Another Seven-Day Wonder : Reagan Will Be Judged Not by Regan Book but on His Administration’s Accomplishments

Former White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan’s book, exposing the machinations of Nancy Reagan and the use of horoscopes to help shape the President’s schedule, has been treated as though it could do real damage to the Reagan Adminstration’s record.

Strobe Talbott of Time magazine, for one, has made such a suggestion. Yet I seriously doubt that this will happen. The uproar has all the signs of being a seven-day wonder.

President Reagan himself reacted angrily to reports of Regan’s book, and this in retrospect may have been an error in judgment. In the past the President has shown extraordinary skill in deflecting arrows with jokes; he might profitably have used the same method against the astrological slings and arrows where jokes are hard to avoid.

Ultimately the Reagan presidency will be assessed by such mundane considerations as the performance of the economy, the rate of inflation and unemployment, domestic tranquillity and foreign peace.On all of these fronts the auguries for Reagan (if I may put it that way) are quite auspicious. By comparison, the presidential schedule will seem to be very minor. The Administration will be judged by its record, not by its method of attaining it. A ship’s captain who arrives safely at his destination will not be diminished by the report that he lacked a compass but steered by the stars.

It is true that if Reagan were seeking reelection, some of Don Regan’s revelations would cause problems. The Christian evangelicals who have supported the President are reportedly displeased by these indications of pagan influence on the White House, and might have withdrawn their support. Nancy Reagan’s reported comment (since denied by her office) that she didn’t “give a damn about the right-to-lifers” is a campaign manager’s nightmare. But of course Reagan no longer faces the electorate.

It is also true that the memoirs of both Regan and former White House counselor Michael Deaver portray Nancy Reagan as excessively involved in personnel matters and the President himself insufficiently involved.

Detached and passive are words that are frequently used to characterize his role in his own Administration, and they hardly seem exaggerated.

The question of Reagan’s passivity is an interesting one, and it deserves a closer look. Usually it is assumed that this is an undesirable quality in a President. But is this really so?

Good government is itself characterized by qualities that are mainly passive, or negative. Most people want a government that will leave them alone, that will not erode the value of their savings by inflating the currency, that will not intercept too much of their income. Like an umpire who enforces the rules of the game (but does not try to affect the score), the ideal state merely preserves the framework that keeps people free from the force and fraud of others.

A “passive” President is ideally suited to preside over such a government. That may well account for Reagan’s continuing popularity, despite hostility from the numerous activists who wish to make their cause the nation’s cause.

Put another way, the President retains his support because people can see that he is not itching to get his hands into their pocketbooks. He seems to be genuinely uninterested in the exercise of power--which is a highly unusual and (mostly) admirable quality in a head of state. In a time of crisis this trait could give rise to real problems, but it has largely been Reagan’s good fortune to avoid such crises. It is worth noting that the Reagan presidency has come a cropper on precisely the occasions when the President has been persuaded, falsely, that action was essential.

His one bad mistake was to believe that he had to “do something” about the handful of Americans who had been taken hostage in Lebanon. Reagan saw the pleading hostage families on television, invited them to the White House and was transformed momentarily into an activist. The result was the Iran-Contra debacle. Similarly,it is worrisome that Reagan seems more recently to have been persuaded (erroneously, in my view) that he must do something about the level of nuclear armaments in the world if his presidency is to be judged a success.

Reagan will no doubt emerge unscathed from the latest flap in Washington. But it may well adversely affect Vice President George Bush. The episode encourages the general sentiment that, even though Reagan may have been a good fellow, it is time for a change in Washington. If so, George Bush will be the loser.