Iranscam's

Even Christmas brought no respite. Ronald and Nancy Reagan exchanged gifts (a red robe for her, a horse blanket for him) and on Saturday flew off to Palm Springs, Calif., for a week's vacation, but in the Oval Office the President kept a low profile. Perhaps the holidays would quell the furor over the Iran arms scandal, if only temporarily. But Iranscam offered only more grim tidings: continued inertia and infighting at the White House, increased squabbling between the Administration and Capitol Hill over how to clear up the mess, questions about the health of CIA Director William Casey and the emotional stability of Lieut. Colonel Oliver North, and a wave of Yuletide firings at the National Security Council. While the scandal progressed, seemingly with a momentum of its own, Reagan grew more and more isolated. "It is really sad watching this," sighed a White House confidant. "It is painful."

Surveys by Pollster Richard Wirthlin show the President's popularity inching up again, giving Reagan some cause for holiday cheer. The polls seem to have persuaded the President's strategists that the further away their boss is kept from the controversy, the sooner it will die. Perhaps to that end, the President last week appointed David Abshire, U.S. Ambassador to NATO, to a new Cabinet-level post: coordinator of White House responses to the congressional investigations and other probes into the U.S. weapons sales to Iran and the diversion of profits to the Nicaraguan contras.

Reagan's only substantive public statement on Iranscam last week provoked a minor uproar on Capitol Hill. In a speech to a businessmen's group, the President made the ill-conceived proposal that the Senate Intelligence Committee provide him with its findings on the Iran-contra matter. That way, said Reagan, the White House could declassify the information and release it "so the American people can judge for themselves" what the scandal is about. Since the still incomplete probe has found no evidence of presidential complicity in any misdeeds, the report might exonerate Reagan in the eyes of the public.

The President's suggestion was ridiculed by Senators who felt Reagan was trying to take credit for their investigation. "He ordered his Administration not to tell the Intelligence Committee what he was doing," said Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy. "Now he wants the Intelligence Committee to tell him what his Administration was doing." Leahy added, with exasperation: "Even Alice in Wonderland doesn't get this twisted around."

The President seems to have maintained his resolve against firing any more of his aides. "Reagan is about as rigid as I've ever seen him," says a longtime ally outside the Administration. "He doesn't want to throw anyone overboard to satisfy Washington's considered wisdom. He thinks that he is being well served by his present staff." Chief of Staff Donald Regan apparently feels his job is once again secure. Several aides say the haunted, hunted demeanor that Regan displayed in the early days of the controversy receded after a Dec. 11 meeting with the President. Regan "hasn't told anybody what happened in the talk," says a White House staff member, "but he's been very chipper since then."