Letter from Washington.

IN DECLINING to attend the Chernenko funeral, "Reagan missed the boat." That's the early consensus among insiders here of both conservative and liberal stripe. "It cost him two points in the polls, easy," says one Hill conservative who believes that Mr. Reagan, as practically the only allied head of state failing to attend the Moscow obsequies, also lost a half-dozen MX votes in the Senate. "Reagan could have gained so much in foreign-policy credibility," says a Republican senator. "He could have said, 'Look, I've been to Moscow. I've met with the leadership there. I've taken the temperature. It's clear to me that, yes, we've got to work together with them, but we need the MX. We need the SDI. The Soviets are tough and we've got to be tough.'" A White House Reaganite concurs, adding that it would also have been smart for Mr. Reagan to go. "That's what the housewives of America want." So who's the winner? "Bush," says a senior RNC official. "George has done it again."

Bush is hitting home runs all around the park these days. At the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a preference poll for 1988 showed Jack Kemp, the darling of the conservatives, defeating the Vice President by an embarrassingly thin four-point margin (39 to 35 per cent), revealing the depth and breadth of Bush's penetration into the heart of the conservative movement. Skeptics argue that the numbers mean only that Bush has "very successfully wooed inside-the-Beltway types," and that in the hinterlands "Kemp remains the clear choice of true hard-liners." Another liberal pundit agreed, saying that the poll reflects only the views of the "Old Right, the Human Events crowd," but that outside of Washington "Kemp is still the conservatives' main man."

Well, the skeptics are wrong. Of the 269 CPAC conventioneers polled, 75 per cent were from outside Washington, and, as a ranking American Conservative Union official notes, "The attendees were a broadly based group of Old Right and New Right." How has Bush come so far with conservatives? His loyalty to Reagan; a very public hard line on a full gamut of issues, as exemplified during his debate with Mrs. Ferraro (following Mr. Reagan's mediocre showing in his own first debate); and fear among Republicans of a "massive, bloody fight between Bush and Kemp."

Bush's cultivation of the big, powerful evangelical vote also seems to be paying off. Thus Moral Majority president Jerry Falwell surprised many evangelical conservatives (and many Washington politicos) at the February National Conference of Religius Broadcasters by broadly hinting that George Bush was his candidate in '88.

Then, in early March, when both Bush and Falwell were in Africa on separate fact-finding humanitarian missions, lo and behold their paths happened to cross in Khartoum (the Reverend to cross in Khartoum (the Reverend Pat Robertson was there too), all of which has led Richard Viguerie to say, "Bush is no dummy. He wants to be President and he can't do it without the conservatives. He's reaching out in a symbolic way." Viguerie remains unconvinced that George is true blue.

From the evangelical perspective, there are two interpretations of the Falwell/Bush chumminess. One, Falwell may have decided that "Bush is going to get in anyway, so why not take advantage of it?" Or, Falwell has "not yet made up his mind on whom to support for '88, but wants to keep his options open." Others say that the value of Falwell's support is overrated. "Even if Jerry endorses Bush, it's not that important," argues a Christian Right leader. He notes that the evangelical vote is a "big tent" dominated by no one person, despite media portrayals to the contrary. "Falwell's a good name on the religious Right," observes this Washington-based official, but a Falwell endorsement of Bush would be "politically irrelevant because there are too many players and too many coaches in the evangelical ball-park."

John Conlan, president of the Faith-America Foundation, confirms this, claiming that Jack Kemp already has 70 to 80 per cent of the Christian Right. The problem with Conlan's view is that no one really believes his numbers, so evident are Bush's inroads into the religious Right. Put in minimalist terms, even if Bush does not now have a majority of the Christian Right constituency, he certainly has a sizable minority, probably enough to propel him into the nomination. In yet more minimalist terms (for Bush), if Kemp chooses not to run in '88, or if he bombs out early, Bush's rapprochement with the evangelicals will be an invaluable asset, assuring him of a near-bloodless nomination.