The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

There is something out there waiting to be taken and shaped and used in the great political spectacle opening in Washington between the Democratic Congress and the Republican White House.

Whether Ronald Reagan has the verve, the understanding and the imagination to grab it is the hour's most intriguing question. It will take a touch of humility, a bit of conciliation and no little amount of old-fashioned soft soap. If he misses the opportunity, then in all likelihood the system will roll by and maybe even over him while he huddles in the White House, a giant become pitiful.

There are encouraging signs that the Democratic election victory, the Iran affair and a few other minor mishaps will spawn a new reality in the White House. The rather temperate statements from the leaders of Congress at the opening session were passed around last week by the legislative liaison office to all the President's senior staff with the pointed implication that they ought to reply in kind.

Over in the speech shop the writers are studying Lyndon Johnson's State of the Union message of 1967, when he arrived in the well of the House with a war going sour and a Congress that had just added 50 new Republicans. "I should like to say to the members of the opposition -- whose numbers, if I am not mistaken, seem to have increased somewhat -- that the genius of the American political system has always been best expressed through creative debate that offers choices and reasonable alternatives," said Johnson. "Throughout our history, great Republicans and Democrats have seemed to understand this. So let there be light and reason in our relations."

Well stated by a man who hated the very idea of giving up anything to the opposition. Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole wants Reagan to come up to the Hill and meet with the bipartisan leaders in the Rotunda and there, in those streaks of sunlight that flood the old stone floor, strike a mutual doctrine on debt and spending and trade. In the shadows of the Speaker's Lobby last week, a Republican leader cocked his eye toward the House floor, teeming with old and new members in their first session, and said, "Ronald Reagan is still more popular out there right now than Jim Wright (the newly elected Democratic Speaker). Reagan could regain a lot of credibility and prestige up here if he would just get interested."

He might. Reagan has laid on an unprecedented series of White House meetings with congressional leaders for the last week in January. He is fully aware that this State of the Union message can make or break him for the next two years. He must reclaim some of the political stage that he has deserted in these past weeks. In February a White House reception for all the members of Congress and their spouses is scheduled, and the plans now call for the biggest and grandest such event of the Reagan era. The bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution is being heavily cranked into the Reagan activities, and that sort of melodrama is what he relishes and does best. It is a reminder to everyone, including Reagan, that we are all in this thing together.

There lingers, too, an affection for the man and an awe of the office that, if properly marshaled, could get the country solidly behind him again. A White House staffer chuckled last week as he recalled the tart-tongued Pat Schroeder, Democrat from Colorado, knifing through the mob at the White House Christmas party so she could be photographed with the President. Indeed, several hundred color shots of legislators posing with the President landed on congressional desks last week, and many of the prints are already down in the frame shop. The newcomers were openly eager for their first invitation to visit the President of the U.S. and get such a picture to send home to show the kind of company they are keeping.