TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/84elect/84elect.015

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                                                                                October 22, 1984

NATION

Questions of Age and Competence


The President seems fit -- but is he too detached?


     His hair is thick and wavy; his rolling gait has just a hint
of swagger. Since Ronald Reagan became President, his chest has
actually grown broader by three inches, thanks to his lifting
weights. Posing for a photograph out at his ranch, he looks rangy
and hale, an ageless cowboy. On a podium with waving flags and
floating balloons, he can mesmerize and uplift. But when he
speaks extemporaneously, the effect can be more halting than
inspirational. He has long been notorious for bungling facts. He
often mangles syntax. Somehow, with a quip or a smile, he
usually manages to fight free of his verbal tangles, leaving
listeners only uneasy, not alarmed.

     But last week's presidential debate, watched by at least 80
million television viewers and parsed by scores of journalists,
greatly magnified Reagan's rhetorical failings. His hesitation
seemed like uncertainty, his digressions like rambling. He
suffered by comparison with his opponent, Walter Mondale, who is
17 years younger and was, on this evening at least, considerably
quicker and more composed. To many viewers, the kindly, anecdote-
dropping uncle suddenly seemed old and a little out of it. To
others, even those willing to give him the benefit of the doubt
about his age, he seemed somewhat blathery and ill at ease with
the issues.

     At 73, Reagan is the oldest President in U.S. history. At
the end of a second term, he would be 77. Too old to be
President? Before the debate, the question was hardly mentioned,
so great were the Democrats' fears of a backlash. "Reagan created
an issue that has not yet come up in this campaign -- age!"
exulted California's Tony Coeho, chairman of the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee. "He looked old and acted old."
Asked if Reagan was doddering in the debate, Coelho replied,
"Well, he didn't quite drool."

     Reagan at first tried to deflate the issue with quips. "I'll
challenge him (Mondale) to an arm wrestle any time," he joked.
Retorted Mondale: "We had a little brain wrestle on Sunday
night." Reagan's physician, Dr. Daniel Ruge, volunteered that
Reagan was "tire, everybody was tired" in the debate. Told of
Ruge's comment by reporters, Reagan's response was defensive and
somewhat baffling: "You got it wrong. He was tired."

     With the age question dogging Reagan, the White House
released the full results of a medical checkup on the President
last May at Bethesda Naval Medical Center. The supervising
examiner concluded that "Mr. Reagan is a mentally alert, robust
man who appears younger than his stated age." The report noted
some "diminished auditory acuity" (Reagan wears a small hearing
aid in his right ear) and the presence of a small, benign polyp
in his colon. The President takes weekly injections for
allergies, but no other medicine. Reagan aides reminded reporters
that Mondale takes three pills a day for high blood pressure.

     About 10% of American between the ages of 65 and 75 are
senile. The President clearly is not. Doctors watching the debate
saw no signs of slurred speech or outright memory loss, the usual
telltales. They did suggest that Reagan should be regularly
tested for mental acuity. Though Reagan promised in 1980 that he
would undergo testing for senility if elected, so far he has not.
Earlier this year he told an interviewer that he would take the
tests "only if there was some indication that I was drifting. . .
Nothing like that has happened."

     The slow response time that Reagan showed in the debate is
not uncommon among older people. Said Dr. James Spar, a
geriatrics psychiatrist at UCLA: "It's the kind of forgetfulness
that when you reach back for a fact, it isn't there. but 20
minutes later, it comes back to you." Stress, not age, may
explain Reagan's slips. "Any of us could be capable of that kind
of performance live on national TV," said Dr. William Applegate,
a geriatrics expert at the University of Tennessee.

     There is no reason to believe that Reagan's intelligence is
diminishing. "The competence of an individual does not change
much with age," said Dr. T. Franklin Williams, director of the
National Institute on Aging. "Many people in their 80s and 90s
are quite capable of being President." Gerontologists point out
that China is vigorously run by Deng Xiaoping, 80, and that half
the members of the Soviet Politburo are over 70.

