The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

The cries for presidential leadership that rose from Wall Street now echo across the country. Here is one formula for the man in the White House in such a crisis.

* Summon to Washington the leaders of labor, industry, banking, agriculture, construction and transportation to get their recommendations and help. Meet the press within 48 hours, then promise a more "intimate" relationship with the media. Follow up with press conferences every few days.

Set up a twelve-hour White House workday. Immerse yourself in the data and details so completely that you can discuss any of the issues with brilliance and complete authority. Line up congressional leaders for support, later send a message to the entire body. Loosen credit for business and agriculture.

Build confidence in the Federal Reserve by praising its efforts to confine the crisis to Wall Street. Wire Governors and mayors to keep public projects alive so that there will be no abrupt layoffs. Repeat to all visitors that it is the President's policy, in seeking to balance the budget, to cut first into business profits before putting any more burden on wage earners. Call for less expensive Government but without heavy taxes.

Send personal envoys to Wall Street to upbraid the worst of the speculators. Then just to gig them a bit more, refer in conversations to capitalists who are "too damned greedy." Make it stated policy that the job of the Government is to keep up the quality of American life and that concern will first be focused on the underprivileged, education, housing, conservation.

Write letters to friendly editors asking them to help you "awaken the conscience" of America to deal with the trouble. When a leading columnist suggests that by using Government so dramatically in the crisis you are interfering with natural economic law, ignore him.

Don't be optimistic, but don't be pessimistic. Caution against fear. Let the country see you as serene. Go to a World Series game and play it fun but cool.

Don't suggest that the crisis may be over when the first good news appears. Don't predict the future in speeches and statements. And don't get overly concerned when reports come in of a drop in the sales of big luxury items like automobiles. Just keep the night-lights on in the Oval Office.

The only problem with this plan is that it is precisely what Herbert Hoover did back in 1929. The economic chaos in the world rolled right on over him, and then history kicked him once he was down.

Ronald Reagan, fumbling around for a hold on the current mess, has been shouted at not to be a Herbert Hoover. But one has to wonder if neo-Hooverism wouldn't be just what is needed now. Hoover, a hands-on President, was arguably the most intelligent, experienced, compassionate and diligent President of the century. He was all the things Reagan is not. But Hoover's problems were different, his Government far less powerful than today's, and his ability to warm and win people was almost nil.

Reagan has a dramatically limited grasp of events, but he heads a powerful central Government and retains a remarkable hold on people's affection. And the message out of Black Monday is that he could be buried by history just like Hoover was.

George Nash, the Hoover biographer who has trudged a lonely path through the scorned archives of that President, makes a couple of tentative observations in these strange days. Some forces in this world, he notes, cannot be stopped by politicians. And would it not be the ultimate irony if out of our worry now comes more study of and more respect for Herbert Hoover?