Leadership from the Heart

Ronald Reagan defies tidy summary. He cannot be measured by bills passed, treaties signed and doctrines proclaimed. Facts Reagan ain't.

He is a refrain from Stars and Stripes Forever. He is a whiff of a kinder age out of the attic. He is reassurance, a pat on the back, a little belief in every person's dream. He is a do-it-yourselfer in an era of easy cop-outs, a simple loyalist among the sophists, a gauzy visionary stumbling through computer printouts. He is comfort that things are not as bad as the experts say they are. Ronald Reagan is a mood that has seeped through the land like the beguiling scent of honeysuckle on a soft Georgia night. Millions have been soothed and seduced.

The political cognoscenti and academicians have been holding leadership seminars of late all over the country, and they thump their annotated treatises and bellow about "staff unity" and "purposeful agendas" and "policy initiatives," and there is nothing that emerges from these deep encounters that looks, sounds or dresses like Ronald Reagan. Maybe it's time to rewrite the book of leadership.

The highest compliment comes from Walter Mondale. He goes around the nation saying, though not in so many words, that the broad themes of Reagan's presidency (less Government at home, more strength abroad) are correct but that Reagan has executed them badly and often unfairly. Mondale is absolutely right.

Reagan's kooky budget formula prolonged and deepened the recession and produced huge deficits. Reagan has had an unusual number of nincompoops working for his Administration. His insensitivities to the poor are monumental. His opposition to abortion and support for school prayer smack of zealotry. He still cannot comprehend the feminists. His beloved military wastes money hand over fist. But these are secondary issues. Those qualities of the spirit that Reagan so relentlessly thunders from the White House are what free and self-governing societies run on. It may yet be written in the history books that the genius of the Reagan years was to slow up the Federal Government, shrink the missionary ardor of the presidency and pep-talk America into doing a lot more for itself.

The U.S. Government spends $2.3 billion a day and has so many departments, agencies and committees that a few years ago the experts quit counting after listing more than a thousand. Reagan has little notion how it all works but a lot of feeling that it is too big and too expensive and tries to do too much for too many people. Reagan believes a little neglect may be good for you.

The wise and witty Barber Conable, Congressman from New York who in a few months ends a 20-year legislative career, espoused a form of Reaganism before Ronald Reagan arrived in Washington. "Government is not the system," says Conable. "The involved citizens of America do their own thing, bring about change, and then drag Government kicking and screaming into recognizing that change has occurred. Those who want a Government that solves everybody's problems efficiently should turn to some other system. Liberal thinkers yearn for philosopher-kings with the power and will to do for the people what the people are not yet ready for. It's safer to let the people decide first, even though it's not very inspiring to have a laggard Government. The founding fathers didn't want efficient, adventurous governments, fearing they would intrude on our individual liberties. I think they were right."

So does Reagan. But if you asked him to talk about it at a Harvard seminar he would have a terrible time. He would get his facts mixed up and tell a few stories that were wrong and lapse into some anecdotes from his movie days. There would not be much to quote, and there might be a lot to ridicule. But there would be no mistaking how he felt. That is Reagan's power.