     Reagan has aged less visibly in office than most of his
modern predecessors. Indeed, his robust example may undermine the
notion that age necessarily saps vigor. Said Spar: "Nowadays
people between 65 and 75, many people cross a vaguely defined
line between what gerontologists call "young-old" and "old-old."
They become less vigorous and more infirm. But doctors caution
that the effects of aging vary greatly from person to person, and
that Reagan is on the young side of old.

     Reagan aides profess not to be worried about the age issue.
White House polls show fewer than 10% of the respondents
expressing concern about Reagan's age and, says one adviser, "so
far the effect on how people say they are going to vote is zero."
Some point out, in a kind of backhanded defense of their boss,
that he was mentally loose and sometimes sloppy with facts even
when he was young. But that does not settle the question. "The
real danger isn't that (his debate miscues) connote an age
problem," said former Reagan Campaign Manager John Sears. "They
raise questions about his competence."

     That was the issue Mondale seized on. For weeks he has tried
to depict Reagan as a dangerously detached leader who skates by
the hard problems of governing. The debate provided more
ammunition. Mondale told TIME: "The President must have control
of the central facts in order to lead his government. If you
don't have that, you can't lead."

     Reagan's handlers have long tried to protect the President
from exposing his detached approach to governing. They know that
he is superb at making speeches but poor at answering questions,
that he prefers hitting broad themes to picking over details. He
has had fewer press conferences (26) than any President since
Richard Nixon. His advisers worry about how he handles
unrehearsed discussions with foreign leaders. Reagan sometimes
has difficulty remembering names, much less complex negotiating
positions. Meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone in June,
he repeatedly referred to his own Vice President as "Prime
Minister Bush."

     But anyone can confuse facts and forget names. For the most
part, Americans have been willing to forgive Reagan his minor
gaffes, his seemingly untaxing work schedule, even his occasional
brief naps in cabinet meetings. His strength as a leader made his
other failings seem picayune. Reagan has skipped over the
minutiae of governing to articulate a clear vision for America.
It can be argued that is precisely what a President should do.

     Still, some details are far from trivial. A year ago, Reagan
admitted to groups of Senators and Congressmen that he had only
recently learned that the Soviets were so heavily dependent on
land-based missiles. He conceded that it was no wonder that the
Soviets rejected as lopsided his original strategic arms control
proposal, which urged that Moscow's land-based missiles be
sharply cut back. Equally startling was Reagan's suggestion, at a
news conference in May 1982, that sea-lauched missiles are less
dangerous than land-based missiles because they can be recalled
after firing (they cannot).

     Reagan continues to show little intellectual curiosity about
the great dilemmas he must confront. He rarely seeks to convene
experts in the Oval Office to toss around ideas on thorny
subjects like the Middle East or arms control. Instead, he
prefers to follow the consensus recommendation of his staff. If
his advisers are capable -- and most are -- Reagan can afford to
trust their judgment. But his staff is not elected, and some,
most notably White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker, may not
stay on through a second term. In sum, the issue Americans should
debate is not Reagan's age but his effectiveness and the validity
of his approach to governing.

-- By Evan Thomas. Reported by Douglas Brew/Washington, with
other bureaus.

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The Loyal Figure in the Wings Awaits His Call to the Stage


A Trouper in '84, Bush Sets His Sights on '88


     If the fateful moment should arrive, would George Herbert
Walker Bush be ready? The question is not an idle one as American
voters grant the oldest President in U.S. history his desire to
spend another four years in one of the world's most demanding
jobs. As a former Congressman, Ambassador to the U.N., head of
the Republican national Committee, special envoy to China and
Director of the CIA, Bush had far more national and world affairs
experience than Reagan when both entered the White House nearly
four years ago. Since then Bush has been treading the thin line
between obsequiousness and his own itch to take charge one day.
Critics dismiss him as Reagan's lap dog; the boss calls him "the
best Vice President ever."

