Called ‘Upbeat,’ ‘In Mint Condition’ : Reagan Looks Ahead as His Term Dwindles

The final Christmas parties of their final White House Christmas are over.

Here in Los Angeles, President and Mrs. Reagan spent the holiday at their new home with three of their four children. Back in Washington, the elegant State Floor of the White House has been turned over to tourists ogling the holiday decorations. On Pennsylvania Avenue, carpenters are busy building the elaborate viewing stand from which George Bush will preside over the inaugural parade on Jan. 20, hours after becoming the nation’s 41st President.

Farewell Meetings

Throughout December, Ronald Reagan’s White House days were filled with holiday celebrations and farewell meetings, which he would prolong to tell stories and reminisce about his time in office.

They all trooped through the Oval Office: assistant secretaries from the Cabinet departments, supporters from out of town, and even, one day, private business people who had worked on the 1984 inauguration. They sought, and received, that brief moment that produces an 8-by-10 color photograph of the presidential handshake. By mid-January, when the procession will end, nearly 500 will have stopped by the office for a few minutes with the President during his final few weeks in office.

And one day, after he posed for pictures with mounted policemen at the U.S. Park Police stables in Washington, one officer turned to Reagan and said: “Happy trails, Mr. President.”

But despite the constant reminders that his presidency is nearly over, the public Reagan is going through his routine much as he has, day in and day out, during each of the last eight years, although he extended his annual New Year’s holiday in Southern California by several days.

Shows No Regret

Even as the round of farewells continued last week up until his departure for California, said a senior White House assistant, Reagan showed no regret that within weeks his eight-year tenure will be over. Indeed, the official said: “There’s no sense that anything’s changed.

“His attitude is, ‘I’ve got my job to do and every day I go to the office and every day I go home, and one day I won’t,’ ” the aide said recently. “When the door closes on Air Force One to take him home (on Jan. 20), his focus will be on the ranch or on Los Angeles or on what’s for dinner. He has this ability to look forward and not look back.”

But, from time to time, the word “bittersweet” has begun to creep into the President’s vocabulary, when asked to describe how he feels about leaving the White House.

He mentioned it a couple of weeks ago at a dinner for members of the House of Representatives. The thought crept in again last week in an ABC-TV News interview before he left Washington when he said: “A sweet part, of course, is looking forward to California and our home and things there. But it is difficult to say goodby to so many people who have worked together here for these eight years, and the parting is the bitter part.”

‘In Mint Condition’

In private, the President--described by friends as being “in mint condition” and “really quite upbeat”--is telling jokes and stories as ever, even as close friends kid him as they did at a small pre-Christmas dinner at the White House that he is about to become yet another out-of-work actor.

He has been bubbling with excitement over White House historical details that he just recently read in a two-volume study of the executive mansion. He led one group of recent visitors on a room-by-room tour, revealing architectural changes that have been made over nearly 200 years, after first exploring the entire building, the initial volume in hand, to trace the changes by himself.

Upstairs in the White House family quarters, Nancy Reagan’s red couches are gone, shipped back to California and replaced with government-owned furniture until George and Barbara Bush move in. Just before leaving for the trip here, Reagan filled seven suitcases with clothes for the move West, leaving behind only what he thought he would need during the two weeks in January between his return to the White House from the Christmas-New Year’s holiday and the inauguration.

Moved by Christmas Scenery

And touring the first floor, where the towering Christmas tree is dripping with ornaments in the Oval Room and the East Room has been turned into a winter woodland of a half-dozen or so trees covered with synthetic snow, the President and First Lady kept asking close friends: “Have you ever seen the White House look as beautiful as it does this year?”

As far as the work of the presidency goes, said one Reagan aide: “He’s mostly looking forward to leaving. He’s very comfortable with himself. I don’t think there’s any regret he can’t run for a third term.”

In the final six months of his term, Reagan, contrary to some expectations, continued to make news: He held a summit luncheon with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, he stirred up controversy with his veto of ethics legislation, and his Administration opened U.S. contact with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

“If you tried to design a perfect ending, it would include a hard-fought campaign in which your candidate won, and then you would take part in a superpower meeting,” said White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater. “The President has a lot to feel good about.”

