He Didn’t Move Legislation, but in Assessing Reagan We’ll Say He Moved People

It was one of those magical convergences of events that saw the waning days of the Reagan Administration coincide with the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the death of John F. Kennedy.

Watching the primitive kinescope recordings of Kennedy’s captivating performances at press conferences in the old State Department auditorium, it was easy to forget that these 1,000 days produced remarkably little of enduring importance. To be sure, the nuclear-test-ban treaty moved us modestly toward a less dangerous world, the Peace Corps was a noble undertaking, and J.F.K. did set in motion the country’s commitment to civil rights. But for every tangible accomplishment there were at least as many disappointments and even outright fiascoes. The reverence in which Kennedy is held has little to do with his accomplishments. We are seeing the same paradox in the twilight of Ronald Reagan’s years as President. On Jan. 20 Ronald Reagan will leave office with the highest popularity of any President since Franklin D. Roosevelt at his wartime peak in 1943. The 63% approval rating that Reagan enjoys is all the more remarkable for the fact that no postwar President has fared as poorly in getting his programs enacted in the last two years of his tenure than has Ronald Reagan. Since 1986, according to the respected Congressional Quarterly, Reagan has won fewer than 50% of the votes in Congress on which he took a public stand. No President since Richard M. Nixonat the height of the Watergate scandal has had such a low rate of success. And if the reasonable standard of legislative accomplishment is applied to Reagan, his entire second term is distinguished far more by its losses than by its victories.

But that is only half the story of the relationship between a President’s accomplishments and the acclaim that he enjoys. It is also important to look at the Presidents who are adjudged successes when this criterion is applied: Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter.

According to the same standard of winning votes in Congress on measures favored by the White House, two Presidents whose terms ended calamitously came out better than Reagan. Johnson, who was virtually driven from office because of opposition to the Vietnam War, got Congress in 1968 to approve three-quarters of his bills. Carter, beleaguered by the Iranian hostage crisis and a sick economy, went down to defeat in 1980 although legislation that he supported enjoyed a 75% success rate. His approval rating in the Gallup Poll was a dismal 37%.

The fact that Kennedy’s term ended tragically did not destroy all parallels between J.F.K. and Reagan. There is, in general, little consistent pattern between the tangible accomplishments of Presidents and how they are regarded by the American people. Presidents can be loved in spite of their lack of accomplishment or disliked without regard to their successes.

This disjuncture between achievement and affection is part of the split personality of the presidency. It is an office that combines both the symbolic majesty of head of state and the political power of head of government. The symbolic qualities are often dismissed as frivolous ornamentation on a serious job--greeting in the Oval Office the poster girl for the campaign against a dread childhood disease, or delivering an uplifting message while laying wreaths at the tomb of the unknowns. Reagan excelled in his symbolic role as head of state, and the modesty of his legislative successes did not impair public affection for him.

The stories of Reagan’s somnolence, his inattentiveness or his tendency to confound myth and reality did not damage him politically because he never sold himself to the public as a policy mechanic. In a neat variation on the political expectations game, inspiration, not programmatic success, was advanced as Reagan’s strong suit. It was part of the job in which Reagan enjoyed total mastery and for which his aptitudes were admirably suited.

Presidents who define themselves by their management skills or their ability to move legislation are held to a more rigorous standard. It is they who must produce the hefty batting averages. Indeed, they must hit it out of the park every time to avoid having failure in one area of policy spread to another. Carter elected to play on this treacherous and unforgiving terrain. Reagan chose to be an expressive, rather than an instrumental, leader and could thereby transcend the failure of his specific political objectives. Reagan successfully remythologized the presidency after it was stripped down to its simple Jacobin home-spun by Jimmy Carter. He re-clothed the emperor. He re-infused with mystery the Oval Office, informed by an astute awareness that Americans do not want to see it as a mere counting house.

Reagan did not invent this presidential quality; he rediscovered it. Teddy Roosevelt had recognized that the job was “a bully pulpit.” Franklin Roosevelt, more decorously, dubbed it “preeminently a place of moral leadership.” Johnson and Nixon, who lacked the felicity and charm to give personal expression to the inspirational qualities in the presidency, tried to simulate them with excessive pomp and ritual.

The approach taken by the Reagan White House was to curtail severely the number of events in which the President, with his uncertain grasp of issues, would be exposed to spontaneous questioning and multiply the occasions on which Reagan could use his virtuosity with a teleprompter to exalt the office and himself.

President-elect George Bush favors a more engaged and down-to-Earth approach, but in his desire to avoid the isolation and selective exposure of his predecessor there are pitfalls for him. His extensive executive experience--”this fantastic resume,” he once called it--may tempt Bush to play the expert. At such times he needs to remind himself that the yardstick of presidential success is marked, most indelibly, with spiritual calibration. Paul Conrad is on vacation.