Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 30, 1992 TAG: 9201310026
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
THE STATE OF THE UNION: THEIR VERDICT IS IN
PRESIDENT BUSH described his speech as his "plan for America." Here's what some Roanoke Valley residents, invited to the newspaper office Tuesday night to watch the speech, had to say about the president's address.\ \ LINDSEY QUESINBERRY\44, stockbroker
I'd give him an A for delivery and an A-minus for content. There was something in there for everybody. . . . There needed to be something in there for everybody. . . . We have to start to restore confidence and that's what he's attempting to do.\ \ ERIC HILTON\ 27, electrician's assistant
President Bush talks about changing the nuclear forces, shutting down the future production; by 1997, cut down 30 percent. . . . Is that enough or should he keep going from there? He had a a lot of questions, but I didn't hear many answers.\ \ CAROLYN JOHNSON\ 37, executive housekeeper
President Bush is coming where he needs to be, to Congress . . . getting them to hurry up and stop sitting and waiting on policies and issues that should have been passed a long time ago.\ \ CAROLYN WORD\ 40, aide to Rep. Jim Olin,
This pep talk should have come the first year he was elected. . . . I think he tried to use the Persian Gulf as the highlight of his career, and I was not very encouraged by it. He's giving us the ways, but not the means.\ \ ROBERT HUGHES\ 49, restaurant owner
The speech was very, very good. . . . If he can deliver on half of the things he said he was going to do tonight, then everything's a lot better for everybody.\ \ SAM GARRISON\ 49, legal assistant
It was a forceful and well-delivered speech. . . . Absent from it was the same kind of call for domestic patriotism that he evoked when talking about competition with others.
When he identifies problems within the country, like breakup of the family, he omits identifying one of the biggest of all, which is pervasive greed and selfishness where people don't think of themselves as part of the community but think of themselves as out for No. 1.\ \ HAROLD MILLS\ 45, railroad machinist
The speech-writer is probably going to get him re-elected. But, talking about hard times, I don't think he looks through the same eyes as some of the rest of us do. Cutting spending and the tax break are not going to put much money in the average American's pocket.\ \ JOYCE MILLS\ 42 business consultant, student
I agree with a lot of what the president said, particularly talking about strengthening the family. . . . That is where our weakness is. . . . The family unit is broken down and this country has become so promiscuous. We have gotten so used to having everything handed to us that we have become a little lax in what really is important, and that is good hard work.\ \ BILL PINKERTON\ 49, car dealership owner
This wasn't a State of the Union speech. This was a campaign speech. If his re-election depends heavily on this speech, I think he's in big trouble because I thought it was a lousy speech. We've heard it all before. The man has been in office for 11 years. A leader leads by example. . . . It's crisis after crisis. That's when decisions are made. It's nice to know that communism is dead in the world; I think there's 2 billion people in China who would like to hear about communism being dead.\ \ RUTH CLAYTOR\ 42, bank customer service
It's promises, promises. . . . I don't understand why all these great ideas came about now . . . all of a sudden in a political year . . .\ \ WILL CLAYTOR\ 45, real estate broker
He spent the first 20 minutes of his speech making excuses for why he was away from the economy, and maybe asleep at the switch. . . . And now that peace is at hand and communism has been put on the back burner, he can devote his attention to the economy back here. . . .
He says he's going to make some changes in tax withholding, and it's one of those situations like pay-me-now or pay-me-later. We'll give it to you now, but at the end of the year when you file your income tax return we'll take it right back. His investment tax was a real good thing. The $5,000 tax credit for the first-time home buyer was a good idea, although I'd like to see him . . . manipulate it around . . . to help a person get into a home.\ \ KAY MINTER\ 40, unemployed social worker
We have a responsibility and we sort of dump it on the politicians and the president. Always when there was a problem with our greed, we had some government regulatory committee to come in and set controls on it instead of us assuming the responsibility to do what was right. I think probably in his plan to reform the welfare system, the committee on families [Committee on Urban Families] is the biggest step.\ \ RHONDA JOHNSON\ 31, teacher's assistant
I heard a lot of positive things being said. And the one thing I do agree with President Bush on is: Patience is a virtue. I'm just going to wait and see.\ \ QUESINBERRY: This being the State of the Union address, it's intended to draw the country together. I think it's incumbent upon each of us to behave and do the right thing. Look at the positives, do what we can do to change ourselves in our environment in a positive fashion. Like the Michael Jackson song, "Man in the Mirror," I listen to if I'm feeling down in the dumps. . . . What can I do in a positive sense to change things around me? And I think that's what we need to do.\ \ PINKERTON: Are you saying we should give him carte blanche approval on what he recommended?\ \ QUESINBERRY: No, I'm not. I'm saying that I understand that in a group this size, there's always going to be diverse opinions.
