The State Of Reagan

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

If the calendar could have been turned back a year or two, the speech might have been one of Ronald Reagan's most effective. Certainly the President . looked well, despite his recent prostate surgery and advancing age (he will turn 76 on Friday). His voice for the most part was as smooth as ever, though it turned a bit raspy toward the end. All the old conservative themes ("we've created a welfare monster"), all the usual ebullient optimism ("freedom is on the march"), all the familiar patriotic flourishes ("starting the third century of a dream") rang through his 40-minute talk. Relieved supporters told one another that the President's sixth State of the Union address was "vintage Reagan."

It was vintage Reagan, so much so that many of the passages -- from the ruminations on "we the people," to the need to allow God back into the classroom, to the tale about the "rising sun" on George Washington's chair at the Constitutional Convention -- evoked echoes of classics that had been uncorked as far back as the 1980 campaign. His claim that "we don't have deficits because people are taxed too little ((but)) because Big Government spends too much" was almost word for word out of his 1986 speech -- and out of countless campaign speeches over the years. The assertion that soldiers "once again wear their uniforms with pride" was in his 1982 State of the Union, among other places.

Perhaps Reagan felt another draft of the heady old wine could make his problems go away. But it indicated little awareness that this was January 1987, not 1986 or 1985. This time he was speaking as the leader of an Administration deeply wounded by revelations that he had been trading arms to Iran for hostages, and for the first time he was addressing Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. The speech may not have been the make- or-break, last chance to reassert his leadership, which is how some aides (and much of the press) had been overbilling it. But it was an important chance to demonstrate that he was taking charge of the Iranscam mess and to advance imaginative new goals that might help him recapture the initiative. One Republican strategist who has long worked with Reagan admitted privately that it was a bad speech for the current situation, but that the President used it because he felt comfortable with it.

There were only a few words on Iranscam. He expressed "one major regret" -- that his Iranian policy "did not work." Though he came closer than ever before to admitting that his Administration had been trading arms for U.S. hostages, he stopped far short of the apology that some of his staunchest supporters had suggested. Indeed, without ever mentioning that weapons sales had been involved, Reagan proclaimed defiantly, "Certainly it was not wrong to try to secure freedom for our citizens held in barbaric captivity." Six sentences later, with no apparent awareness of inconsistency, he pledged that the U.S. will never "yield to terrorist blackmail." It was not so much the lack of an "apology" that was disconcerting; it was the lack of any sense that he understood why a secret scheme to trade arms for hostages was a mistake, and one that he had made.

On domestic matters, the President in a written message pushed as a main theme the "quest for excellence." But in the speech he backed it up mainly by exhortation rather than specific proposals. For example, a plan to insure the elderly against the expense of catastrophic illness is supposed to be a cornerstone of his 1987 legislative program. Yet so far the President has been unwilling or unable to resolve a dispute within his Administration on what type of plan to propose.

The enthusiasm and applause, although they seemed hearty on television, were in fact strained. Younger conservative House members came to the chamber determined to whoop it up for a beleaguered President -- the more so because some had been warned by Republican Leader Robert Michel, who had seen an advance copy of the address, that "it ain't going to be much of a speech." The Young Turks leaped to their feet clapping and shouting at the most routine lines, pretty much forcing senior Republicans to join.

Democrats waited silently until Reagan pronounced the federal deficit "outrageous." Then they jumped to their feet, clapped and shouted in a mocking salute. When Reagan went on to propose yet again a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget, something he has never come close to achieving, the Democrats responded with loud groans of "awww" -- something they never dared when the President was riding high. To some in the chamber, the partisan display was an omen of deadlocks to come. Said Minnesota Republican Senator David Durenberger: "It means the next two years are going to be difficult ones here."

