Letter from Washington

Ronald Reagan is finding out that fellow Irishman Murphy devised a good law when he said, Anything that can go wrong, will. In mid-April, Mr. Reagan walked onto a ballet stage to salute the artists, only to be told by them that the performance wasn’t over; presented an award honoring Nicaraguan refugees to a girl raised in the United States; and lived through the Great Holocaust Blunder.

When Bitburg was first announced, Mike Deaver took the heat, but the fact remains that it is Mr. Reagan himself who insisted that the Bitburg visit go forward. After discussing the cemetery stop several times with Helmut Kohl, the President became convinced that the focus of their meeting must be reconciliation and that Bitburg was the place to reconcile. “Reagan wants to stand beside Kohl,” says a senior White House official, “in the same way that Kohl stood beside him when he put in the Pershings and hailed Star Wars. Reagan practices his gratitude, and he always has.”

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Ronald Reagan is finding out that fellow Irishman Murphy devised a good law when he said, Anything that can go wrong, will. In mid-April, Mr. Reagan walked onto a ballet stage to salute the artists, only to be told by them that the performance wasn’t over; presented an award honoring Nicaraguan refugees to a girl raised in the United States; and lived through the Great Holocaust Blunder.

When Bitburg was first announced, Mike Deaver took the heat, but the fact remains that it is Mr. Reagan himself who insisted that the Bitburg visit go forward. After discussing the cemetery stop several times with Helmut Kohl, the President became convinced that the focus of their meeting must be reconciliation and that Bitburg was the place to reconcile. “Reagan wants to stand beside Kohl,” says a senior White House official, “in the same way that Kohl stood beside him when he put in the Pershings and hailed Star Wars. Reagan practices his gratitude, and he always has.”