Ronald Reagan: Can He Recover?

• Share

(2 of 7)

What is perhaps most distressing about this portrait is its familiarity. The picture of an inattentive, out-of-touch President may have been limned before, but never so authoritatively. The President who told the Tower commission, formally known as the President's Special Review Board, that he "had not been advised at any time . . . how the plan would be implemented" is the same Reagan who has consistently fumbled names and numbers in press conferences and campaign speeches over the years. The President who did not understand that arms-for-hostages swaps, in the commission's words, "ran directly counter to the Administration's own policies on terrorism" is the same Reagan who has never admitted, probably even to himself, that his tax and spending programs were bound to result in gargantuan budget deficits. The President who apparently did not even try to control the activities of Oliver North, John Poindexter and the rest of the hostage-trading crew (for example, he complained to the Tower commission that no one ever told him North was providing intelligence data as well as arms to Iran) is the same Reagan who has let divisive disputes between the Pentagon and State Department paralyze arms-control policy for six years. The defects of what the commissioners euphemistically called Reagan's "management style," and what some former associates more bluntly term mental laziness, were largely offset during his successful first term by the advice of an exceptionally talented group of aides. But since re-election the President has been surrounded by advisers whose own deficiencies, as the commission makes clear, disastrously dovetail with those of their boss.

So, can Reagan recover? Can he establish control over a fractured and demoralized Administration, set an agenda that would give the nation and world a renewed sense of leadership and prevent the last 23 months of his term from becoming a limping and possibly dangerous procession into the twilight? Perhaps. But it will involve conveying to the American people that he now, finally, understands what went wrong and what mistakes he made, and providing convincing assurances that they won't happen again. The real necessity is that Reagan become again the active, engaged President he was at times, though only at times, during the first term. That will require that he change the habits of a lifetime -- no easy task for a man just turned 76 -- and surround himself ! once more with aides who will challenge him, rather than merely people he feels comfortable with. And even if he does, Washington teems with skeptics who think it may be too late. Says Newt Gingrich, a conservative Republican Congressman from Georgia: "He will never again be the Reagan that he was before he blew it. He is not going to regain our trust and our faith easily."