Miffed by Muffie
Henry Fairlie
Washington President and Mrs Reagan are preparing to lavish on Mrs Margaret Thatcher at least an imitation of the spectacular hospitality which Francis I some 460 years ago showed to Henry VIII. It is true that it will all be more like a Hollywood set than the Field of the Cloth of Gold. But that will not be for want of trying; the Americans simply do not manage these things well. At the heart of the preparations is Mrs Henry Brandon — christened Mabel, nicknamed 'Muffle' —the wife of the Washington correspondent of our own Sunday Times. There she is, in the east wing of the White House, arranging it all. 'I look at a state dinner and break it down into all the categories possible,' she has said, 'the menus, the entertainment, the greetings, the table decor, the flowers'. It is not at all clear how she thinks that the rest of us do it. When I gave my own state dinner for the visiting editor of the Spectator last summer, I also made an attempt to keep the menu separate from the order to my florist. I also tried to keep the table decor free of the entertainment, not allowing the dancing girls on the table until it had been cleared.
'I'm not so interested in where someone went to college,' Mabel, known to her friends as Muffie, continued, 'I want to know what he wants for dinner and how he likes his martini'. I have to say that this is the order of my own interest in my guests and, in the case of the editor of the Spectator, he thoughtfully conveys information about the state of his liver in his 'Notebook'. Nonetheless it is nice to know that Mrs Reagan's entertaining is in the hands of so acute a social secretary. For that is the position which Mabel, who will always be known to her friends as Muffie, now holds in the organisation of the White House. Since she is affable, competent, and well-connected, she is suitable for her post. But some eyebrows were raised by both British and American journalists at her acceptance of the appointment. Did it not place her husband in an uncomfortable position? The possibility is obvious that Henry, known to his friends as Henry, and to others as 'Hank', will face severe con flicts of interest. His job is to report fearlessly the doings of President Reagan — for Mr Rupert Murdoch now — while his wife holds an influential post on the staff of Mrs Reagan. That is not easy.
But if Mr Brandon had shown great circumspection, he might have overcome the obvious hazards. Unfortunately he has not done so. The Washington correspondent of the Observer wrote a courteous and fitting letter of congratulation to Mrs Brandon. Correspondents cannot be wholly uninterested in the social secretary to the wife of the president who is arranging the hospitality to be shown Mrs Thatcher. The next one heard was that the correspondent of the Sunday Times had sent to his office in London a copy of the letter which the correspondent of the Observer had sent to his wife in her capacity as social secretary. Why he should have done such a thing is not known though there is speculation here that he might have wanted to quieten the rumblings of discontent on his own newspaper following his wife's appointment.
This action is as outrageous as it is all but unbelievable, especially when the two men are correspondents of rival newspapers. The correspondent of the Observer is Mr Anthony Holden, known to his friends as 'Tony', and I do not know what action he will take. I am not the only journalist here, American or British, who hopes that it will be emphatic. He could of course place his wife, Amanda, in the FBI, where she could police the activities of the rivals of her husband. What are personal letters addressed to the White House, after all, compared with the dossiers which she could compile on foreign correspondents here?
If only the integrity of my profession were at stake, I perhaps would not bother the readers with this story. But it is the integrity of the White House, in its dealings with journalists, and especially with foreign correspondents, and even more particularly with rivals of Mr Brandon, which has been brought into question. The wine has been spilled over the table decor for the British Prime Minister by none other than the wife of a British newspaperman who is a servant of the American administration. If Mrs Thatcher has the backbone of Lord Palmerston, I would have thought that her course is clear. She should scrap the menu and the decor and the entertainment and the greetings and the flowers which have been prepared for her, and accept instead an invitation to the home of Mr and Mrs Holden, where she will, I can assure her, be wined and dined as fits her station, find that the name of her college is known, and probably be entertained after dinner by a rendering by her hostess of the Goldberg Variations.
I suppose that we should be grateful that this is the first diplomatic incident of the new Administration. The opportunity for bloodshed is limited. The Administration is certainly giving the impression — no more, I emphasise— that it is looking for more lively incidents to impress. There is no explanation of why it is so taunting Russia, in these early days, with no indication that it has any idea of how to resist her. The diplomatic corps and diplomatic journalists are laughing their heads off at the preparation of a White Book which is meant to show the extent of Russian and Cuban intervention in Central America. What do such documents prove? Will the chancelleries of Europe, for which they are intended, even read them when they are delivered? To employ special couriers to carry such scraps of paper to the capitals of the world is the height of diplomatic eccentricity. Lyndon Johnson sent round the globe volumes more copious than the works of St Thomas Aquinas to prove Russian and Chinese complicity,in Indochina. They did not a bit of good. All that the allies wished to know was if America would win or lose in Vietnam? They saw that it would lose.
That is all that they wish to know. If America cannot win in the countries on its doorstep, when Russia is however many thousand miles away, then no documents to prove the rightness of the American cause will prevail. Alexander Haig went to the leaders of Congress on Tuesday to demons trate that the rebels in El Salvador are receiving aid even from Ethiopia and Vietnam. If these ramshackle countries are such terrible threats when they are so far and American is so near, then does it not suggest that the fault lies less with them than with American policy in the area. If so many right-wing regimes and military juntas in Central and South America, supported for so long by so many American arms and so much American money, so consistently fail to maintain themselves against handfuls of guerrillas, is there not the possibility that America too often backs the wrong side? What does it mean to demonstrate yet again the villainy of Rus sia, when all that it proves is that Russia's meddling works and America's fails? Documents proving Russian involvement in Central America are suitable for leaking by the social secretary of Mrs Reagan to the correspondent of the Sunday Times. The new Administration is so obsessed with symbols just now, presumably in the absence so far of any substance to it, that It seems unable to free itself from the thrall of campaign rhetoric. Nothing was easier in the campaign, to suggest one's strength, than to attack the human rights policy. A concern for human rights in foreign policy must sound soft anyhow: as pursued by President Carter it also sounded moralising and a little silly. But the most stable and respected friends of the United States ill Central and South America and the Caribbean argue the importance of the human rights policy. Perhaps the Administration will learn when President Reagan finds the time to bring it fullyinto existence. We do not really have the right, after all, to criticise an Administration of so many empty desks. But his second and third level appointments so far are not encouraging. For the first tiale one has the impression that he may be the President whom even many of his ownpar , Pi feared that he would be,
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