The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

The spring henbit touched the pastures of Missouri with a delicate lavender, and the "Kewpie" cheerleaders were deep into Ivory soap when Ronald Reagan arrived in Columbia last week in search of himself. He's playing America again after months as a captive inside the Washington Beltway, where always is heard a discouraging word and the skies are cloudy most days.

Watch out, United States. He is about to swoop down on your towns with balloons (5,000 were released in Columbia with a whoosh and a cheer) and bands (he borrowed the one from Rock Bridge High last week) and old stories (he told one about the verdant farm credited as the Lord's work until the farmer, irked at the preacher, pointed out it had been a mess when God tended it alone).

Several things were evident in Reagan's mission. He is so spooked by the Iran controversy that when he dropped in on Elaine Hassemer's sixth-grade class at Fairview School and eleven-year-old Heather Watson asked a good kid's question about being President and all that stuff, Reagan lumbered into a five-minute Iran defense, the very thing he was trying to get away from.

It was only a slight blemish on an otherwise heartening demonstration that there apparently still exists among regular people a reservoir of affection that is deeper than the Ogallala Aquifer. Something like 75,000 people lined the streets of Columbia, which only has 66,000 residents. There were a few dissenters, of course: THE EMPEROR HAS NO BRAINS read one sign, and another said FARMS NOT ARMS. But mostly it was a greening vista of kids and parents on lawns fresh with forsythia; they were eager to show off Hickman High, one of the tops in the nation, whose tag is the Kewpies because its first athletic teams smiled through defeat.

. Reagan brought along his new chief of staff, Howard Baker, who brought along his Leica and was snapping pictures of Education Secretary William Bennett, big, rumpled and charging into the teeth of organized education with the firm belief that more money is not the way to excellence. He pointed out that student scores were declining during the years that education budgets went up the fastest.

Also on Air Force One was Joy Underdown, a third-grade teacher from Columbia, who in the early 1960s taught young Ron Reagan, the President's son, when he was a preschooler in Los Angeles. Miss Joy, as the family called her, had been visiting Washington when the long nose of the White House sniffed her out and tempted her to take the power trip. She loved it.

Then there was the fellow from Mark Twain's Hannibal, Congressman Harold Volkmer, who was part of the entourage even though he is a Democrat. The effect was to subdue even Margot Patterson, president of the local Democratic club. Said she: "I don't blame ((Reagan)) for coming to Boone County. We have a top-notch school system here."

Joan Olsen's class built a jelly bean White House. Reagan showed he can still fit at a sixth-grade desk, and when he and Bennett joined a computerized exercise in how to make a profit from a lemonade stand, Reagan was good- natured about losing to Bennett, $3.73 to $2.10.

Missouri Governor John Ashcroft, who was leading the National Education Reform Conference at Hickman High, presented Reagan with a huge papier-mache apple before his speech, an old-time rouser for basic instruction. When Reagan finished, Ashcroft hailed him as "America's No. 1 teacher."

Asked to sum up the big day, the President got a strange smile on his face and remarked, "I liked that sign that said, 'I didn't vote for you before but I will now.' " Getting out of Washington and back to the heartland in the spring stirs up a lot of deep feelings.