New Beginnings, Old Anxieties

A TIME poll finds more unease, less hope, than four years ago

He won election by a landslide and was welcomed to office last week with a blare of trumpets and the bells of rejoicing at the freeing of the American hostages. But Ronald Reagan's honeymoon is likely to be somber. He inherits a nation that is bleakly pessimistic about its own situation, anxious about inflation, skeptical about solving any of its major problems quickly and much less confident than it was four years ago when Jimmy Carter took office.

Reagan settles into the White House...