The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

Ronald Reagan was in a strange little drama up in New Hampshire last week that the wags in the White House named The Body Snatchers. Reagan played the body.

Bob Dole on camera waved his letter of presidential thanks for help in the Senate approval of contra aid, one of 51 sent to supporters. George Bush played trump and rushed back to Washington, huddled officially in the Oval Office on secret matters with the President, stayed around for his weekly lunch and then made sure a photo of the two deep into beef-pepper-pot soup was pumped out to the press.

Reagan kind of liked it. There are a couple of things that have got under his skin during these past few weeks. One is Dole. The other is Iowa. Dole beats up on Reagan when it helps him, then cozies up when the crowd turns out to be pro-Gipper, as in New Hampshire. In Iowa they have been sore at Reagan for eight years, even though he helped jolly them through the Great Depression as Dutch Reagan, ace sportscaster. In the 1980 caucuses, Iowa voted Reagan down, but when he nevertheless went on to win the presidency, he sportingly lifted Jimmy Carter's grain embargo for the farmers. Now Iowa has bashed Reagan's own Vice President. No wonder he's a bit annoyed.

Reagan is sworn to neutrality -- so he's said nothing publicly -- but he is not sworn to be oblivious. He is intensely interested. He and Nancy watched the Iowa returns into the night. But nary a leak trickled down.

Earlier, when Bush called in from the frozen Iowa precincts to talk about whether or not he should come back for the contra vote, the President listened and never tilted either way. Bush decided on his own to return.

The President did not even tell Chief of Staff Howard Baker what he and Bush said at the post-Iowa lunch. "Don't you suppose," ventured one White House staffer, "he said, 'George, when you see a microphone, grab it and tell 'em you bought and paid for it.' " Surely Reagan passed on his generally warm feelings about those gimlet-eyed Yankees. Whatever Reagan's advice was, Bush seemed more at ease when he returned to the campaign. He sported baseball caps, drove an 18-wheel truck, even manned a forklift. "I'm comfortable in this state," he told New Hampshire voters. It was a sentiment that seemed to come from the heart.

A little melancholia has been showing in the White House for some time. When Redskin Supermouth Dexter Manley came around with the Super Bowl champs for the South Lawn ordination and declared, "We're going to renegotiate the President's contract for four more years," Reagan's eyes lit up like a pinball machine.

Over in the Old Executive Office Building, a high school delegate in the Senate Youth Program asked him about the two-term limit, and Reagan, with a wistful tone in his voice, made an eloquent appeal to dump the 22nd Amendment and let the American people decide how long a President should serve. He went to Duke University to talk about drugs, and his handlers thought he had forgotten his mission when he grabbed the limousine microphone and began working the crowd like old times. Why not? This is the first year in 23 that he is not on the political line.

His aides love watching the first battles from the sidelines. "The next best thing to a snowstorm," said Speechwriter Tony Dolan. "Fate is in the hands of the American people, a force of nature. There is absolutely nothing we can do about it."

Tommy Griscom, Reagan's communications director, and Baker, who was once a candidate himself, were watching Bush on TV shivering down the glacial campaign trail. Griscom ribbed Baker: "Just think, if you were a candidate you'd be there." Baker smiled and looked lovingly at the burning logs in his White House fireplace.