Salvador's Supersalesman

With an assist from Duarte, Reagan reassures Congress and critics

The Reagan Administration wants to give billions of dollars to Central America, it says, to support liberty and political pluralism. Yet democracy in Central America is a patchy business at best. From among the few authentic democrats in the region, the U.S. has staked most of its money and hopes on José Napoleón Duarte, who will assume El Salvador's presidency on Friday. Last week he came to Washington for four days to justify that investment, and succeeded: Duarte won the hearts and minds of conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats, of President Reagan and severe Reagan critics. "No one could talk to him for half an hour without believing in him," said a high State Department official. "He exuded credibility." Just so: a day after Duarte returned home, where his army is firing a million rounds of ammunition a week in an unending war against leftist guerrillas, the House voted overwhelmingly to send El Salvador $62 million in emergency military aid, without conditions.

Reagan had prefaced his press conference last week with a stern speech in favor of more aid for Central America, and then faced a flurry of questions about his policies around the world. Indeed, the various, precarious strands of foreign policy dominated Washington's agenda all week. Pugnacity from Moscow and aerial assaults by Iran and Iraq on shipping in the Persian Gulf naturally prompted concern, even skittishness. "Mr. President," his final press conference inquisitor asked, "how do you account for the fact that so many people . . . think that during the last 3½ years the world has moved closer to war?" Reagan had been prepped by two mock press conferences with his staff. "That is because that's all most of the people have been hearing . . . that I somehow have an itchy ringer and am going to blow up the world," he said.

Have Reagan's foreign policies actually made the world "a little safer," as he suggested last week? The American voters' answer to that question may be crucial in next fall's presidential election. Reagan's political advisers worry about a contagion of war fears. "We think the talk is getting carried away," says one White House aide. Reagan's soothing, rather lighthearted press-conference manner was meant to calm those national jitters.