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In a yet to be released poll, Lou Harris finds that Central America is proving a "disaster" for Reagan, undoing the confidence that an improving economy has given him, and reviving the old specter that he is apt to get us into war. Faced with rising criticism, Reagan blames the press for its "hype and hoopla," moving New York Times Columnist James Reston to observe, "On these two subjects you have to pay attention, for he's an expert on both." The President's own pollster, Richard B. Wirthlin, samples opinions frequently to give Reagan a measure of American attitudes apart from what Wirthlin calls "the din and tumult represented by the press and pressure groups." Presumably these polls prompt conciliatory gestures like Reagan's appointment of Henry Kissinger. But, as a White House friend told Lou Harris, whatever accommodations Reagan makes on domestic issues, in foreign policy he does not use "a criterion of political advantage."
A whiff of martyrdom has begun to rise from the lower levels of the White House. Faith Ryan Whittlesey, who is something called Reagan's new assistant for public liaison, says she is "appalled" by television news and thinks "the media have tried to portray what we think are the bad guys, the Communists, as Robin Hoods." Her office predicts that Reagan will be proved as correct as Churchill was in the 1930s, and his critics as discredited as Neville Chamberlain. To make such an analogy valid, the country's survival would have to be equally at risk, and the public would have to be convinced that Reagan has not inflated, wrongly identified and sometimes inflamed the problems of Central America.