To Err is Reagan

"THERE YOU go again. "That catchy expression sealed Jimmy Carter's fate in 1980, as his Republican opponent skillfully used it to spotlight the incumbent's evasiveness and misrepresentation. Now, it seems. Ronald Reagan's clever turn of phrase has come back to haunt him. Last week's presidential press conference was only the most recent case in point.

Pulling a sheaf of papers from his breast pocket and waving them above his head, the President admonished reporters for incorrectly challenging him on statements at his press conference a month earlier. "I'd like you to know that documentation proved the score was five-to-one in my favor. I was right on five of them," the President told the nation. Never mind that his own press office refused to release that "documentation"; the President's own advisors acknowledged they had scheduled the conference so Reagan could dispel doubts about his credibility, not clear up specific issues.

The irony of last Thursday's exhibition was that despite those intentions, the President proceeded to undermine his own trustworthiness more than ever. His latest battery of misstatements, gaffes and revisionist history sent advisors scurrying to pick up the pieces. And it occasioned what has become a post-press-conference phenomenon: Reagan aides lamely explaining away their boss's errors by saying he had "misspoken himself."

Asked if he had approved covert activity to destabilize the Nicaraguan government. Reagan began his response, "Well, no, we're supporting them, the--oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm sorry, I was thinking El Salvador..."Minutes later the President dramatically erred on the budget he has allotted for social programs.

In a rambling account of U.S. entanglement in Vietnam, the President informed the press corps that "North and South Vietnam had been, previous to colonization, two separate countries." (They were not--Vietnam had a long history of political unity before its division by Chinese and French colonialists.) According to Reagan, Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh "refused to participate in the elections slated for the divided nation by the 1954 Geneva Conference." (In fact, Ho frequently and vocally sought to participate in the aborted election.) And, said the President, it was former President John F. Kennedy '40 who first sent U.S. marines to Vietnam. (Actually, Lyndon B. Johnson was the first President to dispatch marines to Southeast Asia.)

On the domestic affairs that are supposed to be his forte, Reagan's memory seemed no better. A month ago, the President confidently told the press that the sagging economy would perk up in April; last week, he announced, "I'm not going to pick any particular month or anything..." And he refused to disclose why his Administration believes Nicaragua is sneaking arms to El Salvador, and revealed that he has no idea what the agenda for NATO's next meeting is--although he is scheduled to appear at it.

But you can't teach an old dog new tricks, particularly when you're talking about a 71-year-old more accustomed to saying lines than thinking about them. We wish the President's tendency to shoot from the hip and his patent misunderstanding of critical issues did not reflect itself in his all-too-often cavalier policies, on social issues in particular; it is also lamentable that the very simplicity of Reagan's diagnoses and panaceas so obviously strikes a responsive chord in so many Americans.

But much as we'd like the President to understand his Administration's policies and this nation's history before discussing them at press conferences, that hope is likely of no avail. Suffice it to say that we look forward to the day when we can tell our error-prone chief executive. "There you go again"--this time, for good.