The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

If the fractious globe allows it, Ronald Reagan may spend his final months in power less as a swashbuckler than as a teacher, looking back and extracting lessons from his considerable experience. His "Economic Bill of Rights" speech, delivered on the third of July at the Jefferson Memorial, was a summary of the passions expended in his stewardship and a call to the faithful to carry the banner beyond him.

From his years as a dinner speaker for General Electric, Reagan has been a master of the art of exhortation. Indeed, the day before he journeyed to the Tidal Basin to stand beneath the bronze statue of Jefferson, the President told his Cabinet, "The mashed-potato circuit is still out there, and I may be right back on it." So why not start now, while he still commands the world's airwaves and has his jet to get him around?

Reagan's address on economic rights was mostly a burnishing of the ideas he has carried throughout his political life. Specifically, he will continue his assault on Big Government, high taxes, regulation. He still wants an amendment to the Constitution mandating a balanced federal budget and a law providing line-item veto power for the President. He would require Congress to muster more than a mere majority to impose tax increases. "Taxation beyond a certain level becomes servitude," Reagan declared. He brandished once again the "truth in spending" scheme that would compel Congress to assign a cost to any new program -- and then pay for it either by cutting other obligations or raising new revenues.

At best America will listen with only half an ear, especially when summer ends and the din of the presidential campaign starts to grow. Reagan knows this, but half an ear or even less is better than most recent Presidents have been able to command in their waning days. Time will tell if events permit Reagan to become a pedagogue. He has other pet subjects for discourse, such as the War Powers Act, which gives modern Presidents so many fits, and the two- term limit in office, which saps a Chief Executive's power in his last years.

Reagan's pilgrimage to the feet of Jefferson was a bit of a sacrilege. Jefferson hated political speeches. He also thought it was unwise to hang around the swamps of Washington in the summer. Despite criticism, the Virginian paid long visits to Monticello, where both air and mind were clearer. Yet there is a resonance now between Jefferson's warnings and Reagan's present-day fears of a Government so big and costly that it ultimately breaks America's spirit.

"We're still Jefferson's children," Reagan told his audience wilting in muggy heat. "Freedom is not created by Government, nor is it a gift from those in political power. It is, in fact, secured, more than anything else, by limitations placed on those in Government."

No, there was not that much new in Reagan's before-the-Fourth oration. But artful recasting of unvarying basic themes is what got Reagan into the White House in the first place and what has got him through the 6 1/2 years since then. More important than novelty is the virtue in his suggestions.

"Our citizens were always skeptical of Government," Reagan said. "Jefferson looked at Congress and noted that no one should have expected 150 lawyers to do business anyway. But the Federal Government's role was severely limited, and the future was in the hands of the people, not the Government, and that was the way our forebears wanted it."

Not the most rousing history lecture we've ever heard, but not a bad start for a would-be teacher.