The Press
Reagan: Image and Reality
Paul Johnson
4Alger and division grow daily,' foamed the Sunday Times, 'as President Reagan hardens his insistence that the Siberian gas pipeline shall not go through.' It confessed it had not 'the faintest idea Where the Reagan administration wished to lead us.' Others don't seem to suffer from this problem. A Sunday Telegraph leader stated the position (correctly in my view) With notable simplicity: 'The pipeline debate is about two rival conceptions of how the West ought to deal with the Soviet threat. Should the Russian bear be throttled into submission, as the American hardliners recommend, or cajoled into reasonableness by greater economic cooperation, as many Europeans argue?'
The question, the Telegraph added, was fundamental', and it was 'sobering' that the Allies could not agree on the answer 33 Years after the creation of Nato. In the light of the experience under the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations, when the European-type policy of detente was followed right up to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, I should have thought it in- evitable that the new Reagan team would switch to the other tack. The change of Policy in fact had been adumbrated under Carter. `Vice-president Bush,' the Sunday Pines huffed, 'proclaims that Washington is the leader of the free world and should be treated as such.' Actually what he said was recalled more accurately by an editorial in The Times: 'The United States is the leader Of the free world and under this Adminis- tration we are beginning once again to act like it.' Both parts of this proposition are unquestionably true, and welcome to the Overwhelming majority of people on this side of the Atlantic. I am tempted to add and on this side of the Urals': for refugees
and exiles from Soviet Russia and the Soviet-occupied territories are overwhelm- ingly in favour of Reagan's ban on the ex- port of advanced technology beyond the Iron Curtain.
But Fleet Street is always more anti- American than ordinary British opinion, just as the German and still more the French press tend to be far more critical of what Washington does than their readers. Fleet Street views American policy-making, especially in the hands of Reagan and his men, with a degree of intellectual snobbery which is unjustified. When Reagan was a mere candidate for the presidency, it took its cue from the Eastern US media estab- lishment, which was blinded by its own liberal prejudices, and wrote off his chances completely (two notable exceptions were William Rees-Mogg in The Times and Robert Conquest in the Daily Telegraph). It was flabbergasted when Reagan won by a landslide. It still finds it hard to believe that he is popular not only with voters but with the Congress, and his success in getting his legislation passed . constantly takes the newspaper pundits by surprise.
So far as Reagan himself is concerned, Fleet Street's obsession with the cowboy image is fatal to its understanding of the man. He is seen as a hopeless amateur, a player who has strolled out of his depth and, worse, as a gunslinger shooting from the hip. The Sunday Telegraph presented the US and Europe in the pipeline battle as `two wary gunfighters' who had just ex- changed 'the first shots in this Transatlantic High Noon.' Last Sunday the Observer headlined its Reagan news-story with a characteristic: 'Rawhide Rides into Town and the Natives Grow Restless', adding mixed metaphor to injury. In fact Reagan is
a very old experienced and wily politician. In California, the largest and richest state in the Union and increasingly the core of the US economy, Reagan is seen not so much as an actor as a representative of one of the state's proudest industries and thus a natural choice both as its Governor (where he was a huge success) and as its President, now that the Sunbelt is dominant.
Reagan's principal characteristic, as a political leader, is caution. Unlike the volatile and excitable Jimmy Carter, he keeps his hair on — one reason why, in the end, he found it impossible to work with General Haig, who blew his top too often — and he does not move until he has taken a great deal and variety of advice. His ad- ministration is in no sense underpowered and provincial: quite the contrary. In terms of economic, defence and foreign policy ex- pertise, it is probably the most sophisticated which has ever held office in the US, draw- ing heavily on the enormous resources now provided by America's industrial and academic policy-planning institutes. If his ploys do not always work, that is due perhaps more to the intractable nature of the problems now confronting an American president than to any lack of knowledge and brainpower at this disposal.
Equally misleading is Fleet Street's por- trayal (again copying the liberal US media) of Reagan as an idle fellow. The Observer complains that the Reagans are now taking their 'ninth costly Californian break since taking office 18 months ago, their fifth ex- tended vacation this year . . . By unofficial count, Reagan has enjoyed well over 100 working days off since his election.' Quite apart from the point that California is no longer on the far periphery of America — it is Washington that seems to be in the wrong place these days — Presidential activities are well-known traps for gullible jour- nalists. For eight years President Eisenhower was protrayed by the press as an over-relaxed, golf-obsessed delegator, who left everything to Dulles, Sherman Adams, 'Engine Charley' Wilson and other Administration barons. Now that his papers, including secret appointment books and phone-logs, are open to scholars, it can be seen that Ike was much more industrious than he wished it to appear and that his mi- nions (especially Dulles) were kept on a very short string. Ike used to get up much earlier than he let it be known and many of his most important foreign policy and defence meetings were concealed even from his own press people. Recently, Richard Nixon, who served him as Vice-President, summed up Ike for me in a word: 'Devious.' Now Reagan and Ike are very different people, but they have certain things in common, in- cluding a cunning derived from long ex- perience, and a belief in deliberative rather than instant policy-making. I suspect that behind the leisurely facade of the Reagan White House a great deal more goes on than meets the media's eye; and that Reagan himself is not always what he seems. After all he was an actor.
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