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Judged by the customary State of the Union standard, Reagan gave relatively short shrift to foreign policy. His most interesting assertion was to link U.S. support of anti-Soviet guerrillas in Afghanistan and the anti-Sandinista contras in Nicaragua with the right of any nation to protect itself from foreign aggression. "Support for freedom fighters is self-defense," he said, and "totally consistent" with the charters of the Organization of American States and the United Nations. The President seemed to be building a legal case for Washington's continued use of covert--and maybe even overt--aid in conflicts that it deems the result of Soviet mischief-making.
In what has become a trademark feature of his State of the Union speeches, the President illustrated one of his main points with living, on-the-premises examples. Near the end of his address, as proof that "anything is possible in America," Reagan introduced two special guests seated with wife Nancy in the visitors' gallery: Jean Nguyen, 21, a cadet at West Point whose family fled Viet Nam as refugees in 1974, and "Mother" Clara Hale, 79, a Harlem social worker who specializes in the care of heroin-addicted infants born of drug- abusing mothers. The President had scouted both of these "American heroes" himself: he read about Hale in a magazine and noticed Nguyen in a brief TV appearance.
Members of Congress interrupted the speech 28 times with applause that was noticeably louder on the Republican than the Democratic side of the aisle. When it was over, the President was called back to the podium to receive an outsize birthday card and a rousing round of Happy Birthday to You. Though Reagan got generally high marks for his effective delivery, many critics took him to task for the speech's content. Lamented Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole, a Republican: "I wish he had spent more time on the deficit." Of course, Dole conceded, "when you have something that you're not proud of, you don't raise it as the centerpiece of your speech." Democratic House Speaker O'Neill jabbed harder still. With such an upbeat tone, Reagan was "not being honest with the American public," he said. The speech, added the 72-year-old O'Neill, counted for little more than the musings of "a kindly old man."
The official Democratic assessment of the state of the union, a 30-minute prerecorded TV film, was an oddly pallid presentation. Based on the discussions of four informal "focus groups," each made up of two elected officials and a dozen or so members of the public, the program was partly an exercise in self-criticism and partly a pep talk. Democratic officials defended the approach as an effective way of proving to voters that the party is engaged in a reappraisal of its appeal from the grass roots up. Said Mark Johnson, an official of the party's House Congressional Campaign Committee, which produced the $100,000 film: "I think we should be applauded for recognizing some of the labels the Republicans threw at us and doing something about them."