Editorials/Reagan Remote/Faith in the System
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
"Editorials/Reagan Remote/Faith in the System" Historians set out to define the epochs of the past. Successful statesmen define the present. Ronald Reagan has made historic changes in policy and contributed to a vast change in the national...
...Yet the President realized that repeatedly he would have to enunciate the connection between tax cuts and economic growth to make it a theme of the 1980s...
...The State Department fuddyduddies used a simple reporter much as Ambassador Whittlesey used me, admittedly in the national interest...
...dent has masterfully scotched controversy...
...I was photographed with a cow—my camera...
...He allowed it to appear that SDI was negotiable for large cuts in the Soviet missile arsenal...
...Again, no illegality was ever committed...
...Truth be known, the two days I spent with Ambassador Whittlesey were arduous beyond the limits of the tolerable...
...When one is made an ambassador it is rare that he has the resources or contacts to put together a proper "representational" or promotional fund...
...Thus the black cat news story is not strictly speaking a piece of news...
...Moreover, I thought I was rather special when she asked me to visit her in Switzerland "the next time you are in Europe...
...She had cozened me into giving free lectures in a mountainous country, mostly at my expense, and she would not even pick up the bill when I called my office for sympathy...
...She kept me on the road for two days...
...Ambassador Whittlesey had me up at dawn's first light...
...His original 1983 SDI proposal was tacked on to a statement on the MX missile...
...Though his break with the old order is as momentous as Franklin Roosevelt's, this PresiAdapted from RET's weekly Washington Post column syndicated by King Features...
...To further this noble purpose they hornswoggled an artless Washington Post reporter into creating the aforementioned black cat news stories abounding with spectacles of Mrs...
...Politically appointed ambassadors such as Mrs...
...He has, however, only fitfully defined the present...
...She had purchased fifty copies of my latest book, so I thought she admired my art...
...Even in conferring with his advisers in Iceland it seems he was practically the lone champion of SDI...
...Mornings are spent endormi, and I speak only for my usual fee...
...In domestic policy and in foreign policy he has allowed muddle to reign...
...Attorney General Meese and Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle got to see the inside of our embassy...
...There is nothing I wiUingly do for four hours straight, save sleep...
...This undoubtedly allows him greater political freedom, but it weakens his capacity to define the present and to prefigure the future...
...and as is so frequently true its perpetrators have got it all wrong...
...Many of his friends have gone down in flames, but not the President...
...As late as the week before his Reykjavik rendezvous the President was stressing that deployment of SDI was negotiable, encouraging many to doubt his devotion to strategic defense...
...A black cat news story is a Washington specialty, a news story—usually inaccurate—that is flung across the path of a public figure to scare the hell out of him and to haunt forever his career, making him "controversial" at least and badly shaken...
...She ruined two dinners by demanding that I speak, once to a polyglot crowd in a place called St...
...On one unhappy morn, she forced me to hike for four hours up and down the inclines of scenic Appenzell with its governor as they talked of trade and dairy products...
...Whittlesey's intrigue and extravagance...
...I suppose Mrs...
...Extravagance, my hoof...
...If news stories are to be believed...
...But the poor reporter did not know the half of it...
...Though the rest of the nation remains insouciant to its every lurid detail, in the august purlieus of Washington a ghostly controversy now whirls about the name of Faith Ryan Whittlesey...
...I now do, and according to my calculations Ambassador Whittlesey owes me an apology plus a check for $155.18...
...There have to be more than fifty Swiss in need of them...
...Gallen and once in Zurich at the elegant Bolder Hotel, where I was confronted by the Swiss press...
...I now realize that last spring Mrs...
...Now the Post reports that I was but one of dozens of individuals—for instance businessmen and pols—whom she lured to Switzerland, and she got me in the off season...
...He does not support those who support him...
...When I travel in Europe life begins at 8:00 p.m...
...In their smallness they envy her ability to run a proper embassy...
...Through all the ambiguity that has confused the SDI debate the President has failed to make his goals clear, thus giving his critics unwarranted influence in defining his goals and SDI's problems...
