American Notes: Mar 24, 1986

LARGESSE Smiling Irish Eyes

St. Patrick's Day came a bit early on Capitol Hill last week. In the midst of Congress's struggle to pare the federal budget and close the gaping deficit, the House agreed by voice vote to send $250 million over the next five years to Northern Ireland. The money will go into an international economic-support fund established under an Anglo-Irish agreement signed last year by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her Irish counterpart Garret Fitz-Gerald to give Catholics more of a voice in the affairs of Northern Ireland. The aid proposal allied two politicians who share Irish ancestry but rarely see eye to eye: Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Tip O'Neill. "As you know, the President and I have had our differences," said O'Neill. "But we have no differences on the need to end the violence in Northern Ireland." The package sailed through the House without a glitch, and is expected to win approval in the Senate, where its sponsors are two other experienced Irish pols, Edward Kennedy and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The Administration is finding the road much bumpier for the rest of its $16.2 billion foreign aid package for fiscal year 1987, which many lawmakers regard as an exorbitant expenditure in the era of Gramm-Rudman.

When she was elected to a third term as president of the National Organization for Women last July, Eleanor Smeal vowed to take the depleted and discouraged women's movement "back into the streets." In Washington last week, Smeal and more than 80,000 feminists from as far away as Texas and Minnesota did just that with a march along Pennsylvania Avenue to reaffirm their support for legal abortion and birth control. It was the largest women's rights demonstration since a 1978 rally for the never ratified Equal Rights Amendment, and the number of marchers completely eclipsed the 36,000 who attended Washington's annual antiabortion protest in January. The march, which was to be complemented by a similar demonstration in Los Angeles a week later, was meant to underscore poll results showing a majority of popular support for freedom of choice. "It's about time we show our numbers," said an exuberant Smeal.

It is January 1989 and a doddering, pajama-clad Ronald Reagan is balking at leaving the White House to attend his successor's inauguration: it is too cold outside. So begins The White House Mess, a just-published satire that has titillated Washington by lampooning the self-serving banalities of political memoirs. This capital à clef was written by onetime White House Intimate Christopher Buckley, 33, former speechwriter for Vice President George Bush, as well as the son of Conservative Columnist William F. Buckley, an old friend of the Reagans'. The novel, however, "doesn't seem to have hurt any feelings," admits Buckley. "Maybe I've failed."