Iran Crisis Could Make Job Harder for Next President

The damage done to President Reagan by the Iran- contra scandal is beginning to change the political environment in ways that could make it harder for his successor--whether Republican or Democrat--to retain voter support and govern the country after the 1988 election, political specialists say.

In addition, as Reagan prepares to launch his seventh year in the White House with Tuesday’s State of the Union address, the public’s reaction to the gravest crisis of his Administration seems likely to influence the qualities that voters of both parties look for in their next chief executive.

The most immediate impact of the scandal is the threat it poses to Reagan’s legislative and other plans during the remainder of his presidency. And the Iran affair has already complicated his party’s prospects of retaining the White House in 1988.

But by shaking a broad array of voter attitudes, the Iran crisis is beginning to cast a wider political shadow as well. This is because, when Reagan took office six years ago last week, he appeared to rescue the presidency from the doldrums of misfortune, making Americans feel better about themselves, their institutions and their country.

Now, scholars and political analysts say, the Iran-contra scandal has abruptly ended this era of good feeling and triggered a series of potentially serious secondary effects.

“It is troublesome as hell that another President is on the ropes,” said Richard P. Nathan, a professor of public policy at Princeton University and a veteran of the Richard M. Nixon Administration. “I was hopeful for the institution that the things Reagan brought to the presidency showed how an ordinary mortal can serve in (an) office that had just chewed people up.”

‘Crisis of Confidence’

Among the long-term consequences of the Iran-contra scandal:

--Psychic shock. Having revered Reagan for so long, Americans are in for “a severe crisis of confidence,” warned Garry Wills, a political historian. “Our regard for Reagan was so associated with our own self-esteem that now that he’s tarnished, we all are.” The net result: an electorate more alienated than ever and also more susceptible to demagogic appeals.

--The attraction of opposites. If voters are disillusioned with Reagan, said Boston University historian Allen Weinstein, “the law of invidious comparison” may lead voters to seek someone with entirely different credentials. In this case, Weinstein believes, the advantage would probably go to a candidate whose “hands-on administrative style” contrasts with Reagan’s tendency to delegate even the most delicate tasks.

--Emphasis on character. In reaction to the apparent flaws in Reagan’s personal performance, the 1988 campaign will probably see “much more emphasis on character as opposed to ideology,” contended Prof. William Leuchtenburg of the University of North Carolina. He said the most valued character traits, in light of the scandal, are likely to be openness and integrity.

Flawed Presidencies

The breadth of the affair’s impact on the nation’s political climate can be fully understood only by recalling the dismal syndrome that had afflicted Reagan’s most recent predecessors in the Oval Office.

From Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon through Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter, Americans had endured--along with the traumas of Vietnam, Watergate and skyrocketing inflation--a string of greatly flawed presidencies. Immediately before this bipartisan series of misfortunes had come the violent end to the unfulfilled presidency of John F. Kennedy.

Reagan’s success stood in stark contrast. And his buoyancy and optimism in the face of the early adversity he encountered in office--the attempt on his life and the 1982 recession--were contagious.

So dramatic was the change wrought by Reagan in the country’s perception of its highest office that he won the not-so-grudging praise of his fiercest ideological adversaries. Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, heir to his party’s liberal tradition, declared a few months after the 1984 election that “whatever the wisdom of his policy, Ronald Reagan has restored the presidency as a vigorous, purposeful instrument of national leadership.”

Kennedy seemed to be in tune with public opinion. Surveys showed that besides rating Reagan’s performance highly, Americans exuded increasing confidence about the future--both their own and the country’s. “The Gross National Spirit Index,” a combination of polls compiled by Public Opinion magazine on citizens’ feelings about how things were going in the country and their own lives, climbed significantly from 1981 to 1986.

Hollywood-Honed Gifts

To critics such as Wills, Americans seemed caught up with Reagan in “a kind of joint make-believe,” an exercise based mainly on Reagan’s Hollywood-honed gifts as a performer and communicator.