     Bush, 60, has been a loyal supporter of Reagan and his
discreet adviser. The two men normally have lunch together every
Thursday. To Bush's credit, the substance of these conversations
has remained confidential. The President put him in charge of a
task force to reduce governmental red tape, sent him off to calm
NATO countries about the deployment of Pershing II and cruise
missiles in Europe, and made him head of an interagency special-
situation group. Bush has visited 59 countries and logged almost
550,000 miles on presidential assignments. He is the only member
of the Administration, except for the U.S. Ambassador to Moscow,
to have met with Soviet Leaders Yuri Andropov (at Leonid
Brezhnev's funeral) and Konstantin Chernenko (at Andropov's). The
best preparation for the vice presidency, he jokingly advised
Geraldine Ferraro, was buying "a black hat with a veil."

     Bush's finest moments may have come in the period after
Reagan was shot. Taking charge of high-level meetings, he acted
calmly and with sensitivity. He stayed away from the vacant Oval
Office, and presided over the Cabinet from his own chair rather
than that of the President. Said Chief of Staff James Baker at
the time: "He is performing extremely well, filling in for the
President without being brash or overly assertive."

     Nonetheless, Bush's leadership abilities are still open to
question. He has never won an election on his own outside Harris
County, his congressional district in Texas. Twice he ran for the
U.S. Senate and lost. Along the way, h got a reputation as a
political chameleon. Running against Senator Ralph Yarborough in
1964, Bush described himself as a Goldwater Republican who
opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the nuclear test-ban
treaty. Two year later, he ran as a moderate to win a House seat
from a conservative Democrat. With his Yankee background
(Andover, Yale) and Establishment connections (son of a
Connecticut Senator and former member of the Trilateral
Commission), Bush was often seen as a Rockefeller Republican.

     As Reagan's understudy, Bush has swung back to the right.
"I'm a conservative," he says, "but I'm not a nut about it."
during the campaign he was an indiscriminate cheerleader for his
boss. As Bush said last week, "I am for Mr. Reagan -- blindly."
He became irritated whenever reporters suggested that he and
Reagan were in disagreement. An effective fund raiser (since
becoming Vice President, his personal and mail appeals have
brought the  G.O.P. some $42.6 million), Bush appeared in 32
states in the past two months.

     He rose to his greatest challenge by doing well in his
debate with Ferraro. "I was talking facts; she was talking
emotion," he boasted afterward. Actually, Bush was far more keyed
up than the normally voluble Ferraro, who adopted a measured,
almost subdued tone. Bush nearly squandered his debate
performance, however, by refusing to back away from his erroneous
assertion that his Democratic opponents had said that American
Marines killed by terrorists in Beirut had "died in shame." He
was overheard claiming that he had "tried to kick a little ass"
in the debate, then made light of the gaffe, apparently in the
belief that it would add macho to his preppie image. All this led
Columnist Joseph Kraft, who had admired Bush, to write, "Unless
the real George stands up, the general impression will be of a
foolish fellow unfit to be President."

     Noting the way cartoonists have lampooned Bush because of
his erratic and occasionally quarrelsome performance this year,
one top Republican strategist declared, "Bush is in danger of
becoming a national joke." While that seems too harsh, it is
clear that Bush's presidential stock has dropped. Some G.O.P pros
partly blame his staff.

     Bush will spend this second term accumulating political IOUs
and setting himself up for a run at the presidency. (The last
sitting Vice President to win the presidency was Martin Van Buren
in 1836; the only two-term Vice President to do so was John
Adams, who succeeded George Washington.) At some point he will
have to step out of Reagan's shadow and reveal his true political
colors. No one can be entirely sure what they are. Ron Kaufman, a
Reagan-Bush campaign aide, unwittingly made this point when
trying to explain how circumstance will have changed for Bush by
1988. Predicted Kaufman: "In his next campaign, the way Bush is
viewed will be totally different and what he is saying will be
different." Only then will Americans be able to judge how firmly
George Bush would lead -- and in what direction.

-- By Ed Magnuson. Reported by Melissa Ludtke with Bush.