Lousy Bums and Other Asides

By Hugh Sidey

The Presidency

All the Reagan juices were flowing when the President sat down a fortnight ago at his ranch to give one of his radio exhortations. When he saw the mike, he was seized by a latent actor's impulse to perform. And because the topic of the hour was the Polish government's move to outlaw Solidarity, his molten aversion to Communism bubbled to the surface. To test the sound equipment and his own pipes, he said firmly: "My fellow Americans, yesterday the Polish government, a military dictatorship, a bunch of no-good lousy bums..."

The equipment was working all too well it turned out. The President's intemperate words were captured on tape, later aired nationally, and almost instantly became an issue. Polish apparatchiks rushed to explore the meaning and implication of "no-good lousy bums." That is not the language of diplomacy. It is the language of honesty, such a novel commodity on the international exchanges that the White House feigned unhappiness that the broadcasters had violated the President's privacy. In truth, Reagan handlers were genuinely concerned about the breach of faith because the next time it might be damaging. "No-good lousy bums" is right out of Wrigley Field and the 1930s, naughty but lovable. Remember Richard Nixon's tapes and all those four-letter words about out-of-the-way parts and functions of the body? A caveman lurked down there someplace.

Indeed, in our era of carefully crafted images, these electronic inadvertencies and other unmasked asides carried out of the White House by listeners form a valuable body of presidential lore. So often they are flashes of truth in the twilight world of political dialogue.

Back in 1944 Franklin Roosevelt created a ruckus when he went into a voting booth at his home in Hyde Park, N.Y., and ran into some new voting machines. The best-known voice of the century echoed through the curtains: "Damn." F.D.R. was just that kind of guy.

Hindsight suggests that Harry Truman at first had trouble understanding when he was talking privately and when he was not. At dinner with 200 members of the Reserve Officers Association in 1949, Truman got worked up over criticism of his crony, Major General Harry Vaughan, and called Columnist Drew Pearson an "s.o.b." The White House purged the transcript, but it was too late. Gasped the Chicago Sun-Times: "The dirty phrase used by Mr. Truman has shocked millions who feel that every President becomes a symbol for clean-minded youth."

Just a few months ago, the surreptitiously taped ramblings of Nixon before he went on national television to give up the presidency began circulating among video buffs. They showed the leader of the Western world on the far edge, chattering strangely with television technicians. Had we seen this bit of psychodrama back then, we might have understood the bizarre proceedings better.

There have been times when Presidents simply lost their bearings and talked publicly as they talked privately. In 1966, speaking to G.I.s at Camp Stanley in Korea, Lyndon Johnson became so worked up that he reverted to the Texas storyteller he always was. He told the world that his great-great-grandfather had died at the Alamo. Pure fiction. Knowing a flap was coming, Aide George Christian tried delicately to brace L.B.J. for the outcry. "I never said that," pouted Johnson. Politely as he could, Christian told Johnson that he had heard him say it. "I don't care what you heard," snorted Johnson. "I didn't say it. My great-great-grandfather did not die at the Alamo."

That was, sadly, a glimpse of Johnson rearranging the facts, the one trait that probably did more to force him into retirement than anything else. Too bad that Johnson could not have brought himself instantly to the good-natured confessional he offered years later: "What I was trying to say was that my ancestor was in a fight at the Alamo--that is, the Alamo Hotel in Eagle Pass, Texas." But that was just the way L.B.J. was.

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