But even an event as special as his lunch on Dec. 7 with Gorbachev produced no outward nostalgia in the President, according to those who accompanied Reagan to the meeting in New York.

The President, one aide said, spent the short flight home from New York “cutting up. . . . making jokes and playing with the staff.” There was no discussion of the historic nature of the meeting or the fact that in all likelihood it would be the last between Reagan, as President, and the Soviet leader.

And, one Administration official, noting that a number of his colleagues are desperately seeking new jobs, remarked: “There are a lot of people wandering around the White House with their heads down, but the President is not one of them.”

Rather, said another high-level aide, Reagan “walks down the hall with a special kind of gait.”

Fitzwater said that each farewell dinner the President has attended in Washington has turned into a tribute. “That tends to put him in a good mood the next morning,” the spokesman said.

Still, the President’s generally upbeat demeanor stems from more than just that. His effervescent, sanguine mood at leaving the most powerful job in politics may indeed come from the fact that Reagan will not be retiring--not in the sense that he will suddenly drop out of sight.

‘Mashed Potato Circuit’

He has said many times that he intends to be active on what he calls the “mashed potato circuit,” promoting conservative causes. (“Well, you know, in Hollywood if you don’t sing or dance, you wind up as an after-dinner speaker,” he is fond of saying.)

In a more serious vein, he observed in a question-and-answer session after a farewell address on foreign policy at the University of Virginia that, “for everyone who ever leaves this post, there are things you didn’t get done.”

So, he said, in future months he intends to speak out, “extolling the virtues of the line-item veto and a balanced budget amendment--and again defending the right of us to maintain our military defenses. . . . “

Charles Z. Wick, the director of the U.S. Information Agency and a good friend with whom the Reagans spent Christmas Eve in Bel-Air, said Reagan does not look at Jan. 20 as the end of an era. Rather, Wick said: “As far as he’s concerned, this is the beginning of a new adventure.”

The President seems comfortable leaving George Bush, his loyal vice president, in charge. At a recent meeting with the President-elect, Reagan jokingly said: “After I’m gone, and the trade balance improves, I don’t want you taking credit for it.” Bush cracked back: “My concern is that the trade balance will get worse, and people will blame me.”

From time to time, Reagan will turn to Bush, and say, “George, you’re going to have to look into this”--generally, when they are discussing foreign policy issues--and such comments are often laced with Reagan’s views of foreign leaders, one White House official said.

Leaving a Clean Desk

Remarked another White House official: “There’s a minimum amount of his saying, ‘George will have to do it.’ ” Instead, Reagan is trying to leave a clean desk, and is telling visitors, perhaps ignoring what has become reality, “one of these days I guess I’m going to become a lame duck. But not yet.”

Well before he flew out here Friday, the President’s focus was on California. With his deft delivery and self-deprecating humor, he has been communicating his California thoughts.

At the New York luncheon with Gorbachev, the President was asked what the Soviet leader should see in New York. “My answer was California,” the President said later.

Two weeks ago, during a speech on domestic policy, Reagan said that, “as soon as I get home to California, I plan to lean back, kick up my feet and take a long nap. Now, come to think of it, things won’t be all that different at all.”

In fact, there is one thing the President would like to change: He says he would like to be able to go out in public without attracting large crowds.

“From time to time, he’s reflected on how he can’t go in and buy a pack of gum in the drugstore,” Wick said.

Prefers Front Doors

Looking forward to shedding at least some of the trappings of the presidency--the security concern, for one, that has led him to enter hotels through kitchens and back alleys to avoid contact with the public--he has told a senior aide countless times: “It’ll be terrific to walk into the front door of a place.”

Nancy Reynolds, a longtime friend of the Reagans, remarked that “in general, he sees himself as having more freedom--freedom to decide if he wants to spend every weekend at the ranch.”

“They’re looking forward to the idea they can come and go. They’ll go to a lot of people’s homes. They love going to people’s homes for dinner. Who knows? Maybe he’ll star in a movie,” she said, raising the extremely unlikely possibility that Reagan would return to his old profession. “There’s a sense of gaiety. The world is his oyster.”

James Gerstenzang reported from Washington and Los Angeles and Lee May from Washington.