Is He More Out of Touch Than Ever?

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

What's wrong with this picture? The President walks jauntily into the West Wing of the White House and is greeted by smiling aides, who tell him everything is going well. The chief of staff strides into the Oval Office bearing position papers sanitized of all controversy; the President looks over the choices at the bottom and checks off a preference as routinely as if he were ordering dessert from the White House menu. All is serene.

What's wrong with this picture is its almost bizarre irrelevance to the world outside the White House windows. Ronald Reagan's Administration has been gravely wounded by Iranscam, faces newly assertive Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress, and seems bereft of the bold initiatives that might save the last two years of his presidency from lame-duck drift. Yet he carries on with the same unruffled optimism and inattention to the messy details of policy that have marked his administrative style since his early days as Governor of California.

Once these characteristics seemed at worst material for mild jokes (Reagan has told some of the funniest), at best part of the charm and uncluttered vision that made him an effective leader. His oblivious attitude and shaky understanding of issues has long been a public secret; indeed it is the worrisome basis for his defense of himself from any Iranscam culpability. But even if his poor concentration is no worse than it has been for years, the problems it has recently caused and the sense of drift that has emerged make it a matter of concern once more and a point of attack for critics who no longer consider Reagan unassailable. As he approaches his 76th birthday on Feb. 6, while recuperating from prostate surgery, an old question is once again being raised in Washington: Has the President wandered so far out of touch that he is losing his ability to govern the country?

The question is implicit in Capitol Hill comments on the President's impassivity about Iranscam. Referring to Reagan's request for public release of a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the scandal, Maine Republican William Cohen complained last week, "I have the sensation we've slipped through a rabbit hole into something of a fantasy land. The President is demanding Congress . . . furnish him with a report describing in detail a plan that was formulated and perhaps executed either in or within a few feet of the Oval Office." Stung by such barbs, the White House announced that Independent Adviser David Abshire is regularly briefing Reagan on Iranscam developments and added that the President is quite interested -- as if that could not be simply assumed.

The subject of Reagan's competence comes up more bluntly in the media. "Brain Dead," the title of an article in the New Republic, referred to the lack of new ideas within the Reagan Administration as a whole but carried a not-very-subtle implication about the President as well. A story in the Washington Post reported that Chief of Staff Donald Regan had formed the Administration's position on federal pay raises with only "minimal" involvement from the President, and one in the New York Times described how congressional leaders had come away from meetings with Reagan wondering "if he had understood the issues they had raised."

There is no evidence of deterioration in the President's physical condition. Prostate surgery on Jan. 5 has forced him to lighten his schedule temporarily, but his personal physician says he is "doing beautifully." Mentally, the President seems the same old Reagan. As one of his aides notes, the fresh spate of gossip about his detachment is "the same kind of stuff he has been accused of since the second week he has been here."

When one of Reagan's top aides was asked whether he thought the President was fully engaged in his work, he replied reassuringly and offered a bit of curious proof. A secretary, he recounted, had written a get-well poem ("Your excellent condition is a model for us all/ For it is strength and wisdom that has our nation standing tall") and sent it to Reagan. He sent back a hand- written note illustrated with a self portrait. "It shows he's up there ((in his living quarters)) doing things," the adviser claimed. "It shows that he's extremely responsive and willing to get down into the details."

The President has always devoted inordinate attention to minor matters. He held four or five consultations this month on the case of Belgian-born Anne Brusselmans, a hero in the World War II Resistance, and personally supervised a successful effort to cut through the red tape that had denied her resident status in the U.S. Although he has been unwilling to grapple with the controversy over his new budget plan, he was so moved by the stories of the Amtrak train wreck that he asked that some of those cited for performing heroic deeds be brought down this week for a photo session.

Important affairs of state, however, do not always get the same concentration. At a meeting in December, House Republican Leader Robert Michel pressed the President to support a plan to insure the elderly and disabled against the costs of catastrophic illness. Reagan responded by saying that he liked the idea of such a plan for "those over 65," then drifted into an oft-

repeated anecdote about a welfare family living in a midtown New York City hotel at high cost to taxpayers. Even after some participants tried to steer him back to health insurance, the President repeated the totally unrelated anecdote. At a domestic-policy-council meeting on the health-insurance issue, Reagan read a letter from a 17-year-old California girl who has since died of cancer, even though it had no relevance to the plan for the elderly.

Some aides, in his defense, argue that Reagan was resorting to an old trick of gently turning aside unwelcome advice by telling stories, relevant or not. "It's very typical of him to deflect what he doesn't want to hear," says an intimate. But even if that is so, Reagan was still ducking the issue. Having initially embraced the concept of catastrophic health insurance, the President has avoided deciding an argument among his aides as to what type of plan to propose.

He has been similarly unwilling to flesh out any of the other nebulous proposals he will unveil in the State of the Union speech next week. During one Cabinet meeting in December, Secretary of Education William Bennett listened as bland proposals were presented and then, hoping to spur discussion about the next step in the Reagan revolution, pronounced the prospective agenda "boring, boring, boring." The President just listened politely, and nothing new emerged. Partly it is a matter of selective engagement: Reagan enjoyed meeting last November with a group of futurists who discussed their vision of the 21st century, but he does not seem bothered by not having had a director of policy planning since last September.

During his first term, Reagan was occasionally pushed into greater involvement with his policies. Aides such as Edwin Meese, James Baker, Michael Deaver and William Clark would argue issues in his presence. The disputes forced Reagan to focus and drew him toward decisions. But in two years as chief of staff, Donald Regan has kept most of such controversy away from the President. Regan generally mediates the battles and presents the President with sanitized position papers that give little hint of the cacophony outside. Says one alumnus of the White House staff: "Regan sits through two-hour meetings, then gives the President a two-minute synopsis. Reagan does best when he is challenged. Regan has taken away the challenge."

It would be unfair, however, to put all the blame on Regan for increasing the President's detachment. The system has prevailed because Reagan likes it. "He is very comfortable the way it is," says a friend. "If he needed more, I think he'd ask for it."

With reporting by Barrett Seaman/Washington