LIKE THE SUN THAT SHINES ON A RAINY DAY:

The Way They Are: It’s the most public romance in the world. And the Reagans don’t mind who knows it. William F. Buckley, Jr., writes about them and the night and the music. (William F. Buckley Jr., June 1985, Vanity Fair)

The public impression is almost necessarily static: postage-stamp mutual devotion. And this hurts, because they are both trained in the theater and know the pitfalls of wooden productions. For that reason one is not surprised that, asked if they would dance together intimately for the camera, their answer was yes. I do not know whether that answer was preceded by much deliberation, but whether yes or no, they were, finally, exuberantly delighted to proceed, as though they were Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, romancing and kicking up their heels. Not, if you reflect on it, an easy thing to do, never mind the authentic high temperature of mutual devotion: there is in the West a tradition against chiefs of state engaging in visible, let alone ostentatious, shows of biological informality. One need not question the mutual affection of the Queen of England and her duke to know that no paparazzi dressed in invisible ink would catch him while in the presence of a third person doing anything much more intimate than kissing her ring while she gave him another Order of the Garter. King Constantine of Greece fell desperately in love with Princess Anne-Marie when she was only seventeen, but there was none of that in any public situation. When Grace Kelly arrived in Monaco to become one with her prince, the kiss after the wedding was ever so chaste. Many many years went by before one had any intimation of their offstage closeness, and that came when the camera rested on the face of the widower during her funeral.

No, the tradition is against it. But the Reagans don’t care. Oh, they observe the obvious protocols. But manifestly they think it altogether splendid to dance together in their own version of Camelot—which is theirs whenever, wherever they are together, just as surely as any aircraft becomes Air Force One if he is aboard.