Candidates Give Speech Low Marks

Their fingers crossed in hope, those who covet George Bush’s job offered a thumbs-down assessment Tuesday night of the President’s State of the Union address. Reams of rhetoric boiled down to this: From Bush, it was too little, too late, they said.

“His State of the Union could only have come from a person who is totally out of touch with America,” harrumphed Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, echoing the sentiments of the four other major Democrats seeking the presidency. “The record is four years of neglect, four years of broken promises.”

Republican Patrick J. Buchanan, the conservative commentator and Harkin’s ideological opposite, made much the same point.

“It seems clear that George Bush as a candidate is going to run against the record of the Bush Administration,” said Buchanan, who is challenging the President for the GOP presidential nomination. “He said taxes are too high, spending is too high, regulations are too heavy. It sort of makes you wonder who’s been in charge the last three years.”

Among the candidates, Bush’s speech was judged in political terms: Would it serve to arrest his slide in the polls? The consensus, not surprisingly, was no.

“Tonight, this President assumed no responsibility for the past or the present and offered no real vision for the future,” Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton said.

Former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. said Bush offered “nothing that would let the average American grow and prosper.”

Former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas said Bush offered only “promises, promises, promises.”

Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey offered a bit of praise, saying Bush had laid out “admirable goals. But, he said, “it didn’t address the hardest problem we’ve got,” which he defined as the decline in real income among Americans.

Kerrey, inexplicably, watched the broadcast in the Manchester home of Frank Adamske, a registered Republican who plans to vote for Buchanan in New Hampshire’s Feb. 18 primary. Unemployed for more than two months, Adamske too was unswayed by the President’s remarks.

“I didn’t get real warm feelings,” he said.