Using the Tried and True

By Hugh Sidey

The Presidency

The startling thing about Ronald Reagan's postelection presidency is that so much remains the same. When Richard Nixon was voted another term in 1972, he demanded resignations from 2,000 political appointees with an eye to weeding out his first-term team and infusing the survivors with a little fear from the boss. Reagan has done just the opposite.

It is clear now that several months ago he was rather certain of his re-election and made plans to encourage his people, to produce a salubrious White House environment rather than an earthquake. A week before the election, his staff received personal letters thanking them for their services and hinting broadly that they would continue to be welcome. Most of them will stay. Reagan likes that.

His Secretary of Education, T.H. Bell, and his Attorney General, William French Smith, have planned to leave for some time, but the bulk of his Cabinet will carry on. Reagan's physician, Daniel Ruge, has been training a replacement, Los Angeles Physician Burton Smith, for more than a year. There will be other changes, some expected and some not. But they will be ripples on a tranquil surface. When a man is over a certain age, Harry Truman noted, change is not that welcome. At 73, forget it. Reagan may have produced a landslide, but he is really a glacier.

The gray has crept timidly through Reagan's lush head of hair. An aide half his age examining the presidential locks in the Cabinet Room the other day felt his own thinning strands and lamented that he did not know the Reagan secret. Ruge says Reagan shows no signs of stress. His blood pressure and heart rate are the same as they were when he walked through the front door of the White House.

At the first Cabinet meeting after his reelection, Reagan pulled out of his coat pocket a copy of his famous 1964 speech for Barry Goldwater in which he laid down his scripture about forcing Government to heel. It was like Moses bringing back the tablets for review.

"Government tends to grow; Government programs take on weight and momentum, as public servants say, always with the best of intentions, 'What greater service we could render if only he had a little more money and a little more power.' " Reagan told his Cabinet Secretaries that he was ready to hit "the sawdust trail," spreading the gospel to cut Government spending. "Lame duck?" he chortled. "I'll put a cast on that lame leg, and that will make a heck of a kicking leg."

The President probably never calculated that he was creating a governmental strategy for these crucial weeks. It simply came from his heart and his gut, where so much of Reagan resides. It goes like this: get the old partisans fired up again with purpose and patriotism and make sure they are totally devoted to Reagan, not to the media or the bureaucracy. Then trudge on.

Reagan still wears some of the suits he brought with him from Hollywood, including that plaid number with the cross-hatching that drives the TV technicians wild. He clings to the baggy, beige sweat pants that he wears on Air Force One. He and Nancy are making plans for the parties they will give and attend at his Inauguration in January. In the boiler room of the White House, they are betting he will recycle the old movies that he shows in the White House theater.

The better question now may be not whether Reagan will be different but whether the world may make some adjustment to him. The polls in Europe show a marked increase in respect for Reagan. The Soviets have made several intriguing comments that suggest they are finding more merit in his arms-control proposals than they ever noted before the election. There are some sage observers in this city who claim they even detect a slight mellowing in Tip O'Neill.

Washington is jittery right now with countless conspiracies for favor and power. One of the President's longtime advisers, Lyn Nofziger, recalled last week that the world has come closer to Reagan than he has gone to it. The needle on the national compass may spin, but Reagan is as fixed and steady as true north.