Media

...Washington, too, has a social set of insiders in an overheated industry, and they, too, constantly appraise the central figures in insiders' terms...

...Commenting on the slogans about transferring power "back" from "the politicians" to "the people," Frank admitted that politicians like himself have their defects but added: "the people...

...WILLIAM LEE MILLERILLIAM LEE MILLER...

...The word used thus refers, I learned, not to films but to a social set...

...of exaggerated momentums...

...It was gratifying to hear so unwhitmanesque a comment from a congressman...

...The momentous triumphs in Congress on the budget and taxes were well scripted for suspense, provided unappealing and ineffective antagonists, came to a clean resolution, and left even Reagan's opponents awe-struck...

...and of an endless fertilizer of gossip enriching the exaggerations...

...Ronald Reagan's media-vindicated mana had more appeal than David Stockman's economics, Irving Kristol's philosophy, Jerry Falwell's morality, or Jesse Helms's politics...

...His amiable, joking, cowboy-shirted, jelly-bean-eating personality is more notable, at first anyway, than either his or his opponent's ideology...

...The president," as they call him here, has so far been a prime exhibit of an ancient quasi-religious category: the king's luck...

...In the White House Reagan has displayed the media-derived talent for casting events in a bright-colored and simple dramatic line, so as to create emotional clarity for that public...

...Here are some sentences from one of those books: "Scandinavian sagas tell us of a 'king'sluck' to which pertain victory in battle and invulnerability, healing power, and good weather, particularly during sea voyages . . . The king's 'luck,' as it were, overflows . . . the corn grew everywhere it was sown, and herrings were found all round the coast...

...the same admiration for success, just because it is success, while it is successful...

...At once an actor and a true believer, he has the great gift, for mass democratic politics, of speaking platitudes sincerely...

...Did the controllers take'an oath...

...Libya-a certified bad guy-has been given a neat, painless little defeat...

...President," was more memorable than any political line spoken by either participant in the debate, perhaps in the campaign, of 1980...

...Reagan may have had betterper-sonal relations with congressional Democrats while beating them than Carter did while supposedly collaborating with them...

...Although he certainly has his "tough" side-these events reveal it-Ronald Reagan nevertheless has been known on the screen for a long time, and known mostly as a nice guy...

...Now, as the budget cuts begin to be felt, and the interest rates stay up, and it becomes more evident to the broad public how the tax cut was skewed, and the economy doesn't improve, that "luck" may turn around...

...You couldn't ask for a much better cast of adversaries than John Hinckley, Robert Poli, and Colonel Qaddafi...

...Carter-it was said-could do neither, Kennedy the first but not the second...

...Meanwhile across the continent there has developed another town with its own version of "the movies" and its own stars...

...Coming from Los Angeles to Washington early in the summer, I heard a memorable offhand remark on that subject by the bright Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Barney Frank...

...A Gothic definition of the king calls him 'he in whose luck we conquer.'" "Ronnie's" luck in his new home town has included having the right kind of assassination attempt, the right kind of showdown with a union, the right kind of international incidents with American planes...

...That public is of course the key...

...Most recent presidents have not been nice guys...

...But however undesirable they may seem to the old Los Angeles aristocracy, and to highbrows from the East, "the movies" included people with distinct modern talents, and developed in them distinct modern skills . . . in the most visible group the skills not simply of actors on a stage, but of "stars" on a screen...

...Despite talk of a huge conservative movement of opinion, Reagan himself seems indispensable to the conservatives' specific triumphs of 1980-81...

...If you add the Justin Darts, the Bloomingdales, the Walter Annenbergs, the Joseph Coors, coming in chauffered limousines to white tie parties with their rich friends the Reagans, and making let-them-eat-jelly-beans comments, the picture of Reagan as an amiable cowboy vanishes altogether...

...Behind the presidential corn, grace, and humor there is an already established, already familiar money-in-the-bank persona from years of movies arid television...

...Reagan is the first one since FDR to do both well...

...Neither the luck nor the success is transferable to anybody else...

...And another point . . . and another point . . ." Can you imagine Carter making the tax cut speech...

