The Nation's Pulse/Mettle Fatigue

...The Reagan Revolution is not dead...

...They did not reverse Aram Bakshian, Jr has served as an aide to three Presidents, most recently as Deputy Assistant and Director of Presidential Speechwriting to Ronald Reagan, 1981-1983...

...The subsequent Iran "crisis," fanned to white heat by the media and issue-hungry Democrats, has cost Ronald Reagan some temporary erosion in prestige...

...Similarly, the young career Marine, Lt...

...President...

...In short, they suffered from Mettle Fatigue, and did little good for either Ronald Reagan or the candidates (usually losing) he supported...

...T wo bits of anecdotal evidence paint the picture...

...All too often, instead of being replaced by equally able new talent from outside, their slots fall, by default, to second or third echelon placeholders from within —people who may have been adequate at a junior level, but who are not up to their new responsibilities, no matter how long they have toiled, intrigued, and licked boots to get them...

...Is the Reagan Revolution really dead...

...Reagan is still more personally liked and esteemed than most past Presidents at any time in their tenure...

...it is, at the moment, comatose...

...The myopic, courtier/bureaucrat existence of "gofers" in the Forbidden City is hardly good preparation for the kind of work—and the kind of decisions—these two basically able and dedicated men were suddenly called on to deliver in the second term...

...Good yes-men seldom make good executives...

...In early autumn of 1981, I was again asked to take the job and accepted with the stipulation that I would only stay for a year or two...

...again and again, he has jumped off the mortuary slab and routed his would-be coroners...

...The Hill is alive with the sound of keening, and rather zestful keening at that...

...new ideas grow scarce...

...Indeed, it was arbitrary congressional restraints on traditional presidential foreign policy powers that impelled the Administration to resort to dubious sub rosa methods in the first place...

...They are the victims, not the villains, of this little political farce.munications Director Patrick Buchanan, also a victim of intramural sniping, recommended two eligible replacements for the job...

...Elliott, a conscientious Reaganaut if ever there was one, was reportedly pressured out in the summer of 1986 due to in-house feuding...

...Yet today, in Washington, the talk is not so much of lame ducks as dead ducks...

...This is not the stuff—all other things being equal—that crippled presidencies are made of...

...In- ternally, they are not, and the reason is as much a function of history as it is of adverse current events...

...So, too, must be the cure...

...And the principals involved illustrate the Principle involved...

...Hence the Presidential Peter Principle...

...The Democratic opposition has yet to find a positive, unifying theme to counter him...

...Since Ronald Reagan became President—and before the appointment of Frank Carlucci, an accomplished pro with impeccable outside credentials—there had been four national security advisers (the unofficial title for the head of the National Security Council...

...The best and the brightest in any administration have a way of rising to the top early, returning to more rewarding private careers, or striking out on their own for _ • elective office after a few stifling years of service in the White House womb...

...He has a core of strong beliefs and principles, many of which are shared by the electorate...

...But the return to second term normalcy, as those old enough to remember Dwight Eisenhower's torpid second term will appreciate, also has its downside, albeit one we haven't witnessed in twenty-nine years...

...Nevertheless, knowing the current climate, the Administration principals involved acted foolishly...

...On balance, then, the '86 mid-terms marked no major shift in public opinion...

...The first, Richard Allen, resigned under an undeserved cloud, to be replaced by "Judge" William Clark, who left in frustration to be replaced by his deputy, Robert "Bud" McFarlane, who, in turn, resigned under pressure to be replaced by his deputy, Admiral John Poindexter...

...Many journalists and politicians have remarked that, during last November's campaign, President Reagan's speeches lacked force, freshness, and any positive sense of direction...

...Reagan is the first American President since Dwight Eisenhower to survive into the second half of a second elected term...

...Bad as last November's Senate elections were, the House returns were a near-wash, and the GOP made massive gubernatorial gains...

...A junior member of the speechwriting staff who had feverishly campaigned for the position was then allowed to serve in an acting capacity for several months, but was found wanting...

...what it amounts to is an internal, debilitating disease characteristic of any aging political enterprise—even the most popular of two-term presidencies...