...Strategic defense is immensely more complicated, yet until his October 14 post-Reykjavik address the President never had given a nationally televised speech devoted to the Strategic Defense Initiative...
...It is not written to inform readers but to manipulate them into useful indignation...
...The black cat news stories that have suddenly blighted the path of Ambassador Whittlesey were confected by a bevy of State Department fuddyduddies...
...With $83,000 she could have bought a lot more books...
...Yet perhaps there are also benefits to be realized from clarifying one's goals...
...Before reading the Post, I did not know that she had raised a representational fund of "at least" $83,000...
...Most foreign service officers are of modest means...
...Nonetheless, they have performed a public service...
...As the redoubtable Post reported in October, I was one of the reputed beneficiaries of the Ambassador's largesse...
...The whole controversy puts me in mind of those lurid 1981 news stories of how Nancy Reagan talked patriots into buying new White House china...
...The range of SDI supporters was broad, including such illustrious names as Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, and Jeane Kirkpatrick...
...By encouraging ambiguous interpretations of his deeds he has enervated his critics...
...Whittlesey can, and so in keeping with the pettiness of our era many at the State Department want to prohibit such funds...
...The President's failure in Reykjavik illuminated a far greater failure, one that will surely impair Ronald Reagan's impact on history...
...The mystery of Ronald Reagan is why he is so often alone...
...Thereafter he maneuvered in muddle...
...What is more, they disapprove of her proAdministration positions on Central America and the Strategic Defense Initiative...
...By failing to illuminate his goals he has hobbled them with doubt and confusion...
...When he pushed back from the conference table at Reykjavik for the last time, having finally impressed at least Mikhail Gorbachev of his devotion to SDI, he was absolutely alone...
...Supply-side economics was a commonplace economic concept...
...That is why in early October Congressman Jack Kemp and writer Gregory Fossedal mustered a range of SDI supporters both to publicize that recent technological advances make limited deployment of SDI feasible soon and to encourage the President to remain resolute on behalf of SDI at Reykjavik...
...They have been able to insist that arms control is the goal of our time, though since March of 1983 the President's goal has most certainly been national security through "deep" strategic cuts and through the assured security of the Strategic Defense Initiative as opposed to Mutual Assured Destruction, the nuclear nightmare that has been the inspiration for so many decades of cheap art and puerile oratory...
...Mrs...
...Ronald Reagan's aloofness has enfeebled the champions of his policies outside the Administration, and when this mysterious man retires they will have more difficulty assuring that the legacy of Ronald Reagan endures than they should...
...Possessed of a deeply held set of political beliefs and fortified by the magnificent courage that allowed him to overcome all the treachery in Reykjavik, he remains always alone...
...Whittlesey took me to the cleaners...
...The President had failed to define a major theme of his administration and it fell to these and to others outside the White House to defend the strategic concept of the 1980s, defense...
...That is the custom with such funds...
...Whittlesey, our Ambassador to Switzerland, has fallen victim to recent black cat news stories...
...Once I was there she admitted that she had bought my book "to explain the 1984 election to the Swiss...
...The world would have realized that the 1980s marks the dawn of strategic defense against nuclear aggression...
...Ronald Reagan has made historic changes in policy and contributed to a vast change in the national mood away from pessimism and passivity toward optimism and self-reliance...
...After all this she insisted that I owed her $155.18 for telephone charges...
...He is the leader of a new poUtical consensus, embracing old conservatives and liberals, but he does not work with them...
...Of course, pol that he is, Ronald Reagan has usually benefited from muddle...
...Whittlesey's fund sounded very sensational to our innocent reporter, but it had been examined and approved by the State Department, as were all contributions to it...
...The muddle that Ronald Reagan courts has given his critics more influence in defining the issues of the day than they deserve...
...Had the Great Communicator defined the national purpose more vividly he would not have been so painfully used as he was in Reykjavik...
...I hope she treated her other guests more considerately...
Vol. 19 • December 1986 • No. 12
