In a second-year slump, Reagan softens his rhetoric
That Ronald Reagan's presidency has an image problem comes as no surprise inside the White House. The Yankelovich poll's evidence of growing public unease merely confirms a message that Reagan's advisers have been getting for weeks from other sources: grumblings even among Republicans in Congress about the President's defense and budget policies; unpublished surveys sponsored by the Republican National Committee, disclosing that Reagan's Mr. Nice Guy reputation is being replaced by a Scrooge-like picture of a President whose policies unduly favor the rich over the poor; and their own instincts. From the chief on down, the Reagan White House is undergoing a second-year slump. The affliction is a common one for Presidents, but Reagan's dramatic first-year legislative triumphs had given his aides some hope that they could avoid it.
The President is even more confident than his advisers are that he can ride out the storm, that the economy will turn up and that developments abroad will break in favor of the White House. Says one aide: "Of course we're in a trough right now, but we will come out of it." Meanwhile, Reagan's response to the rising doubts is primarily a marked shift in rhetoric, accompanied by some token measures. Gone, at least for the moment, are the taunting attacks on critics of his defense and budget policies, with which the President peppered his speeches as recently as three weeks ago. Instead, the White House is missing no chance to portray Reagan as a reasonable and compassionate man, one willing to listen to his opponents and sensitive to the problems of minorities and the poor.
Both the rising criticism and the newly mild presidential response were on display last week, when Reagan visited Manhattan to receive a gold medal from the National Conference of Christians and Jews for "courageous leadership in governmental, civic and humanitarian affairs." In contrast to the friendly demonstrations that had greeted the President in Oklahoma only the week before, thousands of outraged protesters outside the New York Hilton Hotel broke into chants of "Money for jobs, not for war, U.S. out of El Salvador!" Ten blocks away, at the Lincoln Center campus of Fordham University, 300 people, including a few members of the N.C.C.J. who opposed honoring Reagan for humanitarianism, had earlier gathered for an "alternative awards dinner" featuring a mocking menu of cheese (which the Administration is distributing to the poor from Government stockpiles) and ketchup (which the Administration once suggested as a vegetable in school lunches). Rabbi Arnold Wolf and Elinor Guggenheimer, a consumer specialist, announced that they would return gold medals they had received from the N.C.C.J. years before. Said Wolf of Reagan: "If he's a humanitarian, I'm not."