TV ROLE OF LIFE LOOMS FOR REAGAN

It’s natural to overstate the influence of a communications medium that itself is given to gross overstatement. Not this time, though.

Rarely has TV played such a critical role in the course of a presidency and the nation as now.

With confidence in the White House eroding in the aftermath of the Tower Commission’s damaging report, President Ronald Reagan’s scheduled address to the nation Wednesday looms larger and larger.

The great speechmaker may have to give the TV speech of his life. What he says about his ultimate responsibility for the Iran/ contra scandal--and how he says it--may go a long way toward defining Reagan’s public legacy as a President and a man.

That’s because much of America will be watching through new, critical eyes, for the President is embattled as never before. As conservative columnist George Will said on ABC’s “World News Saturday”: Reagan is facing a “grave crisis of confidence,” one reflecting on the “basic competence” of his Administration.

There’s been a blizzard of advice for Reagan. Will said that the President should “come before the country and radiate energy.” Others say he should admit personal error. During Sunday’s edition of “This Week With David Brinkley” on ABC, columnist Mary Anne Dolan said Reagan must “get back to conveying the image of a man who is on top of his job.”

“The image ?” ABC’s Sam Donaldson asked. You could almost hear his eyebrow lifting. What the nation doesn’t need is more TV image.

It’s true that Donaldson has been saying for years that Reagan is dangerously inattentive to the details of the presidency. It’s also true that Reagan has long been the target of satirists.

Johnny Carson returned to the continuing saga of “As the White House Turns” Friday night on NBC. And not long ago, a “Spitting Image” special on NBC used puppets to pour on Reagan ridicule, in one instance showing a confused President playing with his dog. It was the usual master/pet relationship with one difference: The dog threw the bone and Reagan fetched.

Moreover, the President has always been attacked by liberals for being too conservative and arch conservatives for not being conservative enough.

As indicated by comments from Will and other Reagan friends and supporters, though, the Tower report has done more than merely fling open the door to criticism. It’s ripped the door off its hinges.

Questions about Reagan’s competency--always a snickering undertone among some members of the Washington press corps--are now on the lips even of conservatives who have been the President’s strongest supporters.

No more Mr. Nice Guy. The gloves are off.

On Michael Jackson’s KABC radio show Friday, conservative columnist Ben Stein expressed outrage over Reagan’s insistence that he could not remember exactly when he approved shipping arms to Iran. “How dare he!” exclaimed Stein, a fervent Reagan backer until now.

Even the regular working press now seems more openly judgmental. “We’re not talking about somebody (not remembering) sending out a suit to the dry cleaners, but when he sent arms to Iran,” NBC’s Chris Wallace noted on “Meet the Press” Sunday.

Friday night’s “Washington Week in Review” on PBS was devoted entirely to the Tower report. The document showed Reagan as “remote, confused, not in control, not asking questions, not remembering what had been done in his name, not being aware of what he did approve and didn’t approve,” Hedrick Smith of the New York Times said.

Think about that. What a devastating interpretation by Smith. And what a devastating characterization of a President.

Here was another from Charles McDowell of the Richmond Times-Dispatch: “You find a man who didn’t know much about what was going on in his Administration and when he did know, forgot what he knew.” McDowell said he was shocked by that, because it confirmed rumors about Reagan that he had not wanted to believe.

“Washington Week in Review” has not survived for 20 years on public TV by being a den of wild, ranting radicals. The participants are print journalists (Haynes Johnson of the Washington Post, Charles Corddry of the Baltimore Sun and Jack Nelson of the Los Angeles Times joined Smith, McDowell and moderator Paul Duke on Friday’s program) not given to shrill partisanship or snap judgments. Their tone is always moderate and cautious.

Not so “The McLaughlin Group,” the conservative-tilted syndicated program (on KNBC Channel 4) hosted by National Review editor John McLaughlin.

Conservative columnist Fred Barnes declared that the abrupt departure of Donald Regan as White House chief of staff and swift arrival of Howard Baker as his successor meant that Nancy Reagan was now in charge at the White House.

Eleanor Clift of Newsweek, who takes a tougher view of the President, suggested that America would now have a co-presidency: Baker and Nancy Reagan.

Conservative columnist Ben Wattenberg said that the Tower Report shows that “in this instance, he (Reagan) was a cluck, not a crook.” Reagan now faces “Senilegate,” Wattenberg said. “He has to demonstrate he has all his marbles, and I think he does.”

The weekend TV news about Washington was also dominated by the going of Regan and coming of Baker, whose arrival was being hailed by some as a “master stroke” at a time when the President needed to hone in on a new arms-control proposal by the Soviets.

And such familiar euphemisms as “management style” continued to shield Reagan from even more severe criticism. “What does that euphemism really mean?” NBC’s Marvin Kalb asked Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) on “Meet the Press.” You didn’t need X-ray vision to see through Kalb’s question. And somewhere in Dole’s rambling, generally evasive answer, he mentioned that a President can’t govern “without knowing what’s going on.”

A frightening picture emerges, of a President asleep at the switch. The government switch. The nuclear switch. On NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” Weekend Update “anchorman” Dennis Miller put everything in context. “There’s no more frightening image in the world,” he said, “than the finger having access to the button, having a string tied around it.”

Until Wednesday.