Like Mayor Koch, Ronald Reagan seems to be asking: “How’m I doing?” and the answer has to be: Not very well. Said the Washington Post’s Lou Cannon, the morning after the news conference: “My guess is that Reagan survives this arms-for-hostages mess because he has more credibility with Americans than does the news corps.”
. . . But other, more friendly witnesses are less sanguine. Former presidential speechwriter Peggy Noonan: “There’s no joy in Mudville. Mighty Casey has struck out”; former White House political director Ed Rollins: “Ronald Reagan does not play well going backward”; soon-to-be-former Majority Leader Bob Dole: “They ought to circle the wagons—either that or let a couple of the wagons go over the cliff.” . . . Norman Ornstein, of the American Enterprise Institute, worries that “there’s no political savvy at the White House. . . . [Donald] Regan just does what the President wants.”
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