Going Home a Winner

By Laurence I. Barrett

When his presidency was just five hours old, on Inauguration Day, 1981, Ronald Reagan took a respite from the celebration and the constant bulletins about the hostages en route home from Tehran by joking with reporters, "It's been a very wonderful day. I guess now I can go back to California, can't I?"

The quip was a typical Reagan play on his ostensible disdain for Washington and for the traditional politician's obsession with power. In a profoundly personal way, Friday's Inaugural will be an even more wonderful day for the nation's oldest President. Eight years ago, many skeptics predicted that he would have to go West for good after one failed term. Instead, he heads home on his own schedule, with a strong sense that he has done what he came to do. Despite the minefield awaiting his successor, Reagan believes, as he grandly put it the other day, "A revolution of ideas became a revolution of governance on Jan. 20, 1981."

That Reagan leaves Washington and the nation very different places from those he found is beyond dispute. How much of his personal triumph translates into durable accomplishment is far more debatable. But those doubts will be invisible as Reagan and George Bush ride to the Capitol together. For Reagan, the Inaugural puts the final adornment on the sash proclaiming him the era's most successful President, if only in political terms.

Though historians will give him a rough time because of the impact of some of his policies, even the toughest appraisals will have to recognize successes that seemed impossible eight years ago. Reagan's four immediate predecessors presided over a frightening decline in presidential authority. Neither Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford nor Jimmy Carter could manage two full terms. Their serial failures left the presidency bordering on decrepitude. That an elderly celluloid cowboy from California unencumbered by heavy intellect, workaholism or Washington experience might halt that decline was inconceivable to the Eastern smart set. Yet Reagan not only arrested the presidency's slide, he reversed it. His high approval rating -- 64% last week, 5 points above Dwight Eisenhower's in December 1960 -- is only one crude measure of that change. Most Americans are more sanguine about their lot and their leaders than they were in 1980. Government paralysis is no longer the norm.

That feeling of serenity, though diluted by a variety of concerns, is part of the foundation of Reagan's political trifecta: his re-election in 1984, his personal recovery from the trough of the Iran-contra scandal and his final vindication at the polls last November. Not since the Roosevelt-Truman era has either party won three consecutive presidential elections. Not even the popular Eisenhower had the pleasure of escorting his designated heir to the Capitol.

Their advanced age, Republicanism and durability create some parallels between Eisenhower and Reagan. But as a politician, the general was not the actor's equal. Political scientist Richard Neustadt points out that "Ike came into office with the status of a genuine national hero and merely had to preserve that aura. Reagan came in only with what he had on his back and had to create his stature." One indispensable item Reagan carried was a quiver of messages and images, simple but sharp, honed over his many years as a conservative advocate. His great skill was in making a few of those arrows stick in the electorate's consciousness.

Later there would be endless musing over "Reagan luck" and "Reagan magic." He was in fact often fortunate. Not only did John Hinckley's bullet stop an inch from Reagan's heart, for instance, but the shooting occurred at a time when the public was still forming its concept of the new President. Reagan's image was enhanced when he responded with both wit and grit. But the incantations about "magic" imply mystical powers beyond the ken of other politicians. There is nothing mysterious about a veteran public performer with a knack for timing, a keen sense for what will please a mass audience, and a talent for hiring adroit p.r. advisers.

Reagan could never master the arcana of nuclear weaponry or arms control. Even the finer points of economics, one of his majors in college, eluded him. But he understood Middle American folklore and myth very well. After growing up in small-town simplicity and pursuing his first career in Hollywood, Reagan needed no tutoring in symbolism. By 1980 a frustrated, confused America had lost all patience with stagflation at home, impudent adversaries abroad and ambiguity from its leadership. The moment was perfect for a leader who dealt in stark simplicities. When he declared that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem," he appealed to his countrymen's primordial suspicion of authority. When he talked of God's plan for American freedom, he revived the nation's self-image as uniquely blessed. When he inveighed against tax rates, he played on Everyman's resentment against the burdens of the commonweal. Last week Reagan followed what he called the "great tradition of warnings in presidential farewells" by protesting the way history is taught these days. He urged renewed emphasis on American uniqueness to achieve an "informed patriotism."

That Reagan believed in his spiel, and in himself, more fully than do most politicians enhanced his credibility. Though he has been living like gentry for nearly 40 years, his geniality kept him in touch with the folks. "Having been a Roosevelt Democrat was an asset," Neustadt observes. "Though he turned far to the right, he never became a three-piece-suit, business Republican." Instead he became something new under the Republican sun, a smile-button conservative who persuaded voters that less taxation meant more prosperity, that less government facilitated the pursuit of happiness. And he taught the Washington establishment that compulsive attention to detail in the Oval Office simply got in the way of big ideas.

None of this could please the crowd for very long without some hard decisions and tangible results. During Reagan's first term, he delivered < enough of these to prove that he could make the White House work again. Was he serious about fighting those nasty special interests? He broke the strike by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers' Association and obliterated the union. Would he tame the Kremlin? He put Moscow's bargaining feelers on hold while pumping up the Pentagon budget to gargantuan proportions. Though the process often seemed serendipitous, depending heavily on events in Moscow, Reagan eventually presided over a microwave warming of relations with the Soviet Union. No one can be sure how genuine or durable the thaw will be, but it has helped Reagan enormously. With the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in force and Moscow in a conciliatory mood, he can ignore the criticism that his conduct of national-security affairs has been generally incoherent.

