From All Directions

To the trigger-happy marksmen of the U.S. newspaper columns and editorial pages, a U.S. President is never more vulnerable than when he addresses the nation at large. Last week John F. Kennedy boldly stood twice in the bull's-eye, first when he delivered his State of the Union message and again when he made the biggest budget request in U.S. history (see THE NATION). Both times the President got it from all directions.

The State of the Union message did evoke a scattered volley of praise, but even that was not so much for what Kennedy said but for how he said it. ''From his first sentence," gushed Columnist Doris Fleeson, "the President showed the new maturity and confidence bred by two hard years. The sophomoric buoyancy of the early days has disappeared." The pro-Democratic Washington Post went even farther. "Unexceptionable, unanswerable and irrefutable," it said of Kennedy's call for tax reduction and reform.

Motley Assortment. These sentiments were drowned, however, by a thunder of skepticism, indignation and wrath. Predictably, conservative Columnist David Lawrence dropped a blanket indictment. Even the address's title, State of the Union, was inaccurate, Lawrence said:

"Mr. Kennedy omitted reference to some of the most important subjects confronting America today, particularly how the national economy shall be saved from disintegrating due to the monopoly power being exercised by a bloc of labor unions." The Chicago Tribune decided that the President's economic proposals came "straight out of the dream book.''

The Wall Street Journal rose to the boil: "Tax cutting is not at all the surest and soundest way to a balanced budget; that way is to reduce spending. Too bad the President didn't end his speech about a third of the way through--when he was way ahead with his attractive tax-cut proposals. Instead, he apparently thought it was necessary to tack on a motley assortment of recommendations adding up to a 'domestic program.'"

Where the strikebound New York Times still appeared* the paper admitted that Kennedy made "exhilarating" listening. But the Times was not exhilarated: "There is some danger that the euphoria thus generated may tend to eclipse the harsher side of reality." Kennedy's rosy picture of things, concluded the Times, was "too good to be quite true." The Providence Journal challenged his logic: "How a President facing such a big deficit can stand before Congress advocating more spending and lower taxes and call his program 'fiscally responsible' is more than we can understand."

A Horror. Harsh as these appraisals were, they sounded like popguns in comparison to the detonations that greeted his end-of-the-week budget message. New York Times Columnist Arthur Krock all but kissed the U.S. goodbye. "Item by item," wrote Krock, "the budget reflects the weird and incessantly disproved economic theory that government can bestow all these material benefits without a grim reckoning at any time in the future. It is the death of a viable economy that is risked by the items which pile on the billions." Predicted the Omaha World-Herald: "If his proposed budget is adopted, America may get to the moon but it is likely to be several light years away from solvency."

The Wall Street Journal returned to the firing line: "Perhaps the real meaning of the President's budget is that its enormous figures are all but meaningless. The figures might as well be picked out of the air, and in large measure they have been." Even the Washington Post flip-flopped into hostility: "While budgetary deficits are regarded with increasing tolerance, increases in Government expenditures are viewed with unabated abhorrence." In Philadelphia, the Inquirer felt deep concern: "This country is venturing onto very shaky ground." In Detroit, the Free Press said starkly: "This budget is a horror. It opens the door to disaster."

* Its West Coast and European editions are still publishing. And, for the strike's duration, the Times's News Service is transmitting the paper's lead editorial daily to 60 client newspapers in the U.S.

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