That prediction seemed borne out later in the week when leaders of the 100th Congress called at the White House to discuss domestic policy. Reagan opened by pledging to veto as a "budget buster" a $20 billion clean-water bill that passed both houses of Congress by overwhelming margins. House Speaker Jim Wright and Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd told the President they thought they had the votes to override; on Friday, Reagan vetoed the bill anyway. Byrd pressed Reagan to call a kind of summit meeting with congressional leaders to discuss strategies for reducing the budget deficit. "I didn't get much of a response," Byrd reported. In fact, he got a vehement one: the President not only insisted on another increase in military spending and repeated his fervent opposition to any kind of tax increase, but called Byrd's arguments for a cut in defense outlays a "bunch of crap." In Wright's view, Reagan "was not familiar with the agenda. He read from three- by-five cards."

Senate Republican Leader Robert Dole commented that the meeting sounded like the "opening gun of '88." Though he intended no criticism of the President, his remark suggested that the principal struggle from now on will be not between the Administration and congressional Democrats but among the leading contenders in both parties (including Dole) for the succession to Reagan.

What are the chances that Reagan can, before then, recapture the initiative? The White House is divided on basic strategy. One group wants the Administration to work with elements of the Democratic majorities to forge ad hoc coalitions on specific issues. Another believes the President should play hardball by vetoing any legislation that violates the tenets of Reaganism and firing back with bold moves like early deployment of the Strategic Defense Initiative.

These strategies were mirrored in two competing drafts of the State of the Union speech. One, written by Presidential Assistant Dennis Thomas, consisted mostly of a laundry list of legislative proposals. The conservatives, led by Speechwriter Anthony Dolan, contributed an unsolicited draft that took a sharply aggressive line: it would have committed the President to push for a constitutional convention to draft a balanced-budget amendment. Reagan rejected both and chose a third draft written by Ken Khachigian, a former White House speechwriter who was called back from California for this effort. Though Khachigian's lyrical prose is well suited to Reagan's natural speech rhythms, the final talk was too familiar and vague to change any minds, in Congress or, apparently, around the country.

The most basic problem is that the Administration, after six years in office, is running low on intellectual energy. To some extent that is inevitable, and particularly for a conservative presidency dedicated to reducing the power of Government; sweeping new programs, to put it mildly, are not its forte. All in all, a sense is growing in Washington that the creative period of the Reagan Administration is over, and the prospect is for two years of drift while the thoughts of the nation turn increasingly to the post-Reagan era about to begin. Some longtime Reagan loyalists outside the Government even find that a benign idea. Asks one veteran of the first term: "Is it so bad to have two years of comfortableness?"

That assuredly is not Reagan's view, but in his efforts to regain momentum he is handicapped by problems other than the temporary idleness enforced by his health. More than most Presidents, Reagan is dependent on the help of savvy aides, which he got during his first term. Right now, though, he is surrounded by inexperienced and unimaginative assistants; one of the brightest members of the current crew, Mitch Daniels, resigned over the weekend. As always, the President is detached from the details of policy and reluctant to crack heads. As a result, Secretary of State George Shultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger continue to battle inconclusively about early deployment of SDI while some Cabinet members whisper, unavailingly but unrestrainedly, about a palace revolt against Chief of Staff Donald Regan. One White House official compares the President's role in this bickering to a "king in his declining years when all the barons start jockeying."

Reagan all but certainly retains too solid a reserve of goodwill to be mortally wounded or discredited. But the country seems on the verge of passing him by, looking beyond his term rather than worrying about how its last two years will play out. Instead of forcing out all the details of Iranscam as quickly as possible, as Reagan pledged, his White House has pretty much hunkered down and volunteered nothing until other sources forced it out. The upshot is that the drip-drip of new Iranscam disclosures will become a kind of water torture, regularly reminding him -- and the nation -- of his failings. On other matters he seems destined to alternate between feisty confrontation and conciliation with congressional Democrats, and to attempt now and again to resurrect his oratorical powers. As Political Analyst Kevin Phillips puts it, he is likely to "muddle through with considerable strain." Reagan may still reverse such judgments, but the State of the Union speech did not start any such process.

With reporting by Michael Duffy and Barrett Seaman/Washington