Speech a Chance to Repair Harm of Iran Scandal

WASHINGTON — When President Reagan journeyed up the snow-covered expanse of Capitol Hill to deliver his sixth State of the Union Message Tuesday night, he faced more than just the House, the Senate and a national television audience: He faced the future of his Administration.

For Reagan, the speech--mandated by the Constitution and delivered, by tradition, before a joint session of Congress--was perhaps the most critical of his presidency, in the view of White House advisers, members of Congress and some outside experts. It was a priceless 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 and with both the House and Senate in Democratic hands for the first time since he took office, Reagan would face substantial challenges under the best of circumstances. But his problems have been compounded by the continuing debacle of the Iran- contras scandal and he may have little time left to convince the public and Congress that he is firmly in command.

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.”

Reagan himself appeared to recognize the challenge. “I have one major regret,” he said in his speech. “I took a risk with regard to our action in Iran. It did not work, and for that I assume full responsibility.”

He sought to cast the Iran-contras 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.”

What the President needed to do in the State of Union addresss, said White House pollster Richard B. Wirthlin, was “to block out in a convincing and credible fashion” major policy goals for his Administraton and the ways he intends to reach them, if he is to repair the Iran damage and “recapture the Reagan magic.”

“He was damaged, has been damaged,” by the scandal, Wirthlin said in a meeting with reporters last week. “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.”

‘Error in Judgment’

GOP Rep. Henry J. Hyde of Illinois described Reagan’s task Tuesday night as telling the American people that the Iran-contras operation “was an error in judgment. It didn’t work out.”

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.”

Even White House spokesman Larry Speakes acknowledged Tuesday morning that, “The American people will judge the President’s final two years as he lays out his program here tonight.

“This is the sixth State of the Union address the President has given, and each year, the President has stood before the Congress and the American people and delivered a strong speech that outlined his program of leadership for the United States, and this will be no exception to these speeches.”

It was not immediately clear Tuesday night whether Reagan’s speech had in fact achieved all those goals.

Still Dominant Force

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

And Republican Hyde, referring to the Iran issue, said: “I really don’t think budget reform and welfare reform and the line-item veto equal this issue in terms of public interest.”

The reaction of the Democratic majority was more guarded. Most Democrats sat in stony silence as the President discussed the Iran issue.

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 programs. And the State of the Union message was long on discussion of individual programs and issues--trade and welfare; budget deficits and health insurance--but may have been short on the stirring gestures and language that are the trademark of Reagan speeches.

But one thing was certain:

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 Were 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 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 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

Indeed, a poll conducted by the Gallup organization for the 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.”

“The atmospherics of it--the image he presents, the perceptions he creates--are almost as important as what he says,” this source said, speaking before the address.