...Like Hollywood, Washington is a place of sudden, surface reputations...

...Hard line...

...Can you imagine Jimmy Carter dealing with the air controllers...

...Sock it to them...

...I don't know how it's been with the herring round the coast but OPEC has behaved, gas prices have stopped rising, and confrontations have ceased...

...Such a public isn't going to have any trouble transferring Ronald Reagan to the White House...

...They'll find it even harder to combine that with established and efficacious media charm...

...As president, after being shot he joked, "Honey, I forgot to duck," to his wife, and "I hope you're Republicans" to the doctors...

...It is a world that takes that "merely artistic view of politics," as Jacques Maintain called it-that appreciates technique and success without regard to the ends they serve...

...His speeches about the City on a Hill, and Gosh, America is swell, and now look at this little chart, give eggheads a slight headache but work with the public...

...The ' 'people," who are indeed no bargain, make Raymond Burr an authority on law and crime because he plays Perry Mason on the screen,and are now making Ed Asner the nation's best known newspaperman because he plays Lou Grant on the screen...

...to borrow a term from the books on the universal essence of religion, he gained his mana at the movies...

...If you are only as good as your last picture, that at least means a great advantage when your last picture was a good one, because of what that principle does to the competition...

...Opponents mocked Bedtime for Bonzo and highbrows scoffed at the idea of a B movie actor in the highest political office in the free world, but the public didn't blink...

...During the network coverage of Watergate hearings, thousands of viewers called network affiliates in anger and consternation because, they thought, the World was still Turning and the Guiding Light still shining and the Search for Tomorrow still searching-the soaps were still soaping- somewhere, out there, blocked from view by Sam Ervin, etal...

...Reagan spent his shaping years as a member of what my epistolatory friend, a native Southern Californian, calls, with some condescension, "the movies...

...It works only with Reagan in isolation...

...Clear...

...with President Reagan that's gone...

...from an old established Los Angeles point-of-view, I gathered, a slightly undesirable social set...

...Well,the people aren't any bargain either...

...Given that he is already a familiar nice guy, then being "tough" and sticking-to-his-guns become added elements of public appeal...

...So the word from the East Coast to the West Coast is this: Ronnie was doing better here than he ever did at Warner Brothers, but it may not last...

...Winning clearcut personal victories has its disadvantage: "But if the harvest was bad the peasants blamed the king...

...Washington is full of references to neoconservatism, supply-side economics, and the Moral Majority, but surely the broad public's appetite for these is mixed...

...The line was that Reagan can do both the outside persuading by a speech and the inside persuading by a one-on-one conversation...

...They depend upon his media past and his media talent...

...Or Nixon trying to extract sympathy for his courageous decisions...

...the air traffic controllers were making $35,000 a year, and had taken an oath not to strike...

...Some would add Tip O'Neill and Dan Rosten-kowski...

...One can say, without mentioning names, that there has been a lot of neurosis in the Oval office in recent decades...

...If you put his wife Nancy into the picture, with her jewels, her gowns, her $1650 handbag.and her manicurist flying across the continent to do her nails, the effect changes...

...Don't yield...

...Like most kings who have it, Ronald Reagan has helped to make it and has added success to it...

...LBJ the second but not the first...

...There you go again, Mr...

...Even if these other presidents had taken the same positions that Reagan did, they would have lost support doing it...

...The dramatic line has been tidy...

...His talent and success with Congress and the public were appreciated and praised not only by members of his own party, but at least in the private circuit of conversation, by Democrats and liberals too...

...A Beverly Hills friend asked me in a letter recently how things are here in "Ronnie's new home," and I answered: very much built around Ronnie...

...There is the same admiration for skill and technique despite the slush in which it is imbedded...

...Right-wing Republicans surely, will find it difficult to come up with another candidate who voted for FDR four times, had an impoverished Irish Democrat for a father, and was president of a labor union...

...of exaggerated volatile ratings...

...Plain...

...The assassination attempt cut early opposition and brought sympathy...

...In the corresponding East Coast star world, Ronald Reagan, in the late spring and summer, was given the highest rating...