Reagan beset by one gaffe after another

Press, 17 November 1981, Page 8

Reagan beset by one gaffe after another

By

MICHAEL PUTZEL

of the Associated Press (through NZPA) Washington

Scarcely a year after his landslide election VictoryPresident Reagan suddenly seems to have lost the reins that held his well-disciplined team in the traces.

After a season of masterfully engineered legislative triumphs the Administration is beset by embarrassments of its own making, both in the domestic and foreign arenas.

One by one. four of the men most responsible for what the Reagan Administration represents — Alexander Haig. Caspar Weinberger. David Stockman, and Richard Allen — were embarrassed by their own words or deeds.

The week-old troubles of Mr Haig and Mr Weinberger were overshadowed by Mr Stockman’s tendered — but rejected — resignation, and Mr Alien’s still-mysterious acceptance of an envelope containing $lOOO apparently meant for the President's wife.

Each new case appeared more serious than the last. Within two weeks, the problems have escalated from nettlesome in-fighting about policy disputes to a criminal investigation of the President’s National Security Adviser.

Perhaps it began with Mr Reagan himself. The President, in extemporaneous comments to a group of editors, startled Europeans by saying he could envision a limited nuclear war confined to the Continent.

Then, a long-simmering uneasiness between Mr Reagan’s White House staff and his Secretary of State boiled over -when Mr Haig complained publicly that someone in the White House was conducting a guerrilla campaign against him. Although Mr Haig did not name anyone — and the White House insisted no “guerrillas” were being sought — a prime candidate appeared to be Mr Allen, president Reagan's National Security Adviser who sometimes competed with Mr Haig for the President's ear. Ten days ago. Mr Reagan called Mr Haig and Mr Allen on the carpet and told them to halt the bureaucratic backbiting that was interfer-

ing with the conduct of American foreign policy. .White House spokesmen had just announced that Mr Reagan considered the matter closed when Mr Haig, a former N.A.T.O. commander, reopened the limited-war fracas by telling a congressional . committee that N.A.T.O. had a contingency for exploding a demonstration nuclear blast should the Soviet Union start a war in Europe. He had hardly uttered the words when Defence Secretary Weinberger, who also has had a few scrapes with Mr Haig, testified before the same panel, and said no such contingency plan existed, nor should it.

The White House, again caught by surprise, tried to explain that there was no dispute, that the two Cabinet officers had breakfasted together that morning and discussed their testimony and that both men were somehow right. Enter Mr Stockman, the brilliant young Budget Director who. more than any other individual, had devised the Reagan economic programme that has been the benchmark of the new Administration. Mr Stockman, apparently as an intellectual exercise, "had been meeting regularly for months with a “Washington Post" editor to discuss the progress and pitfalls of the plan. The editor. William Greider. published on account of those meetings in the December issue of the “Atlantic Monthly," complete with quotations’ indicating that while Mr Stockman publicly pushed the Reagan programme. he had private doubts about the supply-side economics theory on which the programme was based. The theory was a neat disguise for traditional Republican “trickle-down" economics, he suggested, and Mr Reagan’s across-the-board tax cut was really a “Trojan Horse" to push through substantial tax breaks for the wealthy.

Even Mr Stockman's staunchest defenders on Capitol Hill admitted that his comments had hurt the Administration’s credibility and Mr Stockman's own ability to carry on with the Budget cuts President Reagan wants.

After reading the article himself. Mr Reagan first

gave Mr Stockman an opportunity to explain himself to Republican congressional leaders, then abruptly cancelled a lunch with the VicePresident and summoned his Budget Director to the White House. As the shaken and contrite Mr Stockman said later, his 45-minute lunch with the President "was more in the nature of a visit to the woodshed after supper." The President was not happy. But after hearing Mr Stockman apologise for what the Budgpt Director later termed ins “rotten, horrible, unfortunate metaphor" and after Mr Stockman pledged full allegiance to the Reagan policy, the President declined to accept Mr Stockman’s proffered resignation. As analysts contemplated the extent of damage to Mr Reagan’s economic initiatives and wondered whether the cleansed young Cabinet officer could . regain his credibility. attention abruptly shifted back to the foreign’sphere. White House spokesmen, again caught by surprise, were attempting to explain as the week ended how National Security Adviser Allen could have received $lOOO in cash from Japanese journalists grateful for an interview with Mrs Reagan, left it in a safe in the Executive Office Building, and forgotten about the money until F. 8.1. agents asked him about it eight months later. On- Saturday. Mr Allen denied soliciting the $lOOO and Mr Reagan, asked if he intended to keep Mr Allen on. declined to comment.

One Reagan aide, upon learning that the first White House explanation of the matter had erroneously said the case was closed, blurted. “I’ve been here before.” The aide, like many in the Reagan Administration, is a veteran of the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon, and while noone suggested the Allen matter had reached scandalous proportions, the desperate efforts to explain the improbable stirred some old memories.

Once again, as it had been doing all too often of late, the White House information apparatus had lost the initiative. And once again, it was embarking on a mission it refers to simply as "damage control."