Newswatch: Those Low Mid-Term Grades

• Share

(2 of 2)

Year 3 of Reagan thus begins to sound like Year 3 of the past few presidencies. What has saved it until recently from the acrimony accorded previous Administrations was Reagan's amiability—an arm's length amiability, to be sure—with the press. Increasingly, Reagan's genetic optimism is contradicted by the facts. The reporters' questions sharpen; his replies fail to assuage.

Most political journalists seem to foresee continual frustration for Reagan in Year 3. Right-wing columnists like Buchanan and William Safire hope that Reagan can reassert his mastery with a State of the Union speech this week that stoutly repeats his old stands. Then there is the Times's Scotty Reston, grandee of the press corps, a septuagenarian like Reagan, a man more bemusedly tolerant these days than alarmed. He thinks Reagan will compromise when he has to, as he has done before, and then will "probably announce with a smile . . . that he's going home to the sunshine in California at the end of his first term."

Safire, however, is convinced that "the breaking of the President is merrily under way." So often critical of Reagan, he should know better: there really seems little merriment or triumph in the press criticism.