

Nancy Reagan also worked behind the scenes to drive some of the president's most consequential decisions, such as how he handled the United States' potentially explosive relationship with the Soviet Union.

"She encouraged him to make the deal," NBC News' Tom Brokaw told MSNBC. "Not just on their terms, but on our terms."

Brokaw added that the first lady became one of "the two or three most important" political advisers in the president's administration.

Powell recalled that when Nancy Reagan traveled to New York — where she was from and where she returned often — the president would get "fidgety" by the second day. "By the third day," he said, "we were calling to New York: 'Come home.' He was not really complete without Mrs. Reagan nearby."

Powell added: "They were inseparable, both in body and in spirit."