The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

Jeane Kirkpatrick is all of those things that at once baffle and fascinate Ronald Reagan--a woman, an academic and a Democrat. What did not perplex him was her clear-voiced condemnation of Communist societies around the world, particularly in Central America, and the need to counter their brutal purposes. He hired her.

Reagan relished the moments around the Cabinet table when the United Nations Ambassador jarred her Administration colleagues with throaty exhortations to face up to reality. When she was put on the panel to prepare the President for his foreign policy debate with Walter Mondale, she read the suggested questions from White House aides, tossed them aside and made up her own, which were tougher.

Reagan used to study her furtively in meetings, waiting with a half smile for those Kirkpatrick zingers that so well reflected the old Reagan, the one unburdened by presidential propriety. And at the White House last Wednesday, having reaffirmed her intention to go back to academe, she rushed from the Oval Office declaring she had to return to New York and bolster Chad as it went into verbal battle with villainous Libya. In the end, of course, her very virtuosity kept her from the pinnacles of power. Now Ambassador-at- Large Vernon Walters, a world troubleshooter for six Presidents, is likely to take on her job.

Jeane Kirkpatrick left her mark on foreign policy. Something more. She served with the political enemy--the Republicans. She flourished as a remnant of a tradition that has seen this nation through hard times before. Abraham Lincoln labored to get Democrats in his power circle to conduct the Civil War. Harry Truman brought notable Republicans into his Government because they were the best candidates for the jobs and he understood he had to be President of all America. A curse of these times is rank, vengeful partisanship, practiced too often by the President and returned in kind by Democrat Thomas O'Neill, Speaker of the House. "I never conceived of the other party as being the enemy," Kirkpatrick said last week. Referring to the late Democratic Senator Henry Jackson of Washington, she went on: "I can best sum up myself by saying I am in the Scoop Jackson tradition. It is a noble tradition of caring in domestic affairs, of understanding there is a legitimate role for Government providing minimum standards of well-being on the one hand, and being deeply persuaded of the legitimacy and success of American society and the failure and tyranny of Communist societies on the other hand."

There were catcalls, however, from some Democrats and fellow intellectuals who claimed that any involvement in a Reagan Government would taint her beyond redemption. "That bothered me," she admitted. She was convinced that she had undertaken a higher calling. "The United Nations was a marvelous place for me," she said. "I was not there as a Republican or Democrat, I was there representing America. And that is the way they thought of me."

Perhaps her most hazardous mission was her speech to the Republican Convention in Dallas last summer supporting Reagan. "I thought about it a lot," she said. "That was different from anything I had done. That was a real plunge into the very citadel of partisan politics." Here again, she heard voices beyond party. Her answer to critics was in her speech: This man, Ronald Reagan, had provided the leadership necessary on foreign policy issues. "These were the issues most crucial for our civilization," she said last week. "It was important that he be re-elected. The alternative was dangerous."

Unlike Walt Rostow, who worked for Lyndon Johnson and was not welcomed back at M.I.T., and Henry Kissinger, who chose, because of faculty opposition, not to return to Harvard, Jeane Kirkpatrick will be returning to academe. Her re- entry at Georgetown University as a teacher and thinker will no doubt create a few ripples. Perhaps her greatest legacy will be the rebirth of the idea that after an election America needs help from every quarter.