In a high-stakes bid to reverse the setbacks of a rocky second term, President Reagan takes to the hustings this week to make his case for the centerpiece of his ”Second American Revolution.”
Aiming to make his mark in the history books, Reagan is putting the finishing touches on what aides are calling one of the most important speeches of his life, a nationally televised address Tuesday night from the Oval Office to announce his tax-simplification plan.
Reagan said Saturday that the program will ”remove the dark cloud of unfairness” from a rickety tax system and lower payments for most Americans.
In his weekly radio address, Reagan previewed–without giving details
–the administration`s tax plan, which he said would make the 1040 form
”an endangered species.”
After his speech Tuesday, Reagan will leave the suddenly unfriendly confines of the nation`s capital for carefully scripted appearances where aides are gambling that his new tax plan will play better with ”real people” than it probably will with Congress.
Plans call for Reagan to pitch his tax proposal on Thursday in Williamsburg, Va., a symbolism-dripping scene of the first American Revolution. Then he goes to Oshkosh, Wis., seen as representative of ”Main Street America” that White House aides think scores points on television.
Those brief trips will be followed by a visit Friday to Malvern, Pa., a blue-collar town outside Philadelphia that is now associated with high-tech industries.
A new team of top White House advisers, on the defensive for their occasional political bungling during the last four months, are counting on Reagan`s charm as a campaigner to erase a growing perception of vulnerability. ”With this issue, we think the President can regain the initiative and momentum,” said a senior White House official. ”We want to set in the public mind that Reagan becomes identified with tax reform.” All too often during the last weeks, aides admit, Reagan has been identified with losses on Capitol Hill, careless planning and needless controversy.
Among these problems have been losses on defense spending, budget priorities and aid to Nicaraguan rebels. Along the way, Reagan was forced to accept a budget compromise that made him break his campaign promise not to reduce Social Security benefits.
The President compounded his mistakes with the controversy over his visit to the German military cemetery in Bitburg, then saw both Latin American and European allies refuse to back his trade embargo with Nicaragua. In addition, early hopes for a summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev have cooled considerably.
Finally, the Republican-controlled Senate last week handed the President another setback, limiting the deployment of MX missiles to 50, half the number requested by the White House.
A Harris poll released Friday showed that Reagan`s capacity to inspire confidence among the American public has fallen from about 60 percent to 54 percent over the last two months. An overwhelming majority of respondents across the nation disagreed with his handling of foreign affairs.
In political circles, blame for Reagan`s struggling start to his second term is thought to lie with the new White House team headed by Donald Regan, with its shortcomings spotlighted by the President`s penchant for delegating responsibility and leaving detail work to others. Another part of the problem stems from a decision to wage combat on several difficult fronts at once, White House officials admit.
”Maybe he had too much on his plate to handle at one time,” said one aide. ”You can`t pull out all the stops every time.”
In Reagan`s defense, some officials say he was a prisoner of the legislative calendar. ”The question is whether he put the things on his plate, or the things were already there on the plate,” said one senior aide. Others, preferring to look at personalities, see the emergence of Patrick Buchanan, the fiery conservative White House director of communications, as perhaps the second most important staffer next to Regan. His presence is seen as underlying the somewhat more strident rhetoric that marks Reagan`s second term; Buchanan denies this interpretation.
Regan delegated planning for Reagan`s European trip to former presidential aide Michael Deaver, but nonetheless was severely criticized for the Bitburg visit. Last week, in addition to his long list of other duties, Regan decided to assume primary responsibility for setting the President`s schedule.
Now comes the issue of tax reform, as Reagan aides like to call it. The President himself prefers the term tax simplification. And others, including congressional critics, who chafe at last-minute benefits granted to corporations and oil and gas interests, call it impossible.
For a man who wants one of the principal legacies of his presidency to be the permanent overhaul of a monstrously complicated tax code, Reagan cannot afford to lose further ground on the issue. Failure to pass a tax bill this year would mean it would become an election issue next year, making it harder still to pass.
If that happens, White House aides admit, Reagan can expect to be perceived in many quarters as a ”lame duck,” and that could paralyze his presidency through 1988 and diminish whatever lasting imprint he may have on American life.
The sweeping tax revisions to be announced by Reagan during his Oval Office address Tuesday night are expected to drastically reduce individual tax rates for most Americans, impose at least a minimum tax on corporations and eliminate some loopholes that allow the well-to-do to pay less than what is perceived as their fair share of taxes.
”It will be extremely attractive to blue-collar America,” said a senior Reagan aide. ”It`s a realignment issue.” It`s also an issue that is dear to Republicans but one that has been sidetracked for a time by Reagan`s recent troubles.
But to those who have watched Reagan closely for years, reports of his political demise are dangerously premature. Even some of the polls that show Reagan`s popularity dropping at the same time show that his standing is higher than it has been at this stage in each of the last three years.
