The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

For the past four months Ronald Reagan has not had the physical stamina, the emotional intensity or the mental acuity to be President of the U.S. The three qualities are inseparable in leadership. The decline of one weighs the others down, finally diminishing the man. Whether Reagan's reduced state was caused by natural aging, impaired health, the crushing reverses in politics and state affairs, or all of the above will probably never be sorted out. Nor is it all that important. But what is important is his energy level in mind, body and soul in these next few weeks. Can he cope with the job? This is a twilight time.

The Tower commission report states the history well. What began as a reasonable exercise to wield influence in a dangerous world failed, not an unusual occurrence in that high-risk game. But then Reagan failed time after time after time to contain the damage.

"The circuits are overloaded," Mrs. Reagan told a friend. The President could not deal with the rush of events in which his staff members, normally his shield, became adversaries in their unsightly scramble for cover. His ignorance about the issues, his inability to focus on complexity, to sort out chronology, and his shock at the sudden loss of popular affection produced a kind of stupor.

"I look back now," says a political aide, "and I don't think he felt up to it." Reagan had been through a cancer operation the year before, and his prostate trouble was on his mind. Then came Iran. Never before in his long, successful political career had he faced such trouble. He shrank from it. He dithered. His memory on little things and some big things blanked out, a sign of aging.

Nancy Reagan measurably moved into power on that singular love of theirs. A person who gathered with the family to talk about the crisis said it was plain that for the moment she was the stronger of the two. "Then her strength made him seem weaker," added this friend. "You want something done?" whispered one of the old California gang during this time. "Then talk to Nancy. When I see them at night, I talk with him about three minutes and with her 20 minutes."

During the recovery from his prostate surgery, the President's energy was husbanded even more by Mrs. Reagan, and just at the time that the Iran-contra revelations were intensifying. Chief of Staff Don Regan tried to pressure Nancyinto letting the President defend himself publicly. She flared up. The day thatMarlin Fitzwater took over as press spokesman, she summoned him to her sitting room. "I make no apologies for protecting the President," she said. "The doctors say that it will take six weeks for him to fully recover. That is the way it is going to be." Fitzwater felt out White House Physician John Hutton, who echoed the restraint: "The President doesn't need the excitement." And even Reagan himself in the past two weeks asked that the world be held back a while longer despite the rancid environment.

The future is now. Reagan's dinner chatter is again as charming as ever, as he proved last week with the visiting Governors and their wives. He effectively debated his Secretary of Treasury James Baker about post-Tower tactics. His set speeches have been well delivered. But all those things come to the President as naturally as breathing. Are they a sign of renewed vitality or a desperate camouflage of decay? The underlying instincts that once enabled him to judge correctly the men about him, the internal commitment and fire that carried him beyond his woeful failures to marshal the facts, the old surges of common sense that helped him hold the national trust are what are in question now.

The Tower commission report in an odd way not only defines the problem but sets up an opportunity. Ronald Reagan has yet another chance to be the President he once was. But it may take more attention and energy and devotion to this country than he has ever given before. In the end it may take what life he has left. But the Gipper surely knows about such things.