Singing for His Supper
By Hugh Sidey
A couple of years ago, Republican leaders in Congress kidded Ronald Reagan that when he came to dine with them he would have to pay. Last week when he arrived for lunch with 46 G.O.P. Senators, the President pulled from his right coat pocket a crisp $5 bill and handed it to Majority Leader Howard Baker. The President declared: "There's no such thing as a free lunch." The din of clicking camera shutters and grinding television reels was deafening. It was the fin seen round the world. Where Reagan got the five bucks is a mystery, since he rarely carries cash, and the fact that it was in his coat pocket, not his pants pocket, suggests his lack of familiarity with real money.
But there is no mystery about his mastery of the advantages of incumbency.
That visit with the Senators, which normally might have been consigned to a few printed paragraphs, became a big part of the day's entertainment.
Scholars and politicians agree that never before has the presidency been so formidable a political tool as it is right now in the hands of the actor. Presidents have always enjoyed handing out jobs and money, staging events around the White House, using Air Force One and the trappings of Government to heighten the impact of their campaigns. Reagan does all that and a lot more.
"I've never seen an incumbent as well positioned at the start of an election year as this one," says the Brookings Institution's Stephen Hess. "The presidency is a huge echo chamber, magnifying every little thing he does." There is a flip side to this phenomenon, of course. If things go sour, they too are magnified, as Jimmy Carter found out in 1980. Right now, events favor Reagan. No personal scandal darkens him. He moves unburdened on a media stage that is even bigger than in 1980. It is a taut environment. A few mistakes could sink him, but so far his head is high above water.
When Reagan welcomed
Navy Lieut. Robert Goodman home from Syrian captivity, 28 television cameras were on hand, a Rose Garden record. When he phoned congratulations to Raiders Coach Tom Flores after the Super Bowl, he barged in on an audience of more than 100 million, one of the 20 biggest happenings in television history. Reagan invited Burt Reynolds to the White House and basked in the reflected glow of the actor's far-flung fan club. The President has been center stage almost hour by hour talking about hunger and Central America and arms reduction. If there is not enough drama in the day's doings, he can create some. That is precisely what he did when he gave a speech on the third anniversary of his Inauguration.
Swarthmore College's Richard Rubin, author of Press, Party, and Presidency, points out that as news has tilted toward entertainment, television has focused more on personality and narrative. The White House is TV's prime source. "The presidency is the most important beat in the world," says a CBS executive. Anchors like Diane Sawyer, Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw all graduated from White House duty of one kind or another.
No television executive will even estimate the value in advertising dollars of Reagan's 42-minute State of the Union address, seen by some 50 million Americans. "He produces, directs and acts in his own movies," says NBC's Sid Davis. "He even brings the hero: Sergeant Stephen Trujillo."
In April Reagan will stand on the Great Wall of China, and another camera density record will probably be set. In June he will be on the beaches of Normandy to commemorate the 40th anniversary of World War II's Dday. That event will surely be covered by more reporters and camera crews than covered the original, and it will be seen live by hundreds of millions of people. Then come the Los Angeles Olympic Games. Almost anticlimactic after all these highly visible roles will come his star turn: the 1984 campaign.