The Washington Spectator

...On my way down to the White House for the MIPCOPC I picked up a copy of USA Today, which devoted much of its front section ("News") to what it called, in a slight twist, "the toughest press conference the President has ever faced...

...There is a grandeur to Reagan when he emerges from that long hallway and makes his characteristic quick-hop onto the platform, and as the lowing herd responded by unbending its legs and rising to its feet, I got the sense that it was no match for him...

...This insistence was odd...

...if it surfaces—usually presaged by a curiously unhelpful "so, yes" or "so, no"—it has been transformed into a clause better suited to the tail-end of a sentence quite different from the one launched dozens of words earlier...

...wondered Rodney Jackson of San Diego...

...He did so, in a nationally televised address...

...A few seats away from me, Andrea Mitchell squirmed on the edge of her chair, looked at her watch, and pumped her feet nervously...

...Part of the blame for the redundancy must fall to the White House, for holding the press conferences so far apart...

...In the press room I studied the questions closely...

...So it was with Reagan's opening statement, in which he vowed again not to raise taxes...

...The idea was popular...

...Many thoughtful observers (me) consider this the President's most important political position...

...One of the vogue terms in Washington these days is "institutional memory," a phrase redolent of the old quack Jung, meant to conjure up images of mystic streams of democratic know-how running through town like the Civil War-era sewage Canals that are rumored to bubble beneath Constitution Avenue...

...A couple of the questions showed signs of intelligent life, and I appropriated one of them for my own, in case the President pointed my way: "Can Maureen Reagan be stopped...

...time...

...Watching this scene from across the press room, I quickly concluded that I, as a member of the media doing a story that might end up as a story about the media doing a story on the media, could sidle up to Tucker to interview him as he interviewed Eleanor about interviewing Sam, in which case—but I was too slow on the uptake, and my way across the room was blocked by a freelancer from Chicago, who was interviewing Chris Wallace...

...In forty-five minutes the press room was almost empty...

...Not unexpectedly, most of the questions were stupid—"Are we going to have a war...

...Normally such steady milking would elicit a long, mellow moo of pleasure, but instead the herd remained unappeased...

...Under the circumstances concentration has no reward, so I sat back and simply enjoyed the presidential presence...

...For the three weeks before the MIPCOPC, Ronald Reagan had acceded to almost every demand the herd made of him: Must Don Regan go...

...Row after row of hands were poised in midair, anticipating the end of this tragic doldrum...

...Halfway into the press conference, Max McCarthy of the Buffalo News asked a question about acid rain, and the collective intake of breath was audible...

...Four months is a long time for the herd to remember the last MIPCOPC...

...That was a bullshit question," one herdsman told me later, "pure filibustering, buying...

...But then he added: "It was a good performance...

...When, by aiming his finger, Reagan detaches one of the herd from its brethren, he cocks his head genially to hear the question, and then pauses before releasing the often-imitated, never-duplicated "Well . ." What follows is almost invariably mush, and I sympathize with those in the herd who like to have a little meaning to go along with these verbal feeds...

...The White House press corps had its own stupid questions to ask ("Did you feel your policy was wrong at the beginning...

...Would they like one of their own to replace him...

...Two other crews clotted the press room, switching on their lights periodically and panning their cameras as the herd scrambled for pages of the transcript, which was released within minutes of the press conference's end...

...I walked down the White House driveway toward the gate and paused for a moment to watch a local TV reporter on the lawn, rehearsing his stand-up for the late news...

...maybe it is some perverse lagniappe of "charisma...

...but I know that in the East Room, watching him—ruddy under the TV lights, broad-shouldered, straight-backed, good with a quip, and, most remarkable of all, enjoying himself—I couldn't help wishing that this man remain President forever...

...People like Senator Lugar and Howard Baker have access to it...

...It's a good thing that USA Today readers weren't allowed into the East Room, for the herd would have chewed them alive—not because the readers' questions were stupid, but because the stupidity of their questions was of the wrong coloration...

...but in the East Room, it was Widely Regarded by Most Sources as a gross attempt to change the subject from the matter at hand—or hoof...

...Institutional memory" is most often invoked by establishment types—George Will uses it all the time—to scold someone who's rocking the boat...

...Maybe this is the "Reagan magic...

...The President often begins a sentence with a series of words arranged in such a way as to suggest the rudiments of intelligibility...

...An Expert had told the Times that the President would call on "a few oddballs to lighten things up," and I wanted to be ready...

...He mentioned that this was one of the MIPCOPC, and I wasn't surprised at the depreciation, since, as everyone pointed out the next day, the President hadn't "misspoken...

...Is sexual violence increasing in America...

...Bunched in with items on "How more of us have respect for breakfast" and "How more of us are clipping coupons" and an in-depth interview with Burt Reynolds (consigned to oblivion on the op-ed page) that tunneled into the question of when we can expect Cannonball III, the nation's newspaper laid out a full page of questions that "you want the president to answer...

...The Post did this by sending Eleanor Randolph, its media reporter, to cover the reporters covering the press conference...

...The President should watch where he's going...

...They got Howard Baker...

...Because the herd was hyping the press conference so feverishly, it decided to hype the hype as a way of hedging its bets...

...Don Regan didn't, which is why he had to go...

...Hence the MIPCOPC...

...if they did, they would have remembered that the last two press conferences were also the MIPCOPC, just as Reagan's last two TV speeches had been the Most Important Speech of the President's Career...

...In body language and demeanor he was far more at ease than at the last MIPCOPC on November 19...

...The synergy level increased dramatically when, as Eleanor was interviewing Sam Donaldson, Len Tucker of the "CBS Morning News" told his crew to film Eleanor interviewing Sam...

...Then he was gone—fired, rudely and gracelessly, as if the herd had done it themselves...

...Should Reagan apologize, grovel even...

...Two more corners, and he's right back where he started...

...Whatever the term signifies, it's safe to say that the press doesn't have it...

...Not there yet...

...It's always clear his heart is in the right place, and he has the added strength in these press conferences of seeming incapable of constructing a coherent English sentence...

...A camera crew from "60 Minutes" followed Helen Thomas of UPI, covering her as she covered the MIPCOPC ("The press conference wasn't good in the sense of moving history forward," Helen glumly told the "60 Minutes" correspondent...

...the few that weren't were back in the studio...

...in Washington—institutional memory notwithstanding —four months is a long time for anyone to remember anything, as no doubt the President will agree...

...AF 56 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1987...

...but before long a clause will pop up unbidden and wander toward uncharted territory, where it tumbles into wide patches of syntactical quicksand...

...Tonight's press conference is widely regarded as the MIPCOPC," said Tom Brokaw in New York to Chris Wallace on the White House lawn, and Chris couldn't have agreed more...

...THE WASHINGTON SPECTATOR Beforehand, everybody thought that the press conference on March 19 was the Most Important Press Conference of the President's Career—and by Everybody Thought, I mean, of course, that Most Observers Concluded, Several Experts Termed, and Many Sources Agreed—by which I mean, in a word, that it was Widely Regarded as (for brevity's sake) the MIPCOPC...

...The President has turned the corner, but he's not there yet...

...and anything different was viewed as a betrayal, a wandering from the herd...

...He's turned the corner," Sam Donaldson said, after the President's speech on March 9, 'but he's not there yet...

...Coincidentally, many of these terming experts, concluding observers, and wide regarders were in attendance in the East Room on the evening of March 19...

...asked a wimp from Phoenix...