The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

All week long Ronald Reagan was on the sidelines, or at least playing at the fringes, an uncharacteristic role for the most powerful man in the Western world.

It began on the Fourth of July weekend up at Camp David with hours of reminiscing about Fred Astaire, a Reagan friend who had died two weeks before. A collection of Astaire's old movies was Nancy Reagan's birthday present to herself. The first couple were spun again from nasty reality through the golden extravaganzas of Hollywood with Swingtime and Funny Face.

No matter how grim life may seem and how insistent his critics are that Reagan look and act despondent, he refuses. Amid Washington's Iran-contra catharsis, Reagan has wandered off unexpectedly in his odd little byways.

In talking about Novelist Gore Vidal, disparager of all mankind, Reagan got a twinkle in his eye and allowed as how even Vidal might err. A passage in Vidal's novel Lincoln had the Great Emancipator standing in the White House staring out of a window. By his calculation, chuckled Reagan, if Lincoln had been where Vidal placed him, he would not have seen what Vidal described.

Then there was Oliver North to ponder -- or ignore, or something. But Reagan was not to be hurried. First came Nancy's birthday. The President presented her at breakfast with an assortment of greeting cards. Nancy whisked off across the Potomac to lunch with her staff at the luxurious Windows restaurant, then came back for a very private dinner with her husband. Oddly, no reporter asked Press Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater what birthday Mrs. Reagan was celebrating. She was, in fact, an elegant and lively 64, er, give or take a year. But birthdays and almost everything else had been pushed aside in the media, all waiting for the big clash on Capitol Hill.

When Ollie North took the stand on Tuesday, Reagan walked resolutely through a busy schedule, trying to portray himself as a man with more important work. But in the back corridors of the White House, the sound from the televised hearings leaked out from behind a door or two. Two aides of White House Counsel A.B. Culvahouse monitored every second of the Iran-contra drama; another White House lawyer posted himself in the hearing room to catch the off-camera subtleties and interplay. The Communications Office got it all on tape should Reagan want to take a full look later. The White House was walking on Ollie's eggs.

The first day's score as tallied by Reagan's experts: no runs, no hits, no errors for anyone. Yet even then there was a vague feeling that North might prove to be a good gorilla, a polite but strangely muscular force unleashed by the unsuspecting investigators in their midst.

As the second round of the heavyweights began on Wednesday, the President was shaving and putting on his shirt, casting glances at Ollie on the bedroom TV. Reagan was plainly feeling a little happier, though still very cautious. What did he think about the show? a staffer asked. Reagan declined comment even in such an intimate environment. He'd just better not say yet. As he flew off to Connecticut for a little distracting hoopla, the fact that North was the most compelling friend of the White House to testify so far began to lift the spirits of the entourage. Reagan took time to denounce a magazine article , that described him as a has-been. "I can't understand this," he said as Air Force One roared north. "Who is this they are writing about?"

Upon arriving back in Washington, the President was perplexed by another topic. "Why are they saying I'm not interested in the hearings?" he asked his staff, seemingly oblivious to the strategy of protecting him by constructing a dense pack of trivia about his daily activities. Reagan has never feigned aloofness from his critics as Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon sometimes used to. He read the summaries of each day's doings, caught glimpses of the live testimony as he moved through his daily chores. At noon and in the evening he monitored the network replays.

By Thursday, Reagan was hanging out in his small study just down the hall from the Oval Office to savor pure chunks of the drama, which was by then going Ollie North's way. Reagan's very private and tentative conclusion: public opinion was changing, a lot of Americans were going to see that the Administration was trying to do something important in Nicaragua and that congressional critics were too often meddling.

The next stop was a dinner for new CIA Director William Webster up in the ritzy Kalorama neighborhood of Washington at the home of former Texas Congressman Frank Ikard. The President and his wife arrived smiling, buoyed by reports that congressional and White House mail and phone calls were running overwhelmingly in North's favor. At last the American people were beginning to get a clearer picture, Reagan ventured. He laughed at a story about Actor George Burns, shared the misery related by Chief of Staff Howard Baker of traveling that afternoon to and from New York on the air shuttle and drank deeply of good California Cabernet. No complaints, no despair.

By the end of the week, Ronald Reagan could dare hope for the first break in the dismal script that had begun eight months earlier. Private polls rushed to the White House showed Americans beginning to believe North's story that he had not talked to the President about the diversion of funds. Ironically, there was a hint in the new data that Reagan's request for more aid for the contras might get a huge boost from North's testimony.

Still, as Reagan hunkered down for the weekend there was a long and uncertain journey ahead. "The rumors about what Admiral Poindexter may say next week are all around," said an aide. "And they are just as frightening as those about Ollie North."