Mr President looking accident-prone

Press, 16 August 1984, Page 10

Mr President looking accident-prone

NZPA-Reuter Los Angeles

President Ronald Reagan’s joke about bomb-: ing the Soviet Union is one of three developments that have made him look acci-dent-prone only months before the November Presidential election.

During Mr Reagan’s summer holiday there has been confusion over the Administration’s tax programme, the bombing quip and now disclosure by a White House aide that Cabinet meetings send Mr Reagan to sleep. A deputy White House Chief-of-Staff, Michael Deaver, said in a television interview this week that Cabinet meetings were occasionally boring and “Mr Reagan sometimes dozes off’.

There was little indication how Mr Reagan’s standing with the American electorate would be affected.

An opinion poll published by the “New York Times,” conducted last week when the tax issue was attracting attention, showed Mr Reagan and the Vice-Presi-dent, Mr George Bush, leading the Democratic chal-

lengers, Mr Walter Mondale, and Miss Geraldine Ferraro by 15 per cent, the same percentage margin they enjoyed in late June. The President’s war joke sent shudders through White House aides. They said Mr Reagan spoke “off the record” and tried to persuade news organisations not to report the remarks. They were clearly perturbed that disclosure would damage him with the voters who, opinion polls show, are deeply concerned about

super-Power tensions. But the joke prompted more critical press reaction in Europe than in the United States, where newspapers generally handled it relatively briefly with little comment.

One of the harshest comments in the United States was by the “Los Angeles Times” columnist, Joe Morgenstern, who wrote that the quip was “idiotic, stupid, reckless and insensitive".

“Our President pretends to feelings he doesn’t have and wisdom he doesn’t possess and he told us more about himself in these few unguarded seconds than he could ever understand or admit,” he said. But the columnist said: “The chances are Uncle Ron will survive his 23 little words. His followers like him for his. irreverent humour.”

A Washington political analyst, who declined to be identified, told Reuters, “Many Americans will think the joke genuinely funny, and there are others who will feel he shouldn’t be joking about bombing the Soviet Union — that he should be doing it.