Oz on the Potomac

The Kennedy nomination provided a rare fresh breeze of rationality in the White House on Wednesday. For the moment, it interrupted what has seemed to be an extended mad scene from some theater of the absurd or an 18th-Century tragicomic opera.

Could the President really believe that Edwin Meese III, the bumbler who never should have been attorney general, had done nothing to embarrass the White House? That sinister outside forces caused the withdrawal of Douglas H. Ginsburg? That the Administration has had nothing to do with the value of the dollar abroad? That the White House is being flexible on the budget?

Mind you, all of these fantasies emerged from Oz on the Potomac within the space of just 24 hours. This is not to mention the battle swirling amid Senate Republicans over who did what to whom during the Ginsburg fiasco. Moderates darkly mumbled about muggings on the backstairs of the White House. Conservatives condemned moderate “gutless wonders” on the White House staff and seemed to prefer no Supreme Court justice at all if they could not have one of sufficient loyalty.

Two weeks after the stock market crash, with the world looking for action, the President continued to handle the economic situation on the way to the helicopter or at photo opportunities--strictly off the cuff. In Tuesday’s photo-op declaration that he wanted the fall of the dollar to stop, Reagan noted that he had not consulted his financial advisers. Quickly, the White House press secretary emphasized that “the President’s comments were on his own.” Was this meant as reassurance?

When Wall Street was crashing, the President figured, by golly, it was just a correction. Four days later, when the White House decided to take the crisis seriously, the President did exactly the wrong thing: He held a press conference. Forget that the media had clamored for one for months, this was a situation that begged for one of Reagan’s reassuring scripted chats from the Oval Office.

And all along--it seemed to be about a trillion times--the President rarely failed to remind Americans that he had nothing to do with the budget deficit or doubling of the federal debt.

With the Ginsburg appointment, the Administration really slipped through the rabbit hole into Wonderland. Did the President give the secretary of education the go-ahead to pull the string on Ginsburg when he said, “Do what you think is right?” Nonsense, said the President, just another distortion.

Three months ago, the President put the Iran-Contra affair behind him by edict and said no cobwebs would settle on him in the rest of his term. But the Administration has stumbled from one misadventure to the next ever since. Even the prospective arms-control agreement has been won at the cost of deep suspicion from Reagan’s conservative allies.

The White House has lurched this way and that out of lack of direction and judgment. The presidential staff has been torn by ideological warfare. And the President has seemed blissfully ignorant of the disarray and crumbling credibility all around him.

Call it “Through the Looking Glass . . . Darkly.” Not a pretty picture. Not the sort of Reagan legacy the nation can afford.