The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

Down the hall a stealthy step or two from the President's office, an aide ) wonders aloud, "Can the Gipper get back the old magic? That's the question." It happens to be the same question they ask a mile away at the Capitol end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Senators and Congressmen clear their throats, look over their shoulders and mutter that the emperor has no clothes now -- and with the threads went the magic. Nobody is quite certain of the answer, but the Washington world is clearly divided.

Enter the Gipper himself, half convalescent and half President, treading gingerly but gaining strength. There are a few more wrinkles around his eyes, and his weight is down a couple of pounds from the hospital stay. Color a bit bleached. But every vital sign normal, and the crew of doctors unanimous in their belief that he is hale physically. Being President actually prolongs a man's life, statistics suggest. "The doctors said he had the insides of a 50- year-old, and I intend to keep him that way," says Nancy Reagan.

Meetings are shorter. Reagan goes back to the living quarters at midday. No state functions are set for a few weeks. Horseback riding is out. Plenty of rest, much laughter. At last week's Cabinet meeting, he laid off jelly beans. He's tentative about the big things.

"You're telling us," grumps a congressional partisan. The President uses a little list to keep his subjects straight when he talks to members of Congress. But he still gets the subjects out of whack, tells anecdotes that don't fit, isn't sure where the agenda stands or even what is on it. "He sometimes seems a bit disoriented," claims a Senator.

"Sounds familiar," suggests one of Washington's distinguished barristers, who used to work for Eisenhower. Congress lives on details. Most Presidents hate them. "That man does not deserve to be President," roared Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson one day about Ike. Reason: Johnson had asked the President about several programs and pieces of legislation, and Ike wasn't sure what they were about and was utterly baffled over which committees were considering them.

"So what's new?" asked a White House staff member. "Ronald Reagan is just the way he has been for the past six years. He doesn't know the details, and he isn't going to change now." What's new, of course, is that by not knowing the details of Oliver North's activities, the President landed in one big heap of trouble. Is America going to forget and forgive that over the next two years? Indeed, won't there be another blooper or two or more if Reagan wanders along leaving all operations in the hands of aides who have not exactly distinguished themselves lately?

"Before Christmas he had four or five of the toughest meetings I've ever been in," claims a Reagan man. "Everybody was unloading on him. He just listened -- and told his anecdotes." Most of the advice -- to fire Chief of Staff Don Regan and claim the whole Iran arms deal was a mistake -- has gone unheeded. "I don't like lynch mobs," the President told some friends. Read: Regan stays. "Not by a damn sight am I going to accept the status quo," he declared at one of last week's sessions. Translation: Reagan is not going to stop experimenting because he fumbled.

The interim conclusion is that while the world around him has changed, Ronald Reagan remains the same. Over Christmas he wore a necktie that played Jingle Bells when he pressed a tiny switch. He's brought in one of his old word wizards, Ken Khachigian, to help sculpt his State of the Union address, which Reagan is counting on to be boffo theater and rekindle the lost love. When his crew of surgeons watched him sip hot water before a radio address, he reassured them, "Both a minister and Frank Sinatra said they used hot water to help their voices, so it must be true."

With guidance like that, the President better have some of the old magic. Maybe he does. When he showed up for that radio talk, he was proudly toting the wand that was given to him a few weeks ago by Magician Doug Henning (The Magic Show).