Back to the Future, Again

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It sounded like a "Ronald Reagan's Greatest Hits" album. The words and music were oldies but goodies. Less Government. No new taxes. The Soviet threat. A strong military. The primacy of the family. The President's brief (29 minutes) State of the Union speech last Tuesday, counterpointed the next morning by the jarring numbers in his fiscal 1987 budget, replayed the themes he has stressed throughout his charmed political life. As he turned an enviable 75 last week, Reagan pushed his red-white-and-blue vision with a young man's zeal and showed his unflagging determination to bring his revolution to fulfillment.

Reagan's unwavering insistence that the deficit can be cut and military spending raised merely through more slashes in the domestic budget was unnerving even to the Republican leadership of the Senate. Indeed, the current year's deficit of $203 billion is greater than the combined total of all discretionary domestic appropriations. Yet this time Congress cannot heedlessly dismiss the President's proposals. Looming in the background is the specter of the Gramm-Rudman law, passed last year, which threatens automatic cuts if the deficit is not reduced to $144 billion in 1987 and to zero by 1991. On Friday a three-judge federal panel declared the triggering mechanism of that law unconstitutional. But pending an appeal to the Supreme Court, its provisions remain in force, adding uncertainty to anxiety in the coming confrontation between Reagan and Capitol Hill.

In his State of the Union report, however, Reagan displayed the buoyant optimism that is at the heart of his personal appeal, touting the magic of the free market and the strength of the American people for a revitalization of the nation's economy. "If ever there was an Uncle Sam, it's him," said White House Spokesman Larry Speakes as he watched a replay of the speech. Although he has embodied Uncle Sam for five years now, Reagan still does so by chastising the Government he heads. "A lumbering giant," he called it, "slamming shut the gates of opportunity." His national pep talk affirmed again and again his belief that "family and community are the co-stars of this great American comeback."

His emphasis on the family (19 mentions) was rivaled only by his highlighting of the future (16 mentions). His reference to the movie Back to the Future was fitting: his image of the future, a peaceful era of happy families in tight communities, harks back to his vision of an idealized past. For the President, future indicative is past perfect. There were, however, few forward-looking initiatives in his address, in part because budget restraints prevent anything that amounts to more than walking-around money.

He called mainly for new studies. Saying that welfare created a "spider's web of dependency," Reagan directed that his domestic-policy council, headed by Attorney General Edwin Meese, evaluate all federal welfare programs, with an eye toward restructuring the system. "The success of welfare," the President said, "should be judged by how many of its recipients become independent of welfare."