ON MONDAY AFTERNOON the 70-year-old chief of the free world made some courageous, relaxed jokes whereas a bullet lay a couple of inches from his coronary heart. The sensible impact could also be a proud surge of help and sympathy that might within the subsequent few months allow President Reagan to push by the congress and the special-interest teams virtually any insurance policies he needs.
That is the one good end result of the horrid affair. Most People this week can benefit from the exhilaration of treating a president with easy and unifying affection after 15 years of too typically treating three of his 4 predecessors with subtle and divisive contempt. Ever for the reason that botches in Vietnam and Watergate inclined America to retreat from an over-imperial presidency, it has sat snared beneath an overmocked and ineffective one. Those that have longed to see coherent policy-making in America begin shifting once more can now set off marching behind a genial, ambling, conservative folk-hero on a white horse. Let liberals be part of the rally. It is going to on stability be higher if most of President Reagan’s current insurance policies will be confidently strengthened slightly than cautiously trimmed. And it will likely be higher if Mr Reagan’s staff, too, begins cohering somewhat extra firmly spherical what it needs.
