Ahhhhhh Wilderness!

By Roger Rosenblatt

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Reagan takes it easy--and why not?

True to his word, Ronald Reagan has taken the government out of Washington and restored it to the states. At least he has done so for the month of August by restoring himself to California where, except for signing his tax and budget bills last Thursday and preparing for major meetings on defense and the budget next week, he will behave like most governments and do essentially nothing. Moreover, he will do it for 28 days, as he rides Jeep and horse about his 688 craggy acres in the Santa Ynez Mountains, his Rancho del Cielo, 2,200 ft. into the cielo, splitting firewood, clearing brush, ogling stars. A pleasant image for the public to dwell on, but it also raises some questions and a bit of a stir: Is so long a holiday fitting and proper for a President, the leader of the free world? Can Washington survive without being the center of Government for so long a stretch? Is there life without news?

It helps that the nation is asking these questions at a time of year when it is otherwise busy squinting up at tennis lobs, lolling in cocoa butter and perfecting curvature of the spine cocooned in hammocks. August is more a hiatus than a month, and the level of public anxiety ordinarily settles on such problems as whether the inner side of one's forearm is as tan as the outer. Still, some of the is sues suggested by Reagan's holiday are real, especially as they involve policy matters. This has hardly been a languid summer season so far, what with the air-traffic controllers' strike and the resurrection of the neutron bomb. The problems attending these matters have no Rancho del Cielo to escape to; and one must wonder if the nation can really be steered from the saddle.

Not that the citizenry begrudges its head of state a bit of a rest. James Thurber said that "it is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all," but Reagan seems to have lost nothing in public esteem by taking time off. In fact such be havior is tacitly expected of him. Not only is a long vacation consistent with his political philosophy of governing best by governing least; it is also part of the modus operandi he established as California's Governor: in by 9, out by 5. If Reagan has mastered one one art art in in life, life, it it is is that that of of relaxing. He is relaxed talking to television cameras. He is relaxed striding in boots toward helicopters. He is relaxed entering a hospital lobby with a bullet in his chest. Taking a holiday comes as naturally to him as falling on a horse, because he is not merely a member of the leisure class, he is its most prominent spokesman, an embodiment in the public mind of the new American work ethic: work some, play some.

Of course, had the fate of his tax and budget bills been worse, or had popular sympathy been on the traffic controllers' side and not on Reagan's, he clearly would not have felt quite so free to head for the hills of Rancho del Cielo. He might have done so in any case, but the political damage would have been noticeable. Since life has gone pretty much as he has asked it to of late, the only thing Reagan has suffered by taking his long holiday is the dim opinion of some professional observers. Louis Masotti, a professor of political science at Northwestern University, com plains: "We don't have a foreign policy, and the real issues of transportation, urban policy and open lands have not been addressed. I don't know how a President in this day and age can take a month off." Chicago's Studs Terkel describes Reagan's vacation as an insult to "working men and women." Indirectly he makes a point; this is the sort of thing that can turn on the President if his economic policies fail dramatically.

By taking so long a rest, Reagan distinguishes himself among world leaders.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher rarely gets away from it all for as long as ten days in Cornwall, where she relaxes among the rocks. President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines has not taken a real vacation in the past 16 years, perhaps because he has always claimed that no one can yet take his place, and does not wish to put the idea to a test. Even France's new President Frangois Mitter rand is merely allowing himself a brief "breath of fresh air," thus violating the ancient French custom of abandoning Paris to the tourists for much of the summer.

The Soviet Union's Leonid Brezhnev may take a lengthy holiday this year (last year he took just two weeks), at his dacha in the Crimea. But Brezhnev knows better than most the penalties for lollygagging at the wrong time. It was he who replaced Nikita Khruschev in 1964 when Khruschev himself was on vacation.

The President's sojourn may look a bit extravagant compared with those of fellow heads of state, but in terms of American history he is, as ever, a traditionalist. President Eisenhower took a 26-day holiday at the Newport, R.I., Naval Base in September 1957. Democrats used to chivy Republicans about Eisenhower's frequent golfing vacations as well, until they were reminded (by Republicans) that their own Harry Truman was no slouch in this realm, spending much time deep-sea fishing off Key West. Calvin Coolidge, too, used to vacation as often as possible (how could they tell?). The modern record is held by Richard Nixon, who enjoyed a 31 -day holiday at San Clemente in 1969, although it is possible that 18% minutes were unaccounted for.

Naturally, all these Presidents were at work on national business at the same time that they were dozing in the chaise. Everyone who comments on Reagan's lengthy retreat cautions that even when a President is relaxing, he is working like crazy. This is hardly startling news, since everybody gets some work done on extended holidays, along with a neurotic amount of fretting and phoning.

