State of the Union, State of the President

THE months after the 1970 mid-term elections have been a period of quiet and sometimes uncomfortable reassessment in the White House. Some of the conclusions that Richard Nixon has reached will be implicit in his State of the Union message this week. As Nixon embarks on the third year of his presidency, the speech will present his design for the fundamental domestic programs on which he must stake his Administration's future success and, to a considerable degree, his own hopes for reelection. One ranking aide predicted new proposals "that have not even been rumored yet."

During most of his stay at San Clemente in the past two weeks, Nixon vas closeted with his speechwriters and lis top domestic policy adviser, John Ehrlichman, working over rough drafts of the speech and receiving new ideas channeled west from Washington. Over he weekend, he headed for the presidential retreat at Camp David to continue the winnowing and polishing.

The President and his aides have also been reviewing the Administration's general tone, its voices as well as its policies. Almost without question, the G.O.P. congressional campaign left Nixon sobered and disappointed. It may be, too, that the spasms of electoral polemics and his long brawl with Congress have, despite his relish for a fight, offended Nixon's sense of orderly governmental process. Now he is steering toward conciliation and concrete accomplishment, muting the rhetoric that has made some Republicans come to feel that Spiro T. Agnew did the G.O.P. more harm than good in the elections (see box).

Last week, on his way back to Washington from San Clemente, Nixon stopped at the University of Nebraska to deliver his broadest appeal yet to the young. Among other things, he noted that those aged 18 to 21 have recently acquired the right to vote in national elections. "Let us forge an alliance of the generations," said Nixon. "Our priorities are really the same. Together we can achieve them." He even repeatecl a favorite line of Robert Kennedy's: "We can do better than this."

There was no talk of "bums." When a student hit the presidential leg with a snowball, Nixon reacted jovially and quickly. He picked up the snow and returned the pitch.

Nixon announced that he will soon ask Congress to merge the Peace Corps, VISTA and several other activities into a volunteer corps for national and international service under the leadership of Peace Corps Director Joseph Blatchford. Said the President: "I intend to make it an agency through which those willing to give their lives and energy can work at cleaning up the environment, combatting illiteracy, malnutrition, suffering and blight either abroad or at home."

[ Then came a Washington speech at the dedication of the new Eisenhower National Republican Center. The event, coinciding with Senator Robert Dole's official appointment as G.O.P. national chairman, might have been the occasion for a standard partisan talk. Instead, Nixon stressed national unity. The Republicans can prosper, he said, only by becoming "the party of the open door, open to all people, all races, all parties."

Lack of Ease. The Administration's try for modulation indicates recognition that despite its accomplishments and promising starts in some fields, something is missing. To be sure, Richard Nixon can take credit for his reasonably successful conduct of foreign affairs. His attempts to reform vital Government functions such as the welfare system and the Post Office have been thoughtful and innovative. His stubborn tight-money policy to curb inflation, though sound up to a point, eventually became a disappointment. Now he is changing to an expansionary approach, supporting an increase of the money supply and deficit spending. He has done little to conciliate the blacks, and the nation's social problems obviously demand more presidential attention than he has thus far given them.

Beyond that programmatic balance sheet, a central failing of the Nixon Administration has to do with an intangible but important matter of tone. As LIFE comments in an editorial this week, the problem involves an isolation from the public, a certain absence of candor, and even Nixon's lack of ease with his fellow men. "So often a nation wants to hear a President speaking to, and for, all of the people," says LIFE, "and so often it hears a Nixon argument tailored to a segment of the public. The curious paradox of Nixon is that even when he is intellectually prepared to act the statesman, he often explains himself through the inferior stratagems of the politician. Many who might rally to a policy recoil from the dissembling that accompanies it." In the end, says the editorial, "for all its underestimated qualities, the Nixon Administration falls short of the lift or the wisdom that the times require and the country longs for."

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