Sweet, sweet music by popular leader

Press, 28 July 1986, Page 8

Sweet, sweet music by popular leader

NZPA-Reuter Washington

The President of the United States, Mr Ronald Reagan, still portrays himself as a rank-and-file American bent on making the Government shape up, even after si/ 2 years in office.

Judging from the reception he got during a political trip through the South last week, the public loves him for it.

In Texas, Florida, and South Carolina audiences roared with approval as Mr Reagan railed against “the liberals in Washington,” accusing this seemingly all-powerful group of plotting to raise taxes and caving in to the Soviet Union. More evidence of his popularity came from the

cheers he got from large, friendly crowds along his motorcade routes. A Reagan quip at a rally in Dallas was typical of the anti-Establishment approach that has been successful for him throughout his political career: “As somebody put it: 98 per cent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It’s the other lousy 2 per cent that get all the publicity — but then, we elected them.” Mr Reagan’s trip, which was designed to aid Republican candidates for Congress and state governor in the November election, followed on the heels of his controversial speech in defence of his South Africa policy. Although the speech provoked a political furor in Congress, Mr Reagan did not mention it, or the fall-out from it, at any of

his appearances. Instead, he offered nothing but sweet music to his various audiences. In Texas, hard-hit economically by the slump in oil prices, he called the situation a tragedy and said he would do everything possible to change it.

But in South Carolina he hailed the oil price decline: “Isn’t it good to pull into the station today and watch the gallons on the pump add up faster than the dollars?” he asked.

At a rally in Florida packed with CubanAmericans, he gave Fidel Castro a strong verbal thrashing, calling him “a great illusionist, but only for a time.”

“And let me say to you, history is on the side of the free and some day the working people of Cuba will again work and

prosper in the warm sunshine of liberty and justice.”

_ According to public opinion polls Ronald Reagan is the most popular President of the United States in a generation.

He enjoys an approval rating unmatched by any of his recent predecessors, even though the polls indicate that his policies are not especially popular. ,

Inevitably, this has led his most ardent supporters to rue the 22nd Amendment to the United States Constitution, which limits a President to two four-year terms. Senator Strom Thurmond, a conservative South Carolina Republican who calls Mr Reagan the greatest American President since George Washington, say» that if the voters had their way they

would repeal the constitutional limit.

Mr Reagan, at 75 the oldest President in United States history, also favours repeal — but not for himself.

“I think that any President who will try to get the Constitution changed should not be. doing it for himself — he should be doing it for those who follow him.” But, “I think it should be changed because I think it’s only democratic for the people to be able to vote for someone as many times as they want.”

Ironically, it was Mr Reagan’s fellow Republicans who pressed for the limit on Presidential terms after a Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt, who served as President from 1933 to 1945, shut them out of the White House in four consecutive elections.,