“Even young people who did not grow up with Reagan or grow up hearing him on the radio or watching him at the movies have accepted his version of the past as their own best pledge of the future,” Wills, the historian, wrote in his newly published analysis of Reagan’s rapport with his countrymen, “Reagan’s America: Innocents at Home.”

But along with the willingness to accept Reagan’s rosy view of the world, Wills contended, there was “the lurking suspicion” that the President’s views were not always in accord with reality. This ambivalence was reflected in poll results showing that many voters approved of Reagan as a person and as a President but nevertheless disapproved of some of his key policies.

Split in Attitudes

That split in public attitudes, which had previously posed only a minor problem for Reagan, became much more serious when the revelations of arms sales to Iran and diversion of profits to the contras stirred resentment at his apparent duplicity.

Opinion polls recorded the dramatic shift. First Reagan’s own standing plummeted. Then other public attitudes soured. A Louis Harris survey early last month reflected a sharp drop in confidence in the presidency. A Gallup Poll commissioned by Times Mirror Co. at the end of the year registered sinking ratings for other institutions--Congress, the CIA and the press.

One of the proudest claims of the Reagan Administration had been that America stood taller among other nations as a result of the President’s forceful leadership. But 75% of those surveyed in a December Gallup Poll said they believed American influence abroad had been seriously damaged by the Iranian affair.

Negative Feelings

Whether these negative feelings will fade, persist or perhaps even intensify depends on whether Reagan can repair the damage.

Princeton’s Nathan thinks it possible that “disarmament negotiations or some other external event will emerge and the President, his spirits buoyed, will get by this, and something of his standing will be restored.”

But others contend that arms control negotiations, never easy, will be made still harder by Reagan’s weakened prestige. John Palmer, senior fellow at Washington’s Urban Institute and editor of the 1986 book “Perspectives on the Reagan Years,” doubts that there is anything the President can do to make up lost ground.

“Investigations are either going to show that the President knew what was going on in a lot of these areas or he didn’t know,” Palmer said. “And I think either way it looks bad.”

Choice of Candidate

Besides affecting public attitudes on the presidency and other national institutions, the Iran-contra affair is expected to influence the kind of person many Americans seek in their next President.

Looking for Competence

The revelations of sloppy management in the White House, for example, are likely to help the chances of a candidate who can present himself as an experienced administrator, said North Carolina’s Leuchtenburg. “What voters are going to be looking for in a President is demonstrable competence, rather than a consumer culture hero,” he contended.

While Reagan’s weaknesses may shift the pendulum of voter preferences, some political specialists believe voters will not entirely forget the President’s strengths as they choose among those vying to succeed him in the White House.

Weinstein of Boston University, who gives Reagan an A-plus for his performance in the role of chief of state, believes “there is still this public nostalgia for the ceremonial Reagan. I don’t think people would want someone as President who can’t make an impression in this country and the world, someone who knows not only the words but also the music.”

Personal Characteristics

Some analysts believe that because many Americans have felt personally disillusioned by the Iran-contra revelations, they will focus more closely on the personal characteristics of presidential candidates than on their policy proposals.

Something of the sort happened after the Watergate scandal: In the 1976 presidential campaign, Jimmy Carter’s “born-again” morality struck a responsive chord in the electorate.

The broader question about 1988 and beyond is what lesson the electorate will draw from this experience about the institution of the presidency and about the political system.

“My hope would be that the public would learn something from this and would have a deeper understanding of what it needs from its leaders,” said the Urban Institute’s Palmer, who is disturbed about increasingly unrealistic expectations for the presidency since the “Camelot” aura of the Kennedy Administration.

“But I’m not optimistic,” Palmer acknowledged. “What’s lacking is a certain kind of maturity on the part of the public. The best case is that we would become more mature. The alternative is that we keep looking for what we thought we had in Reagan and become increasingly vulnerable to demagoguery.”