Dress rehearsals no help to a blundering Reagan

Press, 15 October 1982, Page 17

Dress rehearsals no help to a blundering Reagan

From

ROBERT CHESSHYRE

in Washington

“Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States," intones a disembodied voice. And 200 or so journalists rise from their chairs as a smiling, headbobbing Ronald Wilson Reagan walks swiftly along a diagonal gap between the seats to the lowpodium. In manner and panache it is the entrance of a prizefighter making his way to the ring. The setting is the White House East Room—first used by Abigail Adams, the second President's wife, to hang out her laundry to dry. and now an ornate chamber lit by chandeliers and painted gold. Although everyone present has a White House pass or has been meticulously screened, “secret" servicemen—they wear badges proclaiming their trade—hug the walls. Cameras set up a cacophony of irritating clicks, and the President reaches into his pocket for the text of a short prepared homily bashing the Democratic Party. Such is the unchanging opening of a presidential press conference—those ritualistic and intermittent occasions when the holder of the most important elected office on earth gives an account of his stewardship. It is the closest a President comes to the grilling a British Prime Minister faces twice a week at Commons Question Time. President Reagan’s latest conference was his thirteenth in nearly two years in office. It was, as usual, a thoroughly unsatisfactory and sometimes embarrassing event. Unsatisfactory because the random nature of the questions and the lack of followup mean there is no sustained probing of policies: embarrassing because of President Reagan's frequent gaffes.

The conferences are nowstaged in prime television time immediately after the evening news, a recent move from the afternoon, which had been considered a “safer” time by White House staff, since they could chase up the President’s blunders before most viewers got home from work.

Since few people would recognise a political dropped brick if it landed on their toes, the present strategy is to take the risk and” go for the big evening audiences.

The journalists are seated according to the White House’s concept of their importance (i.e., usefulness), with the TV network reporters, the major agencies, and the big city dailies in the front rows.

The President's gaze seldom strays beyond this inner circle, many of whom come to be seen on national television rather than to explore

the President's mind: quite often the same question will be asked twice, the second time by a reporter who has been so keen to be “recognised” that he has not been following what President Reagan has been saying. The mood of deference created by the formal opening and the grand surroundings colours the questioning and subdues the reporters. (Jimmy Carter, who never understood the importance of style, staged his press conferences in a dismal auditorium in an office building.)

It is rare for one of the chosen few to stand his ground and pump in awkward supplementaries, and when a spirited middle-aged toughie, who has been around the White House since Eisenhower’s day, did just that two months ago, she was branded as “rude” by a colleague. (So unusual is such outspoken courage that she became a media wonder for all of a week, appearing on breakfast TV shows and in the gossip columns.) The thirteenth conference was not a lucky one for President Reagan. He made mistakes about productivity figures, unemployment rates, job vacancies, and the percentage of American people at work, which is about par for a half-hour Reagan conference.

He and his aides had to devote much time the next day to clarifying what he had said about the length of time United States marines might have to stay in Beirut. For, in the absence of other clues

as to how the country is being run, these conferences are seized on as holy writ. “Marines to stay in Lebanon, K Reagan says, till pullout by the Israelis and Syrians,” announced a threedeck, three-column headline in the “New York Times,” which also always publishes a verbatim text of the conference. No, said the White House and the State Department, that wasn’t exactly right. President Reagan’s statement was based on “a hope and an expectation” that foreign troops would soon be out of Lebanon and was not meant as an Indefinite commitment of the Marines, which was how it had been read. With the mid-term congressional elections less than a month away the Democratic Party jumped enthusiastically on Reagan’s economic “mis-statements”—the favoured euphemism for when the President gets things hopelessly screwed up. For, however disastrous the American economy, President Reagan is still popular, and it is politically hazardous to be too nasty about him.

So the Democrats’ party chairman labelled him “the great prevaricator,” by which he meant, but did not dare to say, “liar.” The Reagan blunders do not stem, as one might suspect, from want of diligence: he puts in several hours specific study on the issues likely to come up, and goes through two mock conferences with his press advisers—one on foreign and one on domestic affairs—shortly before going live. No actor could be more conscientious. At rising 72 Ronald Reagan is unlikely to master his briefs any better than he has in the past, and we can expect the ritual chase after “mis-statements” and "prevarications” to dog his declining days, but he remains the master of the one-liner.

He was asked: “Does any of the blame (for the recession) belong to you?” “Yes,” he shot back, “because for many years I was a Democrat” Copyright— London Observer Service.