State of the Union: Speech Short & Sweet

The betting among some people in the White House is that President Reagan’s 1986 State of the Union Address, to be delivered before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, will be best remembered for brevity.

Acting on the advice of White House pollster Richard B. Wirthlin, the presidential speech writers are attempting to produce a 10-minute oration. “The Nielsens (the A.C. Nielsen television rating service) conclusively show that the audience attention span for a presidential speech is 10 minutes,” one White House aide said, deadpan. “But,” he added mischievously, “substance may force it up to 15 minutes.”

In fact, according to White House officials who, by Friday, had already seen three drafts, substance will not be one of the hallmarks of the President’s address. “It’s the usual happy pablum,” commented one insider. Although Administration officials have let it be known that the President will be delivering a “family speech,” it is not considered a marked departure from previous efforts. “Family speech is just a verbal conceit,” says one White House official. “In reality, it’s only a shorter version of the same old speech he’s been giving since his General Electric days.”

For a time last week, some White House aides were concerned that it was going to be a dry, boring version of the same old speech. After chief White House speech writer Bentley T. Elliott submitted a first draft, Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan and his legislative strategist W. Dennis Thomas, who had overseen the drafting process, suddenly decided to order a second, less emotive version. Cabinet secretary Alfred H. Kingon was pressed into service. He had performed some speech-writing chores for Regan when he was at the Treasury Department.

Then Patrick J. Buchanan, White House director of communications, discovered what was afoot and cried foul. Complaining that the State of the Union Address was the responsibility of his speech writers and, more important, that the Kingon draft was abominable, he regained control of the speech.

The third draft, completed by the end of the week, was expected to recapture the flavor of the original. Also, taking some advice from former aide and now White House media consultant Michael K. Deaver, senior officials began to search for a surprise announcement. “We need a Lenny Skutnik,” said one White House staffer, referring to the hero of the 1982 Air Florida crash. Skutnik, who dove into icy Potomac River to rescue crash survivors, was an unexpected guest in the visitor’s gallery and was introduced by Reagan during the 1982 State of the Union Address.

Heroes aside, the President’s address is not expected to receive a warm welcome on Capitol Hill. Even at 15 minutes, it will lack a detailed legislative agenda. Only one or two new measures, including a proposal for catastrophic health insurance, are currently being considered.

More important, the assembled lawmakers will not be given what they most desire from the President--a practical map through the political mine field known as the Gramm-Rudman Deficit Reduction Act. That act is the No. 1 topic of conversation here. In the view of the Senate GOP leadership, the President’s refusal to deal with Gramm-Rudman in a serious way is undermining the fortunes of the Republican Party for the fall midterm elections, not to mention the effective functioning of government. One Senate staffer said, “There are a lot of worried Republicans up here.”

Gramm-Rudman, enacted during the closing days of the last session in December, obligates Congress to reduce the deficit by some $60 to $70 billion by October. If this goal is not reached, the law requires automatic across-the-board spending cutbacks.

While the President will insist in his State of the Union address, as he did in private meetings last week, that this goal can be met through his old-time religion of domestic budget cuts, there are few of similar faith on Capitol Hill. One such co-religionist, Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), said during an interview, “The targets can be met.” But even Kemp, who voted against Gramm-Rudman, admits he is “concerned that the pressure created by this legislation could lead to defense cuts and tax increases.”

An arch political foe of Kemp’s, former budget director David A. Stockman, lends credence to the congressman’s fears when he tells his new friends on Wall Street, “I could have used the Gramm-Rudman violin to play quite a good song.” And some in Congress hope that when faced with massive and automatic spending cuts, the White House will blink.

But Stockman doubts the Regan-led White House team had the political acumen to orchestrate an 11th-hour compromise. Instead, he has told colleagues, “This game of chicken will only exacerbate financial paralysis.” He expects the exercise to degenerate into another version of the regular effort to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. Members of Congress, he predicts, will posture and at the last moment vote to extend the deadline--”stay the execution,” as he says. For Stockman, as well as a large number of Senate Republicans, the “cork in the process” is Reagan.

By refusing to come to grips with Gramm-Rudman in the State of the Union Address, the White House, in the view of a number of congressional insiders, risks losing its role as a major player on Capitol Hill this year. “The State of the Union will be dismissed and focus will immediately revert to the Gramm-Rudman doomsday machine,” predicted one Republican.