Would he really attack inflation, high interest rates and unemployment? Reagan rammed through Congress his radical tax-reduction scheme and some curbs on domestic spending. Just as important, he supported the harsh restraints already being applied by the Federal Reserve Board under Paul Volcker. Inflation succumbed, at last, to the thumbscrew treatment after Reagan waited out the most severe recession since the 1930s. This painful therapy, together with the borrowing binge required to finance the budget and trade deficits, produced the economic expansion now in its seventh year. Today, with unemployment at a 14-year low of 5.3% and inflation at a tolerable 4.4%, Reagan has a shield against charges that his economic accomplishments rest on quicksand. When asked about the intractable pathology of the underclass, he sometimes replies, accurately but irrelevantly, that the newspapers are full of help-wanted ads. That a booming economy cannot match the chronically unemployed with available jobs is an irony Reagan chooses to ignore.

Liberals still fulminate about the so-called Teflon factor that ostensibly insulated Reagan from the penalties for his weaknesses and mistakes. This complaint ignores some large facts. No Teflon protected Reagan's approval rating during the 1981-82 recession or the Iran-contra debacle. Moreover, commentators have shouted themselves hoarse warning about the dangers of the budget deficits.

Yet a huge disconnect occurred. Reagan, understanding better than Beltway insiders what really interests voters, usually concentrated on a handful of fundamentals. Having established his credibility early, he was able to get by on what amounted to a TV-era version of bread and circuses. The bread was the economic recovery, which created a sense of well-being among most members of the middle and upper classes. The circuses were mainly Reagan's performances as head of state, in which he could be as inspiring, consoling, reassuring or entertaining as the event demanded. After the Challenger disaster, for instance, his moving speech was a televised condolence call on the nation that helped distract attention from NASA's ongoing failures.

In the use of American military force abroad, Reagan drew the U.S. back from its post-Viet Nam allergy to intervention. He established his bona fides as tough guy so thoroughly that, unlike Carter, he was largely immune to political damage when terrorists demonstrated in bloody fashion just how vulnerable the country still is. Two hundred forty-one servicemen died in Beirut, and 259 people were killed when Pan Am Flight 103 went down last month. In the Tehran crisis that destroyed Carter, the hostages survived.

After the dour, crabbed atmosphere of the Carter years, the country needed a mood change. The great failure, and great paradox, of the Reagan era is that its protagonist succeeded too well on that score. His rhetoric on domestic matters encouraged Americans to celebrate instant gratification at the expense of the future, while his policies channeled national energies away from enterprises of common purpose. Reaganomics increased the national debt by 170% and converted the U.S. from a major creditor to a vulnerable debtor in the global financial market.

An inch below the lush turf of the Reagan prosperity, fault lines are already formed. While the elderly have grown more affluent, one-fifth of America's children live in poverty. While there was a legitimate need to increase defense resources, the Administration tolerated such sloth that blatant waste and scams eventually evoked an anti-Pentagon backlash. While Reagan celebrated deregulation as the key to a more creative economy, lax scrutiny of the savings and loan industry contributed to widespread failures that will cost taxpayers tens of billions. Wall Street's obsession with wasteful takeovers diverted resources away from constructive investment, while stagnation in basic research for civilian technology inhibited innovation. Efforts to compete effectively with Japan and other striving industrial rivals suffered accordingly. Looser ethical standards and the adoration of capitalism led to a wave of scandals in and out of government that rivaled the excesses of the Gilded Age.

Many of these problems did not start with the Reagan Administration. And though the national conceit puts the presidency at the center of our political solar system, no President can shine so brightly that every shadow disappears. Reagan's failure was to deny frequently that the shadows existed. While incumbency rounded out some of his early one-dimensional ideas, Reagan clung tenaciously to his phobias concerning Government intervention and federal taxes. Even Bush has had to acknowledge that Washington must act more vigorously in some areas, but Reagan to the end fought that reality. In one of his several farewell talks, he compared advocacy of government activism to "a false determinism ((that will)) take us a mile or two more down what Friedrich Hayek called 'The Road to Serfdom.' "

Hayek, an economist Reagan admires, preached that the free market conquers all. During the first term, such nostrums were handy tools for trimming some obsolete domestic programs and reducing marginal tax rates. But when Reagan reached those goals, he lacked intellectual material for a second act worthy of the first. Here another of his weaknesses came into play with devastating effect. Throughout his career his detached management style made him depend heavily on his senior advisers. After his 1984 electoral triumph, his fatigued White House staff needed relief. Instead of reorganizing it himself, Reagan allowed his then chief of staff, James Baker, and Treasury Secretary Donald Regan to work out a job exchange that suited their desires much more than the President's needs.

Reagan went into his second term with a lackluster cadre of close advisers determined to "let Reagan be Reagan." The energy level dropped, and so did the level of expertise. Only after the traumas of the Republicans' 1986 loss of the Senate and the Iran-contra scandal upset the chessboard did Reagan put effective knights into play again. But he had lost two precious years in the interim, and with them the initiative in dealing with accumulating problems.

This Friday at noon, Bush inherits the challenges Reagan leaves behind. Eight years ago to the day, as the hostages were leaving Iran, Reagan had the pleasure of lighting the White House Christmas tree a month late; Carter had left the tree dark as a symbolic acknowledgment of the crisis. In the years that followed, Reagan sent a great deal of welcome electricity into the nation's circuitry. Now Bush must figure out how to pay the power bill.