Image of Blundering Fought : Can Eloquence Calm the Furor? Aides to Wait, See

Throughout his political career, Ronald Reagan has risen to the occasion when his popularity was on the line--with skillful speech, emotion, symbolism and tremendous camera presence. But never before had there been such a controversy to control or such damage to repair.

And not even the President’s most ardent admirers among his inner circle were claiming Sunday that one day of solemn, heartfelt speeches and imagery had erased three months of acknowledged blundering in arranging Reagan’s trip here to a German military cemetery.

One White House official, speaking on condition he not be identified, echoed the prevailing attitude of Reagan’s advisers when he observed: “He did just what he wanted to do, as well as he could do. Now we’ll just have to wait and see.”

There were, of course, more exuberant comments from officials who spoke for the record. “It was a brilliant performance,” said Assistant Secretary of State Richard R. Burt.

Reagan received a long, loud round of applause from his staff as he walked through Air Force One while flying from Bitburg back to Bonn. He responded, according to spokesman Larry Speakes, that it had been “a very moving day for all of us--a day of remembrance and hope.” Later he told reporters, “It’s been a wonderful day.”

Reagan had mentioned to reporters on Saturday that he was “looking forward” to visiting the Bitburg cemetery. However, he finally spent only eight minutes there, compared to the 20 originally planned.

Reagan tried to politically sanitize his symbolic wreath-laying ceremony with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in an effort to dilute the controversy of the highly publicized event.

He did this primarily by personally inviting, in a telephone call last Monday night, retired Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway to join him in laying the wreath. Photographs of Reagan laying the wreath--and he barely touched it--also had to show Ridgway, 90, a veteran of some of the most bitter fighting of World War II, including the nearby Battle of the Bulge.

“If I were an American veteran, I wouldn’t complain about the wreath-laying,” one anonymous White House official said, slightly grinning.

Kohl laid a separate wreath with a World War II German Luftwaffe ace, retired Gen. Johanner Steinhoff, 71. And as the two heads of government and the two retired generals walked away from the ceremony, the two old warriors, formerly enemies, reached across a grave and shook hands.

“I have to tell you,” Reagan said later of this poignant scene, “that nothing will ever fill me with greater hope.”

The presence in the cemetery of the graves of 49 members of Adolf Hitler’s Waffen SS was the fact that particularly sparked the outrage of Holocaust victims and Jewish leaders worldwide.

The SS, an abbreviation for Schutzstaffel, was the security force originally set up as Hitler’s bodyguard. Its members became the administrators and guards of the concentration camps, and a separate combat branch was eventually added, called the Waffen SS.

After the wreath-laying, in a speech at a nearby U.S. Air Force base, Reagan made it clear that he was in no way was honoring the memory of the SS--a point that specially recruited speech writer Kenneth Khachigian thought it was mandatory to make.

“The crimes of the SS must rank among the most heinous in human history,” Reagan said.

‘Evil World of Nazism’

Driving home the point, Reagan used the word evil seven times in his speeches at Bitburg and earlier at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp: “That man and his evil. . . . The evil world of Nazism. . . . We mark the day when the hate, the evil and the obscenities ended.”

Although he occasionally referred to Hitler, Reagan never once mentioned him directly by name--a policy he always has followed with political opponents.

Bitburg got nearly all the advance billing for this day, but the real drama for those on the scene was 280 miles northeast at the site of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where 50,000 Jews, Christians and Gypsies died under Nazi terror during World War II. Reagan spent roughly an hour there with his wife, Nancy, in what he called a “painful walk into the past.”

Reagan really does not like “painful walks” and this is a major reason--aside from his rationale of not wanting to “offend” the German people--that he originally rejected Chancellor Kohl’s suggestion that he visit the much more gruesome Dachau concentration camp.

“Reagan is emotional,” an anonymous adviser said in recalling why the President did not want to visit a concentration camp. “He said, ‘Oh, God, I know about it (the Holocaust), but do I have to see it?’ ”

Face Looked Pained

The Bergen-Belsen site, with its stark earth mounds covering mass graves containing from 300 to 5,000 bodies each, was depressing enough for Reagan. His face looked pained throughout the visit. And he seemed to be fighting back tears toward the end of his speech as he read from the diary of Anne Frank, the German-born Dutch teen-ager who died there.

The consensus among reporters who closely follow Reagan is that his performance on Sunday, while superb, did not match the skills he displayed last June at Normandy on the 40th anniversary of D-Day. And one theory was that Reagan was consciously holding back on his emotions, striving to keep them under control.

At Bergen-Belsen, in contrast to Bitburg, Reagan significantly took the large wreath himself and carried it alone several steps to the Jewish memorial. Then he stopped in silent prayer. Normally, a military aide physically places the wreath for a president.

In most respects--starting with the fact he kept his commitment to Kohl to go to Bitburg, resisting intense pressure to scrub the visit--Reagan did the day his way. His words, symbolisms and anecdotes articulately reflected his views and adhered to his patented style.

Full of Hope

Eternally the optimist, Reagan’s speeches Sunday were full of hope for the future: “We are here today,” he said at Bergen-Belsen, “to confirm that the horror cannot outlast the hope, and that even from the worst of all things, the best may come forth.”

A heavy user of anecdotes to make a case, Reagan plucked one from probably his all-time favorite magazine, Readers Digest. Borrowing from a January, 1973, issue, the President told of a young German mother who during the Battle of the Bulge took in three lost American soldiers and, subsequently, four German soldiers. They all celebrated Christmas Day together.

“Those boys reconciled briefly in the midst of war,” Reagan said. “Surely, we allies in peacetime should honor the reconciliation of the last 40 years.”

Taking a suggestion first made by some Jewish leaders--but credited by White House officials on Sunday to the Rev. Billy Graham--Reagan paid an unscheduled stop at the grave near Bergen-Belsen of Konrad Adenauer, a foe of the Nazis and the first postwar chancellor of West Germany.

All of his attempts at a political reconciliation with Jews showed little advance indication of success here. Twenty-six Jewish leaders declined invitations to attend the wreath-laying ceremony at Bergen-Belsen. The only Jews in evidence at Bitburg were along his motorcade route chanting, “Please don’t go.”

Majority Opposed

Public opinion polls soon will be indicating how Reagan’s performance on Sunday went over with Americans, who were able to watch it on live television. Up until now, a majority of those polled had opposed his visiting the cemetery.

Some Republican political consultants, interviewed on condition their names not be identified, speculated that Americans generally will approve of the way the President handled himself Sunday.

But, these consultants believe, the previous damage to Reagan has been so severe that even if the public ultimately is convinced that he was correct in visiting the cemetery, the last three months has tarnished his image as a leader.

“His reputation for political effectiveness has been diminished,” one consultant said. “And, although he was moving and elegant, I got no sense that he changed the focus of debate.”