Reagan’s Chance to Allay Fears : Press Conference Crucial Opportunity During Crisis

Although White House aides had sought to play down the significance of the event, President Reagan’s first White House news conference in seven months came at a moment in his presidency when crisis seemed to be piling upon crisis--a time when Americans traditionally turn to their chief executive for reassurance that a firm hand is at the helm.

With the nation shaken by the worst stock market crash since World War I, the escalating conflict in the Persian Gulf, the acrid fight over Robert H. Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court and a host of other problems, Reagan’s prime-time appearance before a national television audience was a priceless opportunity to allay fears at home and abroad, while displaying that, in his 77th year, he remains able to carry out the demanding tasks of the presidency.

What the President needed most of all to do was “show he is confident and on top of the problems,” a supporter and occasional adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said hours before Reagan walked up the red-carpeted White House corridor and into the East Room Thursday.

Seeking to do just that, Reagan declared in an opening statement that, while more volatility may lie ahead for the securities markets, “it does appear the system is working” and the economy as a whole is healthy.

But the situation, said Paul C. Light, a scholar who has written three volumes on the presidency, called for more from Reagan than “something Roosevelt-esque.”

“To the extent he presents presidential reassurance and fatherly comfort--that will not be enough,” Light said. “He needs to show he understands what the problems are.”

In particular, the President needed to take specific steps to address the federal budget deficit, one adviser said, because “the market is voting a vote of no confidence in the degree and order of Ronald Reagan’s engagement in the presidency.”

During the 30-minute question-and-answer session, Reagan chose not to lay out a specific formula of his own for deficit reduction. But he did signal a major--if reluctant--shift toward flexibility and away from confrontation. After vowing month after month to veto any legislation containing higher taxes, he declared himself willing to discuss increased revenues as part of a cure for red ink.

At the same time, Reagan continued to display the combative and partisan instincts that have aggravated his relations with congressional Democrats and even many Republicans. At one point, for example, he declared that the House and Senate employed a “kind of stupid set-up” in reviewing budget proposals and have scant knowledge of the departments whose funds they control. In fact, whatever the merits of their final budget decisions, congressional committees have elaborate and knowledgeable staffs that maintain close contact with the executive branch agencies they oversee.

Similarly, Reagan suggested several times Thursday night that the deficit could easily be reduced by some $22 billion without higher taxes if Democrats would only accept measures he has already proposed. Those measures, however, are highly controversial and their purported savings are in dispute.

And it was only under the pressure of Monday’s 508-point plunge in the Dow Jones industrial average that the President moved toward negotiations over the budget deficit with Congress after five years of stalemate.

Economic Upheaval Feared

Unlike Reagan’s most serious previous crisis, the Iran-Contra scandal, the difficulties he now faces raise questions that go beyond whether he is sufficiently involved in the running of the government. The Iran-Contra affair, while it shook public trust in an unusually popular President, was remote and abstract compared with the intensely personal and frightening possibility of a major economic upheaval or a bloody conflict involving American servicemen in the Persian Gulf.

And these more-threatening problems crowd in at a time when an aging President has apparently been unwilling to accept the reality of Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress and has seemed, on occasion, to be struggling to keep up with the demands of his job.

Indeed, the President--his hair seemingly no more gray than when he was inaugurated in 1981 but his face increasingly lined--appeared to speak with great care, searching carefully for particular words, though at one point he described Secretary of State George P. Shultz as his “secretary general.”

Presidential scholar Light, and others who observed Reagan closely, agree that his strength as President lies more in his ability to communicate broad ideas than in demonstrating a willingness to delve into the nitty-gritty of legislation or master the facts of economic problems--even if that is the sort of performance that can provide reassurance in the give-and-take of a news conference.

“Does he know the facts? Is he capable? Is he good in this format? I say no,” said a former member of the White House senior staff, arguing that the President would have been better served had he delivered a speech from the Oval Office, after his views on the nation’s economic problems had been fashioned into a polished text in which there would be no opportunity for ad-libs and possible gaffes.

Expressed Puzzlement

Reagan allies pointed to his initial reaction earlier this week, in the fog of the falling and then gyrating market, when he expressed puzzlement at the crash, and then his view that the market was simply going through a period of correction after its bullish performance.

Such comments, admitted one White House adviser, “just fortified” the concerns, which Reagan needed to address Thursday evening, that he was not on top of the economic problems that have shaken Main Street as well as Wall Street.