New Tactics at Half Time

In his State of the Union and budget messages, Reagan will shift his stance

"How time flies when you're having fun."

—Ronald Reagan at an informal news conference on the second anniversary of his Inauguration

The irony was unmistakable. For as everyone in the White House press room knew, the President is under siege at the half-time mark of his Administration. Indeed, more than a few of the inevitable stories analyzing his performance at the mid-point sound more like obituaries than dispassionate assessments.

Against this background, the State of the Union speech that Reagan is delivering this Tuesday night and the budget he is sending to Capitol Hill six days later have assumed even greater importance than is customary. They will bring the Administration, and the nation, to a critical test. At issue is whether Reagan can produce a credible program to nurture sustained recovery from the crippling recession that seems to have finally hit bottom. That in turn will go far to determine whether he can regain enough of the political momentum he lost in the past year to restore his effectiveness during the second half of his term.

Final touches were still being put to both documents over the weekend. But all last week Reagan was in effect rehearsing themes and lines for the two big messages: at the news session, at a fund-raising dinner in Chicago for Republican Senator Charles Percy and at a kind of mid-term pep rally in Washington for his political appointees. The sum of his remarks suggests that he may be about to moderate his harshly ideological stance just enough, and just in time, to stave off disaster.

The most striking change is in tone. Last year's State of the Union speech was a self-confident stay-the-course message typified by this assertion to Congress: "I will not ask you to try to balance the budget on the backs of the American taxpayer." But last week he was stressing moderation and an appeal for bipartisan cooperation. To the Republican contributors at the Percy dinner, Reagan held up as a model the accord worked out among the White House, the National Commission on Social Security Reform and House Speaker Tip O'Neill, even though it includes huge tax increases. "Yes, it involves necessary compromise," said Reagan. "We must now seek similar answers to other problems weighing on our economy and on our people."

A comparable note of somber concern is creeping into the President's assessments of the economy too. Reagan is well aware that the recession has reinforced a widespread impression that he is indifferent to the sufferings of the poor and unemployed; some 300 demonstrators drove home the point last week by assembling in the bitter cold outside Chicago's Conrad Hilton Hotel and chanting, "We want jobs!" At the Percy dinner inside, the President told his partisan audience: "In the long run, economic growth will put our unemployed back to work, revive idle factories and open new doors of opportunity. But in the short run, our people continue to hurt. So we must take action." That marked a sharp contrast to Reagan's previous denunciations of "make-work" programs.