There You Go Again

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

Till cant cease, nothing else can begin.

--Thomas Carlyle

There are moments in American life when events lurch out of context, when the public is hurtled from dim awareness of a seemingly trivial news item into a maelstrom of moral reappraisal. That appears to be happening in the affair that the Washington press corps has predictably dubbed "Debategate."

The story first arose as a footnote to history: a terse report that a "briefing book" drawn up to help President Carter prepare for his 1980 campaign debate with Ronald Reagan found its way to Reagan's staff and was used to coach the Republican challenger. Journalists, who might well have disregarded the discovery as of scant consequence during the period when the new President was taking office, perceived high drama when the story surfaced in June. Washington was nearing the dog days of summer, and another campaign was beginning.

In the still, humid air of a capital without much news, reporters sniffed the sweet scent of skulduggery. At first a novelty item, the story grew into a revelation and took on a vitality almost irrespective of its merits.

It turned out that the Reagan team had acquired other Carter papers of unknown significance. Then the atmosphere turned ugly. Aides to the President contradicted one another. Reagan was hammered at a press conference because he would not condemn an event that he sincerely if unwisely labeled "much ado about nothing." As criticism of his ethical fumbling mounted, the President sensibly yielded to demands that his private campaign records be handed over to investigators from the FBI. Zealous accusers exulted that they might have unearthed another Watergate.

A few journalists and other political observers have tried to restore some sense of proportion to the affair. Columnist David Broder of the Washington Post, whose newspaper has been among the most heated in pursuit, last week deplored the unthinking usage of the suffix "gate" for matters that in no way echo the vast moral subversion of the Nixon era. Wrote Broder: "The mischief in labeling is that it sometimes distorts reality. On the basis of what is known now, not only is this not another Watergate, it is almost exactly the opposite." Reagan aides have talked to reporters. The President has ordered full cooperation with investigators. And he has pledged to dismiss anyone proved guilty of wrongdoing. Nothing could be further from stonewalling.

To be sure, a genuine scandal may yet emerge to justify reporters' persistence. Troublesome accusations are being made: that White House documents with national security classifications, not just campaign papers, may have been involved; that they may have been obtained by illegal or inappropriate means; that the Reagan campaigners may have got information from employees of the FBI and CIA (see NATION). Still, no specific claim of a crime has been lodged against the Reagan campaign, let alone proved. On the known facts, at least some of the ballyhooing of the briefing book caper looks less like vigilance in defense of liberty than like a case study in sanctimony.

The hypocrisy operates on two levels. First, many of those who profess moral outrage, while they doubtless feel that they are doing their jobs and serving the nation, also enjoy an opportunity for personal gain. Democrats have found a potentially exploitable means of sullying Reagan. The chairman of the investigating subcommittee, Representative Donald Albosta of Michigan, has been rocketed up from obscurity. President Carter's former advisers have suggested that their man lost in part because of a dirty trick. On the Republican side, Reagan's ousted National Security Adviser Richard Allen has been brought forth by some alchemy as an expert on morals; on television he has happily fingered, as a source of leaks from the Carter camp, the man who triggered Allen's own departure from office over an all but forgotten $1,000 gratuity left in a Government safe. Other Republicans too have latched onto the episode to advance factional disputes. Most of the Reagan aides who admit having seen Carter's papers are from the staff's pragmatic, centrist wing; conservative rivals have gleefully described the dustup as a chance to root out the White House moderates. Though exposure of wrongdoing is one of the highest callings of a free press, some of the journalists on the story have simply savored the excitement of a big-game hunt against a government.

Beyond the jockeying for position in the name of moral probity, a deeper hypocrisy is at work: many of those who have denounced the ethics of the Reagan campaign know full well that finding out what an opponent is up to is an absolutely normal part of politics. In the real world, rather than the world of civics textbooks, campaigns often aim intelligence operations at each other. The stakes are substantial and emotions run high. Candidates and staffs can be driven to excesses by a genuine belief that their program and point of view will help the country. It is difficult to name a major American campaign that did not run afoul of some legal technicality or transgress someone's notion of propriety. Politics is no justification for crime. But within the law, political professionals sharply disagree as to what ethical standards apply to campaigns. They suggest that greater leeway can be given to challengers, who must combat the advantages enjoyed by incumbents. The conduct of sitting Presidents must protect the image of their office; besides, they already have at hand the resources of the Government.

