A Pitch With No Zing

As he has done so triumphantly in the past, the Great Communicator ended a broadcast address by looking Americans squarely in the eye and appealing to them to tell the Beltway insiders just what they thought about taxes and spending. “Because believe me,” President Reagan said, “if some in Congress won’t see the light, I know you can make them feel the heat.”

Such an appeal used to hit Washington switchboards like so many blinking Christmas trees. More than a few critical votes in Congress were turned around by the flood of phone calls supporting the President. But last week the phone lines might just as well have been dead. Members of Congress had barely any calls. Opposition to the President’s rigid and all-too-familiar position on the budget often outweighed support.

What to conclude from this? Democrats responded that there still is a reservoir of warmth for the President personally, but that he has reached back for the same theatrical pitch so many times that it no longer is effective. Those were the charitable comments.

Today the President was to begin a weekly series of speaking trips outside Washington to rail at the recalcitrant taxers and spenders in Congress. It won’t work. This old refrain no longer is a lightning rod for public discontent. The people are not ready for a resumption of throwing money at problems. But they clearly have lost patience with drawing lines in the dirt as a substitute for policy and programs.

The best solution may be simply for everyone to wink and let Reagan be Reagan, while Howard Baker quietly cuts a deal on the budget and a modest tax increase. Allow the President to declare victory over the taxers and the spenders. The country then can get on with its important business without undue embarrassment about a President’s ineffectiveness.