An Uncertain Future

The nation wants, and needs, a strong and vigorous leader at the helm through the coming two years. But President Reagan’s State of the Union address Tuesday night failed to provide an adequate plan for sailing from a murky present into an uncertain future. Regrettably, the contents of the President’s speech consisted of little more than rejected proposals of the past and platitudes lifted from dusty old speeches.

Americans should be grateful that the President looks well for a man approaching his 76th year and who recently underwent surgery. Still, this was not the win-one-for-the-Gipper speech that his aides had hoped for, and the polished delivery failed to overcome the inadequacies of his program.

The President talked of the future, but his words looked backward. The President puffed up the economic good news that he could find and mostly ignored the bad. He talked of a rare opportunity of negotiating arms control with the Soviets, but gave no inkling of how, when or where. He insists that he will not budge from his Strategic Defense Initiative, although that stubborn position is precisely what is standing in the way of arms control.

To his credit, the President assumed full responsibility for the Iran- contras affair, and called it his “one major regret.” But he was not able to put the issue behind him with his meek vow to get to the bottom of it and take whatever action is called for. Alas, the President gave the people no indication that he yet knows just quite what went wrong with the arms-sale adventure, or even where the bottom of it is.

In a hollow footnote to the Iran issue, the President vowed that the nation will not yield to terrorist blackmail. Imagine how that was received in the capitals of the world, from Bonn to Beirut to Tripoli. It certainly met with some incredulity in Washington.

In sweeping quickly through a list of the world’s problems, the President offered no new approaches to the massive trade deficit or the Administration’s wrong-footed efforts to advance contra revolution in Nicaragua. He promised more of the same policies that have proved inadequate to the task.

As expected, the President put some emphasis on the problem of making the American economy competitive in the world again. He promised to submit legislation that would include new science and technology centers and strong new funding for basic research. But in the end, he said, the real key to being competitive is putting just plain American grit to work. But, in the movies, “True Grit” worked for John Wayne only because he was a crafty old fox who got the jump on the bad guys and could shoot faster and straighter than they.

If his address lacked substance and innovation on international issues, it was almost totally void of such on the domestic front. The White House hinted that the President would launch some major domestic initiatives in an effort to take eyes off the Iran affair. But what we got was vague promises of future legislation and recycled Reagan rhetoric that went back as far as the 1960s and 1970s--about the “welfare monster,” the outrageous budget deficit and even prayer in schools.

In response to the national disgrace of health-care costs, he promised to propose legislation to protect elderly Americans against catastrophic illness. He made the very same promise in his State of the Union address one year ago, and his Administration still cannot agree on what form the legislation should take.

We are grateful that the President seems to be well, if perhaps not yet back to top form. But his address failed in the two major goals set by the White House: to defuse the Iran-contra controversy and to demonstrate that the Administration is back on top of events and moving forward into tomorrow.

Not everyone agrees with the President’s policies, but everyone wants the Presidency to succeed. Swift currents are at work, both internationally and domestically. A boat needs to keep moving forward in order to maintain direction. Take the hand off the tiller, and it comes up directly into the wind and stalls, its sails flapping without purpose. That is the sort of State of the Union that was presented to the nation Tuesday--one indicating that there is not a sure hand at the tiller or a weather eye fixed squarely on the horizon.