Newswatch Thomas Griffith: Taking It to the Public

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It has to Begin's shrewd tactic, with both Jimmy Carter and Reagan, to speak admiringly of Presidents in public, while ignoring their counsels and doing whatever he wants to do. Since this ploy had worked many times before, Begin, in an interview with David K. Shipler of the New York Times, acknowledged some "differences" and "misunderstandings" with the U.S. over Lebanon, but described Regan as "a wonderful friend of the state of Isreal." Five days later, Reagan surprised angered Begin by setting forward an American plan for the Middle East that for the first time openly challenged Begin's course. Part of the U.S. strategy is to avoid polemics with Israel, and for this Secretary of State George Shultz, self-effacing and temperate, is well suited. He too turned up on a Face the Nation show. Fending off the loaded and provocative questions of interviewers, Shultz blandly proposed to outwait Begin's rejection, confident in the end that the American proposals were the surest guarantor of peace. Not flashy, but effective.

Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, in a discouraged and candid survey of his first year as U.N. Secretary-General, complained that in all the wars, uprisings, invasions and disputes of the past year, the U.N. had been all but ignored. The same can hardly TV, said of the American public. As it reads the news, or watches it on TV, the American public may think it is merely looking on, with varying degrees of attention and interest, at someone else's troubles. But to foreign governments, the U.S. public is a participant, and increasingly the most crucial one.