Reagan in Desert: Some Work, Some Parties--and a Secret Golf Score

PALM SPRINGS — Behind a barrier of barbed wire and dense shrubbery from which they have ventured out only once, President and Mrs. Reagan are passing a quiet New Year’s holiday just as they have for each of the last 20 years--among longtime friends and political associates near this desert playground for the wealthy.

Each day, a national security briefing--delivered in person when the President is in Washington but generally on paper when he is on vacation--is presented for Reagan to peruse. Other documents are delivered by electronic transmission from Washington.

But White House officials, who transported the national and personal security apparatus of the presidency to Palm Springs this winter, as they have each year since December, 1981, made no effort to portray Reagan’s visit as anything but a few days of vacation--similar to many of the more than 365 days he has spent in California during the last seven years.

Relaxed Melange

So, Reagan’s days at Sunnylands, the estate of Walter H. Annenberg in nearby Rancho Mirage, are a relaxed melange of late breakfasts and evening parties, desert garb and formal wear.

The chill that has afflicted the California deserts this week and coated the nearby 10,804-foot summit of Mt. Jacinto with snow kept Reagan from Annenberg’s 18-hole golf course earlier in the week.

The score of what the President calls his annual game of golf is guarded with the jealousy of a state secret and will remain so, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said, unless the President gets a hole-in-one. So far, the score remains undisclosed.

Fitzwater said that, since Reagan arrived from Los Angeles on Tuesday, time has been reserved each morning for reviewing paper work dispatched from Washington.

In addition, 12 bills passed by Congress before the holiday recess awaited Reagan’s signature--each accompanied by a briefing memorandum reviewing any staff reservations, along with recommendations for presidential action.

“It takes a while to review them,” Fitzwater said. “It adds up to a morning’s work. Mr. Annenberg lets him use his office.”

Signs Pay Hike Bill

On Thursday, for example, Reagan signed legislation granting 2% pay raises to the 2.2 million members of the military services and to 2.1 million federal civilian employees whose salaries are below the level of $72,500. In addition, the action granted a 4.2% increase in Social Security benefits and military and civilian retirees’ pensions.

Other measures Reagan has signed have had less far-reaching effects: One authorizes appropriations for the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, another establishes two wilderness areas in New Mexico and a third implements a land claims settlement reached with the Seminole Indian tribe of Florida.

A 5 1/2-minute videotaped message of New Year’s greetings to the Soviet people, intended to be broadcast today, was prepared in Washington before the President began his weeklong vacation, which ends Sunday. Similarly, the radio address that he will deliver Saturday was taped before he arrived here.

The charm of the annual desert visit for the Reagans is that, unlike time spent at Camp David, Md., or their isolated ranch northwest of Santa Barbara, it affords them an opportunity to socialize with some of the business and entertainment figures who helped start the President’s political career two decades ago. And, for Mrs. Reagan, the contacts with old friends are considered particularly important.

Aide Carries War Codes

Reagan was accompanied to the Annenberg estate by a military aide--who carries the codes needed to launch a nuclear attack--and a military physician. The President’s personal secretary, Kathy Osborne, visits Reagan each day, and White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr. plans to arrive in Palm Springs today, spelling deputy staff chief Kenneth L. Duberstein.

In earlier visits here, Reagan has occasionally had to wrestle with such difficult issues as the questions surrounding the deployment of U.S. troops in Beirut. But, as he enters the last year of his presidency, problems of that magnitude have not intruded on the gentle atmosphere, in which the only apparent disappointment has been the unseasonably cool temperatures.

In Rancho Mirage, where visitors are greeted by occasional moats, high walls and multiple signs warning that trespassers will be met by an armed response, the Reagans have been nearly anonymous guests.

Of course, in a community where Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope are residents--Sunnylands, the 200-acre Annenberg estate is situated at the intersection of the boulevards named for the two entertainers--even the presence of a President is barely news.

A local television station led its evening newscast on Wednesday not with Reagan but with the report that a local resident, former First Lady Betty Ford, had been re-hospitalized for treatment stemming from recent heart surgery.

On Saturday evening, President and Mrs. Reagan will leave the Annenberg estate to attend the opening of the Bob Hope Cultural Center at Palm Desert.

Black-Tie Party

But the centerpiece of the annual Reagan visit to Sunnylands is the black-tie New Year’s Eve party given by Annenberg, ambassador to the Court of St. James’s during the Richard M. Nixon Administration, and his wife, Leonore, the first chief of protocol in the Reagan Administration.

There, on the pink marble dance floor, they have greeted the New Year for two decades, surrounded by manicured lawns, a reflecting pool and sculpture by Rodin.

“It’s very well done,” one White House staff member commented during a previous visit, with a pronounced degree of understatement.

But another White House official was less reserved in his reaction to the gowns worn to one of the dinners the Reagans attended a few years back at the El Dorado Country Club.

“I haven’t seen that many feathers in a bird sanctuary,” he said.