Ronald Reagan: Can He Recover?

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How much further is this President prepared to go in shouldering blame and cleaning house? A vital clue will come in the televised speech to the nation that he is preparing to deliver at midweek. It shapes up as probably the most important speech of his presidency. At week's end, though, it was still undecided what Reagan would say. Virtually every one of the President's current advisers is arguing that Reagan should forthrightly accept the blame for Iranscam that the Tower commission pinned squarely on him, confess blunders on his own part as well as by his staff, and follow up quickly by submitting to the battering of the press at a news conference. Says one aide: "First, he has to go on television and admit that he blew it, that if he had it to do over, he certainly wouldn't do it again. Second, he's got to take his lumps at a press conference." There is, however, one adviser whose word weighs heavily with the President who partly disagrees: Nancy Reagan. The First Lady has dropped her once adamant opposition to subjecting her husband to the strain and possible humiliation of a press conference. But she still thinks Reagan can get by with suggesting that he was misled by poor advisers, and firing a few staffers in addition to Regan. No one is yet sure whether Reagan can be induced to confess, first of all to himself, any fundamental error. To take the most important example, the President has consistently and vehemently denied that the U.S. was swapping arms for hostages, though the voluminous record assembled by the Tower commission leaves no question that that is what happened. At the televised briefing introducing the findings, Chairman John Tower, the former Republican Senator from Texas, asserted flatly that however the Iran initiative began, "it very quickly became an arms-for- hostages deal." Commission Member Edmund Muskie, a former Secretary of State, asserted that the President personally "was driven by that compassion for the hostages from beginning to end." But it is far from clear whether Reagan has yet admitted that even in his own mind. Speaking generally of a confession of error, one White House aide says, "It won't work, in fact it would backfire, if Reagan says it and doesn't believe it."

Another question is how far the purge triggered by the Tower commission report will go. Said White House Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater: "The President is rightfully angry at the mismanagement that has occurred, and he is determined to make changes." Most of Don Regan's assistants, often derided as the "mice," will shortly follow their chief out the White House door. The Cabinet is a tougher problem. The present members most criticized by the Tower panel are the least likely to go: Secretary of State George Shultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Attorney General Edwin Meese.