GOP Leaders Call Reagan State of Union Talk Crucial

House Republican leader Robert H. Michel warned Thursday that unless President Reagan sends Congress a clear signal on his legislative plans in his State of the Union address Tuesday, the lawmakers themselves will take charge of the agenda for the 100th Congress.

“Seeing the kind of things we’re up against, this would have to be one of his more important State of the Union messages,” the veteran Illinois legislator told a breakfast session with Times reporters. “If there isn’t a significant charge in the State of the Union, then we’ll have to pick up” the agenda.

Michel’s remarks reflected concern widely shared among other Republican lawmakers and the President’s own advisers about the pressures on Reagan as he starts his seventh year in the Oval Office. Apart from the damage to his prestige caused by the Iran arms- contras scandal, now roiling through its third month, he must also contend for the first time with a Democratic-controlled Congress.

Beyond all that, Reagan must face the traditional difficulties common to presidents entering the second half of their second terms when their lame duck status becomes acute.

“These things have got to start coming together pretty darn quick,” Michel said, referring to the need for Reagan to move swiftly and forcefully on a program. Unless the President sets forth at least a limited agenda, to “reaffirm some of his basic thoughts and views,” Michel said, “there’s a void there,” forcing the lawmakers to “plug the gap and do something of our own.”

Michel saw Tuesday’s State of the Union address as an opportunity to “get the President leapfrogged over the Iran thing,” a view shared by Republican Sen. Pete Wilson of California.

Wilson added that Reagan needs to be “coming forward with one, two, three--even one--real initiative that is of substantive importance.”

Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, a sometime critic of the President’s handling of the Iranian affair, also sounded a hopeful note. Dole predicted that Reagan will “reconfirm that he’s the dominant political figure in this town when he gives the State of the Union message.”

‘Still a Lot of Fire’

Equally hopeful was Rep. Dick Cheney of Wyoming, a member of the House Republican leadership. “I think there’s still a lot of fire in the President’s agenda,” he said.

Still, for his part Michel was troubled that Reagan had not been decisive enough in dealing with the Iran issue. “I have to be troubled when I hear the President say, ‘You folks in the Congress, release all the information you know,’ ” he said. However, he rejected the idea that the President should apologize for the arms sales, saying, “the hell with an apology routine.”

If Reagan’s congressional allies think the State of the Union is critical to the future of his presidency, so do his own advisers. His pollster Richard B. Wirthlin told reporters at another breakfast Thursday that the President needs to use the speech “to block out in a convincing and credible fashion” major policy goals for his Administration and the ways he intends to reach them, if he is to repair the damage of the Iran scandal and “recapture the Reagan magic.”

Lists Issues to Address

Among the issues the President should address in the speech, Wirthlin said, are the creation of more jobs, catastrophic health insurance, deficit reduction and the drug problem. In addition, Wirthlin suggested that Reagan could return to the issues of welfare reform and monetary reform, which he dealt with in his 1986 State of the Union.

Although Reagan’s job rating with the public seemed to be recovering--bouncing back to 54% favorable after dropping to 46% from its high of 69%, Wirthlin indicated that the President still has credibility problems on Iran. He gave no specific figures but said that his surveys show some of the same skepticism about Reagan’s statements on the episode that has shown up in other polls.

“He (Reagan) was damaged, has been damaged,” by the scandal, Wirthlin said. “Today we are in a somewhat better position than we were 30 days ago. But it’s still a book whose last chapter hasn’t been written. And the potential for damage is still very great and very real.”