Talk Is a Chance for Reagan to Regain Control

President Reagan’s State of the Union message Tuesday night was perhaps the most critical of his presidency--a unique opportunity to reassert his leadership, recapture control of the national agenda and regain his credibility with the American people.

With his last term passing the halfway mark, with Congress solidly Democratic for the first time since he took office, and with the Iran- contras scandal still unresolved, some White House advisers and members of Congress, as well as some outside experts, suggested the address may have been Reagan’s best remaining chance to regain command.

Results Not Clear

And, while the President’s performance drew a chorus of praise from Republicans in Congress--including some who had expressed open concern before he spoke--it was not immediately clear whether he had met the larger challenge.

Reagan’s strength, said political scientist Ross Baker of Rutgers University, “has been to know what is bothering the American people.”

“What is bothering them is Ronald Reagan” Baker said. “He’s got to set their minds at rest if he wants to achieve anything.”

White House pollster Richard B. Wirthlin said President Reagan needed to set 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 Iran damage and “recapture the Reagan magic.”

“He was damaged” by the scandal, Wirthlin said in comments before the speech was delivered. “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.”

And Patrick J. Buchanan, the President’s communications director, remarked: “The demeanor is important. The carriage is important. The people have to see what they have come to expect from Ronald Reagan, the great communicator.”

Reagan himself appeared to recognize the special challenge posed by the speech, especially on the Iran-contras issue, and he sought to deal with it directly but briefly: “I have one major regret,” he said. “I took a risk with regard to our action in Iran. It did not work, and for that I assume full responsibility.”

Terms of Leadership

At the same time, he sought to cast the controversial affair in terms of bold leadership. Adopting a phrase that echoed the late John F. Kennedy, Reagan declared: “Let it never be said of this generation of Americans that we became so obsessed with failure that we refused to take risks that could further the cause of peace and freedom in the world.”

Republican leaders quickly declared themselves satisfied.

“Ronald Reagan is still the dominant political force in Washington,” Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said Tuesday night. “The President didn’t duck the tough issues, including the Iran controversy. He was right to publicly accept responsibility for what happened.”

Other Republicans were similarly positive in their responses: House GOP leader Robert H. Michel of Illinois, acknowledging that Republicans were looking at the speech with “special apprehension and anxiety,” said afterward, “I think the President carried it off very well. . . . I got a real good, visceral feeling that the dissemination of this speech has gotten him to where the polls will show him coming back.”

Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Me.), a member of the Senate select committee on Iran-contras, praised the President’s remarks on Iran. “It was a positive statement. For the first time he has ‘one major regret.’ He’s come a long way from where we were last November. It’s very difficult to get a President to say ‘I’m wrong’ in any forum, let alone this one.”

Democrats Critical

The reaction of the Democratic majority, however, was highly critical. “I don’t care what he said. We still don’t know who is running the country,” Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) said. “Our foreign policy is in a shambles. There is no direction, there is no sense of purpose.”

Sen. David L. Boren (D-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a member of the Iran-contra investigation committee, also expressed disappointment with the Iran statement.

“I was puzzled that he didn’t say the policy itself was flawed. Obviously, transferring arms to Iran was a policy mistake--not just a mistake of implementation,” Boren said.

And Rep. Tony Coelho (D-Merced) said regarding Iran: “The truth is not out and he still has a problem with the American people.”

The address contained ringing affirmations of such traditional Administration policies as a strong defense budget and aid to the contras but broke little new ground on legislative proposals.

Short on Trademark

And while the message touched on a variety of individual programs and issues--trade and welfare; budget deficits and health insurance--it may have been short on the stirring gestures and language that are the trademark of Reagan speeches.

One thing was certain immediately, though: With so much at stake, Reagan’s appearance before the joint session of Congress represented a drama unmatched in his previous State of the Union addresses.

One Reagan associate called it a “seminal event,” and compared the challenge to that posed by the second presidential debate of the 1984 campaign, when Reagan had to bounce back after a weak showing against Democrat Walter F. Mondale in the first debate.

Political scientist Baker likened Reagan’s task Tuesday night to that faced by Gerald R. Ford in his first speech after taking over the presidency from Richard M. Nixon in 1974--a challenge Ford met with a reassuring declaration that the long nightmare of Watergate had ended.

The crisis that is swirling about Reagan’s presidency is tied directly to the revelation that the United States was shipping arms and spare parts to Iran, and the subsequent disclosure that profits from the weapons sales were being diverted to the rebels fighting to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

Questions Raised

But even before word of the Iran-contra operation became known, darkening shadows had begun to gather. Questions were being raised about Reagan’s performance at the Reykjavik summit conference with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. The Democrats’ success in the 1986 congressional elections raised doubts about his future effectiveness. And completion of work on such central initiatives as tax revision had left the Reagan domestic agenda in need of a burning issue.

A former Reagan aide who has maintained contacts with senior members of the Administration said the President is facing a particularly difficult period because the questions raised by Reykjavik and Iran “are questions that go to his style of governance.”

“The subject of arms control is a real critical one for him right now, from a leadership standpoint. It’s one of the few areas where he can demonstrate he is in control, that he has a grasp of the issues,” the former Reagan assistant said, addressing the heart of the questions tied to the Iran affair. In this view, significant progress--or even the appearance of movement--in the arms control arena “would cause Iran to pale quite a bit.”

While Reagan supporters in Congress and his pollster argue that the political problems of the Iran affair are possibly being overstated--Republican congressional leaders who visited with Reagan Tuesday morning were said by White House spokesman Larry Speakes to have found little evidence of public interest in it in their districts--other samples of public opinion cast doubt on this assessment.

Polls Show Concern

A poll conducted by the Gallup organization for Times Mirror Co., parent company of the Los Angeles Times, found earlier this month that 42% of Americans believe the crisis is so serious that they now question the President’s ability to run the country.

And, in a survey published Tuesday in the New York Times, 52% of those polled were found to believe Reagan is lying about the Iran-contra operation.

Thus, in the view of the former Reagan aide, Reagan needed to “give some explanation of his policy, and reassure people that he was indeed the one who was making the decisions.”

At the same time, he needed “to look like the old Reagan, in charge.”

With immediate reaction to the speech following partisan lines, the answer to the question of whether Reagan’s State of the Union address succeeded or fell short will come only in the weeks ahead, as he faces congressional and other adversaries on specific tests of strength.