One measure of the prevailing moral confusion is that pundits have not lined up predictably on this story. Columnist James J. Kilpatrick, an ardent supporter of President Reagan, is deeply troubled by the idea that the Reagan team had Carter's briefing book. Yet George Reedy, a former top aide to Lyndon Johnson, says, "It takes a positive effort of will for anyone who has been involved in presidential campaigning during the past 50 years to seethe with genuine indignation over the case of President Carter's purloined briefing documents." Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Robert Strauss similarly has said that politicians need not aspire to sainthood, and can accept data that come to them unsolicited. Recent candidates would not have doubted that: campaign aides to John Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, among others, sought information from the camps of opponents.

In theory, right and wrong are divorced from consequence: it is as wicked to steal a dollar as a diamond. In practice, misdeeds are often judged by their scope and outcome. According to Carter's aides, the purloined debate strategy relied significantly on plans for springing facts and numbers on Reagan to make him look forgetful and unpresidential. The value to Carter of that sort of surprise attack is dubious. The magnitude of his defeat, as an incumbent President, reflected a specific rejection of him by the people.

Idealism has an honored place in the traditions that built America. But this country's apparent inability to distinguish between peccadilloes and political atrocities puzzles allies and imperils the nation's being taken seriously by the rest of the world. The Wall Street Journal warned in an editorial last week that "we risk going down in history as the first civilization to strangle itself in a frenzy of ethics." The press and the political system seem to have developed a reflex impulse to discredit every President. Americans want their leaders to be decent men who play fair, but voters know that a measure of cunning, even sleight of hand, can be essential in politics and diplomacy. Moreover, an absolutist piety can have the unintended effect breeding cynicism rather than virtue. Repeated false rectitude about trifling lapses wears out the reflexes for indignation when it is justified.

Easy though it is to make light of the way in which the debate caper was metamorphosed from old news into the summer's hottest story, the consequences could be weighty. Already, the equilibrium has been disrupted between the ideologues and the pragmatists on President Reagan's team. If the affair results in resignations from either faction, the direction of the Reagan Administration could be substantially altered. For Presidents, the loss of a trusted adviser, and with him the skilled advocacy of a viewpoint, is a common experience, but a disruptive one. For Reagan, the effects of departures could reach to the platform that the Republicans run on next year, even to whether he chooses to be the party's candidate. The press corps in Washington is well aware of how the impact of the story may exceed its significance: ABC White House Correspondent Sam Donaldson has been gloating to colleagues that the scandal will keep Reagan from seeking reelection, making him our sixth successive President to be unable to finish two terms.

Now that the briefing book imbroglio has been thrust into national consciousness, the Reagan Administration can regain its full credibility only by ensuring that investigations go forward. If there is housecleaning to be done, the President has already demonstrated--most recently in the EPA scandal--that he can do it, however reluctantly and unapologetically. He stands by his characterization of the ruckus as "much ado about nothing. " But Reagan has already said what Richard Nixon could never quite bring himself to say about Watergate. Promised Reagan: "If, when the investigation is over and the truth is known, it is necessary to correct that statement, I'll correct it." Even if Reagan is vindicated, however, he and the nation could well pay a high price for the cleansing process. Any scandal diverts the Government from its essential business of sustaining the economy, the national defense and the pursuit of peace. It also sidetracks the press from its role as watchdog on the great issues. The distraction can, in turn, disillusion allies and invite aggressive moves by unfriendly nations. When a scandal is legitimately grave, all that is worth enduring. If a scandal is overblown, however, the nation is subjected to a deplorable, unnecessary burden. Politics and government are arts of compromise, of weighing one concern against another. Those who place ethical absolutism above all other interests should bear that in mind.

--By William A. Henry III This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.