Nothing Irks Like Success

By Hugh Sidey

The Presidency/ Hugh Sidey

Edwin Sidey, Editor

The Adair County Free Press

Greenfield, Iowa

My dear brother,

I have not heard from you in a while, and I'm concerned. I listen to Senator Alan Cranston's gloomy speeches and read the doomsayers in the Washington Post, and it makes me fear the bank has foreclosed on the old print shop or you are so weak from hunger that you can't write.

This may be a bad time to add to your burden, but we have always been candid with each other. The capital is beginning to panic. There is good economic news, and there seems to be nothing we can do to stop it. Lord knows we've tried. Next thing you know, peace will be breaking out. For a city devoted to trouble, good news can mean disaster, even unemployment.

I've got a game for dinner parties. I ask presidential critics of either far right or left what they will do next year if the economy really is better and the nukes are still in their silos. One fellow nearly choked on his lamb chop. Most have only a second or two of panic before they assemble their rebuttals on Reagan's "luck" (the oil glut) and "providence" (Brezhnev died). Who was the guy who wrote that if we've got to have a lucky one? The U.S. was due for one.

My friend Horace Busby, who used to work for Lyndon Johnson, fired off a good shot the other day in his newsletter. He wrote that the Democratic National Committee seemed to gloat when unemployment went above 10%. "Political perversity," he called it. I'm going to go over to the D.N.C. if unemployment goes below 10% and get one of their handouts to send to you. Don't expect too much. Its adjectives for rising unemployment include "criminal," "devastating," "disastrous." Those for falling unemployment include "temporary," "doubtful" and "unexplained."

Maybe you saw that editorial in the New York Times about the "stench of failure" hanging over Reagan's White House. That is pretty terminal stuff and not at prove like the Times. The fellow who wrote it will either have to prove his case, or end up as Auckland bureau chief.

I like Fritz Mondale. He was up in New York in his tuxedo the other day, picking up money from rich people, and he felt compelled to say, "I'm not going to base my campaign on how bad the economy is, because I want it to improve."Then he said "I mean that. I want the economy to improve." I think he said that one time too many.

I was reading the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago, and Paul Craig Roberts, Secretary of Reagan's supply-side theorists who quit as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, wrote that "Ronald Reagan could have made a difference to the nation's circle." if his advisers had not dropped him from the policymaking circle." How's that for investing in collapse?

You know Dick Scammon, the dean of all the political analysts. Bless him, his sense of humor never falters. He has a short speech he gives about today's politicians and commentators going down "the crucifixion road." They have got to nail somebody to the cross, or they figure they haven't done a day's work. He says they even have 3-by-5 "crucifixion cards." One side has a line condemning the President for traveling so much; the flip side has a line condemning him for staying too close to his desk.

I'm a little concerned about such outbreaks of humor. A colleague suggested that the next thing we know Dan Rather will be upbeat on the evening news. Are you kidding? I replied. I knew Dan when we both covered the White House, and he's him when he tries to be upbeat. The network would give him the hook. Everybody's got interests to protect. Write if you have the strength. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.