In fact, compared with most American executives, Reagan enacts very little business while he is away. But he does have his routines: every morning National Security Adviser Richard Allen pre pares a 20-page national security briefing in Washington where it is scrambled, telecopied and then unscrambled at the communications trailer behind the Reagan ranch house. Shortly before 8 a.m. the briefing paper is ready for the President. Aide Mike Deaver, who has scanned it, phones the ranch from the Santa Barbara Biltmore. Almost all information that reaches the President goes through Deaver, who screens out everything but the essentials. They speak for 15 to 20 minutes in the morning and again at lunchtime. Reagan approves a few appointments, mostly routine and obscure, and makes a few phone calls (last week to Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis on the air-controllers' strike, and to Philadelphia First Baseman Pete Rose on his breaking Stan Musial's National League record for total hits). That is about the extent of Reagan's workday.

Robert Benchley once made up a list of things to do when one wants to kill time. It included:

1) Rowing a rowboat without using the oarlocks.

2) Tooting an automobile horn in a stalled car.

3) Upsetting bookcases and then putting the books back in again, with each book opened at page 27.

4) Running just as fast as you can to the end of the room and back.

Reagan's vacation consists of none of these things. Instead of killing time, Reagan seems to fill it with the life he most enjoys. In the mornings he and Nancy ride horseback for a few hours, and in the afternoons he clears and cuts. Even with a retinue of aides and Secret Service men in constant attendance, he retains most of his privacy. Reagan's ranch is very much his world of values. It gives him solitude, independence, and a sense of making one's own way--he stacks all that wood for a house heated solely by wood.

Last Tuesday he altered his schedule by cleaning out his pond, "Lake Lucky."

Wearing a pair of white trunks, he jumped into the lake (a sight to gladden a former air controller's heart), and spent 3 1/2 hours wading in mud, pulling weeds. That is the President's idea of a good time --that or his other recent projects of framing a tack room for the horses and mending a fence. Still, Reagan's concept of a vacation also includes quieter things like noticing deer, listening to frogs and staring at the brilliant, spangled nights. Why anyone would choose such activities over munching canapes in the Hamptons is a mystery to many journalists, but then they have long found Reagan somewhat unreal.

Does the important business of Government get done during this idyll? So far, apparently. Reagan seemed generally on top of things at last Thursday's bill-signing press conference, that, largely because of an eerie mist that swirled about the ranch, was suffused with an air of cozy cordiality.

Nancy Reagan, in jeans and cowboy hat, was uncommonly at ease with reporters. The President touched on all the major national and world worries about the air controllers' strike, the neutron bomb, Poland, the F-16s for Israel. This week Secretaries Caspar Weinberger of Defense and Alexander Haig of State will fly out for discussions on the future of the MX missile and the B-1 bomber. On Tuesday Reagan will meet with Office of Management and Budget Director David Stockman to discuss future cuts in federal spending. At the Biltmore, the executive offices of the President appear to be open for business, in spite of their luxurious location in three white adobe cottages beside a putting green. Two Marine guards in full dress uniform, including white gloves, indicate that Cottage Eight is the heart of the operation. Deaver explains that originally the Marines were posted for security, but now "they remind everyone that we're not on vacation."

Actually, there is no good reason for the Executive Branch of Government to be any more self-conscious about taking time off than either of the other two branches. The Supreme Court manages to flee Washington for the entire summer every year without a writ of apology, and Congress, as usual, has scattered until September. All this exiting has had a refreshing effect on life in the capital city, if not on its weather. Traffic flows; restaurants offer a table. The first drafts for all proposed budgets for FY 1983 are due at the Office of Management and Budget by Sept. 1, and that will keep several people at their desks in town. At the White House, Presidential Counsellor Edwin Meese minds the mostly empty store. Reagan's other top aide, Chief of Staff James Baker, is gone fishing in Texas.

The question of whether Washington can survive with its main engine in neutral is far less urgent than whether reporters can survive a month without presidential news. One can only do so much with the story of the local rat carrying the bubonic plague, unless, of course, the plague recurs. About 70 members of the press corps are encamped in Santa Barbara, all living fairly well, that being the way to live in Santa Barbara, but some going quietly mad nonetheless, as the President cuts and clears. Whenever Deputy Press Secretary Larry Speakes announces that the President is cutting and clearing today, reporters jot down "no news." Still, reporters and photographers are a brave lot and are taking in stride events like wine-tasting excursions to nearby vineyards, when they are not peering down at Rancho del Cielo with binoculars, praying for a sign. None is forthcoming. This is August. The President is on vacation. --By Roger Rosenblatt. Reported by Douglas Brew/Santa Barbara

With reporting by Douglas Brew

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