BUCHANAN'S PRETENSE OF DEFENSE

White House communications director Patrick J. Buchanan has teamed with elements of the Democratic Congress whom he despises to dash the holiday hope that petty partisanship might be set aside during investigations of the clandestine Iran arms deal.

Maybe it wasn't a realistic hope. Some Democrats resent Ronald Reagan's popular presidency so much that they can't resist any opportunity to make him squirm. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence yielded to this unfortunate partisanship last week when it withheld a report that failed to shake the president's story that he knew nothing of the diversion of the Iran arms sales proceeds to the Nicaraguan contras.

But Buchanan was the worst offender to common sense and civilized discourse. On the day that White House counselor David M. Abshire began organizing administration efforts to cooperate with congressional inquiries, Buchanan spent the lunch hour in Lafayette Park tearing down the president he is pretending to defend.

I say "pretending" because Buchanan has deliberately chosen to raise the specter of Watergate and compare Reagan to former president Richard M. Nixon. He knows this does Reagan no good. No one has charged Reagan with authorizing a burglary or obstructing justice. Nor has he been accused of receiving brown bags of cash in exchange for past political favors, in the style of Buchanan's other hero, former vice president Spiro T. Agnew.

While genuine defenders of the president emphasize differences between Watergate and the Iran-contra scandal, Buchanan wraps Reagan in the shroud of his first loyalties. As Buchanan sees it, Nixon and Agnew were innocent victims of an assault by the American Left, in which he lumps Democrats, the media and the majority of Republicans who believe in constitutional processes.

"The Left is not after the truth, it is after the president," Buchanan declares, using a Nixon tactic of painting those who disagree with him as card-carrying leftists. Buchanan is aware, of course, that Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), chairmen of the congressional committees investigating the Iran affair, are not members of "the Left." He knows that Lawrence E. Walsh, the respected independent counsel, is no leftist.

Buchanan's smear tactics were previously on display in two articles in The Washington Post, which he now castigates as the "untethered attack dog of the American Left." Last March 5, Buchanan wrote in The Post that the vote on contra aid would reveal whether the Democratic Party "stands with Ronald Reagan and the resistance -- or {Nicaraguan President} Daniel Ortega and the communists." Last Dec. 8, also in The Post, Buchanan accused Republicans who questioned the wisdom of the Iran arms deal of being disloyal to the president.

Perhaps these bizarre declarations will boost Buchanan's future column sales or launch him as a presidential candidate. But, by using a White House imprimatur to castigate legitimate investigations, Buchanan has compounded Reagan's political predicament and cast doubt on the sincerity of the president's oft-expressed intention to cooperate fully with these inquiries.

Why should Reagan be saddled with such an indefensible defense? Despite his resentment of the media, Reagan has explicitly rejected Buchanan's radical and anticonstitutional view that presidents are above the law. He has sent his chief of staff to Capitol Hill to testify under oath without claiming executive privilege, something that Nixon never dared to do.

When Reagan named Abshire as his special counsel, the White House was launched on what spokesman Larry Speakes called "a two-track approach" of governance. Abshire was to head the team dealing with the Iran controversy, freeing the rest of the staff to focus on Reagan's legislative agenda. Instead, Buchanan has given the White House a three-track approach, in which he discredits inquiries that Abshire is supposed to assist.

Buchanan is a capable communicator and self-promoter who may succeed in inciting the congressional partisanship that he claims to deplore. But he can't help Reagan by smearing the investigations of the Iran arms deal. That is a style of defense that ought to be reserved for cover-ups.

Reaganism of the Week: Asked as he left the hospital last Thursday what his doctors had advised him to do, the president said, "They said it's cold out here and to get in where it's warm."

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.