The hearings, and after.

The Hearings, and After

IN TWO AND A HALF WEEKS, it seemed, the worldturned around. Admiral Poindexter, emotional as a Frigidaire, explained that, no, President Reagan did not know about the now-famous diversion. Lieutenant Colonel North, who was anything but cool, explained what he had been doing and why. The Left's best hope of pinning a wrong on Reagan vanished, while the cause of the Contras was measurably advanced.

All during those weeks, the press and the pols triedmightily to put a better spin on events that were spinning out of control. Senator Inouye lectured Colonel North soberly about Nuremberg. The Democratic presidential candidates got in their licks at a cattle show in Cleveland: "Oliver North is not a hero' (Paul Simon); "North put the Constitution through the shredder' (Richard Gephardt); "Our political system generally sees that justice is done' (Michael Dukakis, speaking of Joe McCarthy). But the blue ribbon for damage control surely goes to the New York Times, which on July 12 ran, at the top of page one, a posed picture of Senate counsel Arthur Liman holding a staffer's child, as comfortably as if it were a sack of peat moss . . . Well, sorry, Senator; tough luck, dwarfs; so long, Arthur. You were the ones who wanted a show. The actors just wouldn't read their lines.

All of which should not distract us from severalbasic points. The first is that there is still a war going on in Nicaragua, and the Contras are not winning. They need increased American assistance. Pat Buchanan has suggested $500 million; we see him, and raise him; certainly it is absurd to send less than the Corporation for Public Broadcasting gets. They also need, as Max Singer argued ("Can the Contras Win?' NR, Feb. 13), a concerted American political offensive, designed to isolate the Sandinistas in the same way that Somoza was isolated before his fall. In this connection, a poll conducted by Gallup's Central American affiliate in January is worth recalling. The pollsters asked people in four Central American countries their opinion on aspects of the Nicaraguan question. When they asked, Which side do the Nicaraguan people support? they got these responses: Sandinistas: 23 per cent (Guatemala), 20 per cent (El Salvador), 14 per cent (Honduras), 12 per cent (Costa Rica). Contras: 46 per cent (El Salvador), 60 per cent (Guatemala), 72 per cent (Costa Rica), 75 per cent (Honduras). (For obvious reasons, there was no polling in Nicaragua.) When the question was American military aid to the Contras, the answers came back like this: Disapprove: 28 per cent (Guatemala), 23 per cent (El Salvador), 21 per cent (Costa Rica), 9 per cent (Honduras). Approve: 68 per cent (Guatemala), 69 per cent (El Salvador), 70 per cent (Costa Rica), 81 per cent (Honduras). That sentiment has to be consolidated regionally, then used to leverage hemispheric, and world, opinion. If the State Department won't do it, Reagan needs a new one.

There also has to be a political offensive at home.The Administration's Central American policy should not have had to wait two years for a lieutenant colonel of the Marines to present it forcefully. No American President has willingly acquiesced in the establishment of foreign salients in this hemisphere (we do tolerate Cuba--unwillingly). The danger is real and present, and the precedents for removing it are old and honorable. Reagan has to make that plain to the American people.

In the course of doing so, he must brand the DemocraticParty for what it is--the Sandinistas' Washington affiliate. Most Democrasts (even most Democrats in Congress) do not feel this way, perhaps. But the Party as a whole has let its Central American agenda be set by a hard-core pro-Sandinista coterie, many of them graduates of the New (Tom Harkin) or Old (George Crockett) Left. Since the party has let them take the lead on the issue, it is fair to bash the party as a whole for it.

Go ahead, Mr. President. There have to be morepeople on the Contras' side than Colonel North and Admiral Poindexter.