The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

Richard Viguerie, the right wing's genial blowtorch, is absolutely correct when he howls that Ronald Reagan has "abandoned every last pretense" of standing up against the Washington establishment. Reagan has lost his presidency for the time being to that moiling collection of political people and purposes that form the capital's core from generation to generation.

It could be the best thing that has happened to him in this season of distress. At the heart of the Establishment are good and wise men and women who so often in times of crisis place the national interest above party and ideology. If Reagan finally lends his considerable talents to their healing agenda, he could not only recover lost prestige but go on to greater achievements. If he decides to buck an aroused Establishment, he will in all likelihood be run over by events.

Reagan asked the Establishment people into his tent. He had no other choice. Because his credibility after the Iran arms revelations hung in the balance, an immediate application of respected outside candor was required. TheTower board was almost inevitable, three wise men of deep experience. They opened the way for White House reform. The President's trusted intimate, former Senator Paul Laxalt, now a lawyer with a stately office on Pennsylvania Avenue, proposed a solution: former Senator Howard Baker as chief of staff. Baker, with his unrivaled knowledge of power's rituals, joined Frank Carlucci, the newly installed National Security Adviser with a solid reputation of service to four Administrations. Others like them have followed; more will come. President Reagan now has a White House geared for more openness and conciliation, essential ingredients for progress in a presidency's waning years.

Even if any wild new foreign adventures were to be hatched in the Government's bureaucracies, the Washington Post and others in the aroused media establishment would unmask and neutralize them. On certain issues, the media can have more influence on U.S. policy than the Secretaries of State and Defense.

The courts are another powerful factor. So is the army of young barristers at work on the three Iran investigations. Many of them come from Washington's great law firms, which are peopled by those who have served the Government before. These staff members find a singular exhilaration in unraveling the Iran mess. Out of that comes a reaffirmation of the Republic's purposes and a strong defense against further cover-ups and corruption. The old ideals shine through again.

Congressional leaders of both parties, like the sagacious Georgia Senator Sam Nunn, have been invited into the White House for their counsel. Their inputis now being felt on issues like the ABM treaty, SDI, trade, welfare. Changes in Reagan's approach to policy are almost inevitable, unless he wants to court more defeat, which could darken his exit a couple of years hence.

Those who tend Washington decade after decade have many faults, but there are splendid moments when the best rise to defend this ungainly democracy. When Lyndon Johnson passed the acceptable threshold of bloodshed in Viet Nam, the political establishment weighed in. Richard Nixon violated the law andthe threshold of decency in Watergate, and the city exposed and expelled him. Reagan crossed a threshold of mismanagement, and is being called to account.

. Dan Boorstin, the keen-minded Librarian of Congress who sits atop Capitol Hill and watches the drama below, talks about the "cleansing effect of Washington." The old city, given enough time, knocks common sense into cockeyed theories, rounds the corners of sharp practices, and finally forces almost every leader who is successful to heed the sound counsel of history.