The Art of Enticement

By Hugh Sidey

The Presidency

One of the great rituals of tribal Washington is the dance of the aftermath. It is staged by pundits and politicos, explaining why an event that happened in their midst was not predicted by them or should not have happened without their approval.

We had a crackerjack last week, when Ronald Reagan won the AWACS fight. He overcame the objections of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Speaker of the House Thomas P. O'Neill, not to mention the plaints of countless editorial writers and TV double-domes.

There was ABC's young Ted Koppel, looking puzzled under his mound of neatly mowed hair, trying to get his correspondents to explain how come certain defeat had been snatched from the jaws of certain victory, without proper notification to the networks.

There was California's Democratic Senator Alan Cranston, noted for his cool wisdom and for running a 100-yd, dash in 12.6 sec. at age 55, trying to redefine for a CBS breakfast television audience the meaning of "ironbound," as in "I have 54 ironbound votes against AWACS."

Columnists, lobbyists and bureaucrats were all trying to describe an unprecedented juggernaut of pressure and persuasion mounted by that ruthless old movie actor in the White House against the AWACS tide. Anchormen furrowed once, twice and even three times over the new force they found to be unleashed in the capital. But something was missing in this spectacle. Those commenting failed to note that in this kind of struggle, a President almost always has ways and means to win. Some are subtle; some not.

According to one breathless account, the wooing of South Dakota Republican Larry Pressler included a visit from the Governor of his state, some attention from Maxwell Rabb, our Ambassador to Italy, who is here on other matters, three brief meetings with Reagan in the White House and finally a phone call from the President. Not bad for any Senator from a sparsely populated state like South Dakota. But in the big leagues of lobbying, the pressure on Pressler sounds like a page from the beginner's guide to Washington influence. Some folks around Washington, a little more seasoned in the art of legislative enticement, can remember stories about Lyndon Johnson quoting from selected income tax returns and random FBI reports about mistresses and gambling debts.

Another who got the full Reagan treatment was Nebraska Democrat Edward Zorinsky. He has been wooed before. Back in 1978, when the Panama Canal Treaty was in the works, Jimmy Carter invited Zorinsky and 190 of his fellow Nebraskans to the White House for a briefing, had Rosalynn Carter call Zorinsky's wife, had Ambassador Sol Linowitz play tennis with the Senator (Linowitz lost), and invited both Zorinskys to a state dinner for Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito.

What seems to have happened this time, as it does so often in Washington, is that the actors in this singular drama became too entwined in their intricate maneuvers. A distorted picture was produced of both the battle being waged and the state of mind of the nation waiting in the background. Almost anyone traveling this country the past few weeks could have detected that there were far more important problems on the national agenda than the AWACS sale. A great many people surely favored letting the President try to do his job. and, since we get nearly 20% of our imported oil from the Saudis, we ought to help them out a bit.

In short, the AWACS victory was a good deal less spectacular than some of the newly minted media legends suggest. Ronald Reagan, with sincerity and urgency, reminded everybody of the burden he must carry in a dangerous time and the trust he needs to be effective. He won another vote of confidence. That is the way government is supposed to work.

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