Tidings at Mid-Passage

By Hugh Sidey

Ronald Reagan's Administration is at mid-life and shows it. The White House now feels like a settled home, all burnished mahogany and established rituals.

George Bush has family portraits and decorated Christmas trees in both of his elegant offices. Nancy Reagan has shaded the private quarters in her favorite yellows and peaches, and state entertaining is a pageantry of grace and beauty. The gray squirrels come up to the windows of the Oval Office and knock when the President has not gone to Camp David for the weekend and brought back acorns to leave for them on the porch.

Mike Deaver has lost 45 Ibs., and James Baker has shed about 600 hairs. Ed Meese has picked up some of Deaver's pounds but none of Baker's hair. The Reagan Cabinet has gained two women and is a little more mellow, but it still has the same jar for its weekly dole of jelly beans.

The most notable new addition is Lucky, the roly-poly sheep-dog puppy that has captured everybody's heart and one presidential sock, which she chews with relish.

History and tradition live in all the rooms and corridors in the Executive complex which has been scrubbed, waxed and brightened more than ever before.

Theodore Roosevelt's Nobel Peace Prize medal gleams under a muted spot in the Roosevelt Room. Two cannons, trophies of Admiral George Dewey's ("You may fire when you are ready, Gridley") from the Spanish-American War, now proudly guard the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance to the Old Executive Office Building.

Richard Nixon's face on the wall has been upgraded with a new portrait by J. Anthony Wills, and Rosalynn Carter will soon join those ranks when her picture is hung. Calvin Coolidge, in oil, steadfastly watches over the Cabinet Room, although Reagan has yet to match him in number of surplus budgets (Coolidge had five) or tax cuts (three).

Concerns over budgets and arms control remain relatively constant: they came in with Reagan, and will go through his second term. There are, however, many subtle changes in issues and approaches at the midpoint.

One of them is the recognition of the influence of Nancy Reagan on her husband, which has been noted by both China's Deng Xiaoping and the Soviet Union's Andrei Gromyko after official meetings with the President. Reagan's growing interest in foreign policy is another. He has faces and personalities to put onto governments, and friends to call and talk with about international problems. That has changed what was often an academic exercise into a people problem, which Reagan likes.

If the President's budget formula proved a bust in his first four years, his sense that patriotism was about to break out in epidemic proportions did not. Patriotism has reached new levels of intensity, and will be used by the President to power many of his appeals. Historian Walter Berns of the American Enterprise Institute says that one of the most irresistible forces in history is the resonance that comes when people discover a leader who endorses their latent pride.

In addition, Reagan has tilted the world's attention to outer space, whether he planned it that way or not. The arms talks will now focus on Reagan's Star Wars concept for a space-based defense against nuclear missiles as a substitute for the current balance of terror. Virtually every debate about national security will lead into the heavens, where the U.S. space shuttle flies, and plans have been made for a permanent space station.

Perhaps as important as any change has been the growing evidence of the ability of the American people to cope with hard times and bounce back with more energy and daring than before. Many of the aides in Reagan's White House now count the remarkable adjustment of state and local governments to budget cuts, and the resilience of individuals to job loss and career changes, as a sign of a confident and creative society that is more ready than ever to question old assumptions and try new ideas.