...Some of this may be hindsight, but the results speak for themselves...

...The media have long since joined the refrain, and more and more erstwhile Reagan supporters seem resigned to an Administration foreign policy in permanent paralysis and a domestic policy bereft of initiatives and suffering legislative gridlock for the duration...

...One of my subordinates, Bentley Elliott, succeeded me on my recommendation...

...B ut are all other things equal...

...we will still be left with a more fundamental question: Is there life after the first term...

...Oliver "011ie" North, who handled the details of the Iran/contra caper, had spent most of the first term as an isolated, overworked junior NSC aide in the same West Wing basement...

...No politician in the history of the Republic has been the subject of more premature autopsies than Ronald Reagan...

...Nor, except as an exaggerated symptom, has it anything to do with Contragate or the new Democratic majority in the Senate...

...And the main reason is not external headines...

...I know, because I was offered—and declined—his job at the time...

...it need not end his effectiveness as...

...They were both vetoed after much internal intrigue...

...Again, the answer is yes . . . and no...

...In itself, this is undoubtedly a good thing—a return to institutional stability after a long, nerve-shattering interval of aborted presidencies destroyed by scandal, assassination, disasters of war, and, in the case of Jimmy Carter, common incompetence raised to heroic heights...

...President Reagan's original director of speechwriting, Kenneth Khachigian, who had done a masterful job in the 1980 campaign, resigned in early 1981 to pursue a more lucrative private career in California...

...Even as his job approval rating plunged in the New York Times/CBS Poll, 66 percent of respondents still rated Ronald Reagan a strong President, 59 percent said he "has more honesty and integrity than most people in public life," and 52 percent said he "has good judgment under pressure...

...And, again, the Peter Principle was at work...

...When he finally made it to the top, Admiral Poindexter had been almost inevitably blindered by too many years of subordinate seclusion in the basement of the West Wing, an able, intelligent palace eunuch suddenly placed in a grueling command post...

...To make matters worse, the Mettle Fatigue and the Peter Principle tend to reinforce each other...

...Mettle Fatigue and the Peter Principle with a vengeance...

...Meanwhile, the presidential talent pool begins to run dry...

...A nother illustration in a smaller scale...

...At the end of 1983, I accordingly resigned to resume my private career...

...True enough, in happier days, a less confrontational press and a less irresponsibly partisan Congress would probably not have blown the story wide open...

...Oft-repeated slogans and battle cries grow stale on the lips of weary partisans, and fall flat on the ears of jaded listeners...

...A few percentage point deviations in key Senate races in a number of small and medium-sized states tilted the balance in the upper house...

...The author of two books on presidential politick he is currently a corporate executive in New York...

...the mood of America...

...28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1987 Thus, by the time the Iran episode broke, the NSC was being run by the former assistant to a muscled-out former assistant to a caretaker chief who had reluctantly replaced an eclipsed original appointee...

...First, consider the opening chapter of the Iran fiasco...

...the fighting spirit of the first term falls a casualty to ennui and mediocrity in the second...

...The ill, then, is internal...

...Call it Mettle Fatigue or the Presidential Peter Principle...

...His direct superior, White House ComTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1987 29...

...In their elevated second-term capacities, they simply Petered-out, miscast for roles they were never meant to play...

...Do these examples—and they are only two of many—mean that the balance of Ronald Reagan's second term, by its very nature, must be second rate...

...They were outstanding in their first-term capacities...

...Whatever the merits of the case, and however commendable the intentions involved, it is generally agreed that this curious White House/National Security Council operation, hatched with at least the informal logistical assistance of the CIA, miscarried in a most embarrassing way...

...Hence Mettle Fatigue...

...The answer is a clear-cut yes .. . and no...

...long after the last Administration lamb has been sacrificed on the altar of congressional and media wrath...

...The result: Cut off from new energy and new talent during the crucial 1986 campaign, an under-manned White House speechwriting staff was led by the same acting head who had been passed over for the job twice in 1981,and again in 1983, as inadequate .. . and this during what was probably the most important legislative election of Ronald Reagan's presidency...