The nature of his speech, the event, the State of the Union, I think we need to draw together in a positive way and not hark upon the negatives and believe that the government is here to bail us out. It all comes down to individual responsibility . . .\ \ PINKERTON: That sounds real good, you know, but we're looking at a $3.2 trillion deficit. Now, what can we as individuals do about that? And it wasn't a State of the Union address, it was a campaign kickoff. . . . We have to be realistic about this thing and look at what was said this evening and how self-serving that speech was.
. . . You go down his points: He's all for investment tax credits. That was taken away during tax reform in the administration that he was a part of. Talk is cheap . . . money buys whiskey . . .\ \ WILL CLAYTOR: I didn't get the impression listening to everybody that we're all sitting here waiting on the government to bail us out. I felt like we were all sitting here waiting for some signs of leadership to come out of Washington. He talks about these initiatives . . . he talks about crime and drugs . . . There are no specifics to any of this stuff.
\ GILBERT BUTLER JR.\ 38, attorney and real estate
We have basically a gridlock up there, and it's the fault of the Democrats and Republicans, the members of the House and the Senate and members of the executive branch, regardless of their respective parties.\ \ HUGHES: I enjoyed the speech and all, but politicians, even locally, can't be trusted, so I don't believe anything he says until something happens.\ \ GARRISON: He didn't say anything about the fact that we have a higher illiteracy rate than many industrialized countries . . . that we have a higher infant mortality rate than many industrialized countries. It seems to me like a country that can produce the excellence in the military and in the space program is perfectly capable of having excellence in everything it sets its mind to. . . .
We're no different than our tribal ancestors 20,000 years ago. We have a leader and the leader is the one that focuses the attention of the group upon the things that need to be done, and I thought it was uninspiring in anything but in reminding us of what a good effort Desert Storm was.\ \ JOYCE MILLS: He's talking about over the next five years cutting $50 billion in the military. What is he going to do with all those people he puts out of work? Along with all of the other people that are already are out of work, what is going to happen to our economy at that point? . . . We're just going to continue and continue in the same manner that we're going right now. And, we're headed for trouble.\ \ CANDACE DUNN\ 17, high school student
He's making a lot of promises and saying a lot of stuff that he shouldn't, like he wants us to cut down on crime and drugs, which is great, but how many years have leaders said that they wanted to do that? I think we should become more aware of what's going on around us. This is the first presidential thing I've ever watched.\ \ JEFF GRAYBILL\ 30, worker at shelter for the homeless
A lot of people think the economy is in such bad shape, but there's really a lot more work out there than people want to confess up to. I've had a lot of jobs over the last few years. People have got to start to realize that they're going to have to start taking jobs - like the Carol Burnett you see at the end of the show where she's mopping floors. People are going to have to realize that they have to do something . . . even the littlest of jobs.\ \ WORD: I would just like to talk about the basics that I deal with every day. Health care for the elderly, that he kind of just jumped over . . . the elderly that receive small Social Security checks. . . . [There are] a lot of things that Medicare will not pay. They suffer and they don't eat. They don't get their prescriptions. There are a lot of homeless people. He didn't touch on that at all.\ \ RUTH CLAYTOR: We have to get more politically involved. This is the first time I've ever been involved in anything. Usually I turn the State of the Union address off and just go on and do my business. But, I'm glad I listened because it's making me think what I can do . . .\ \ WILL CLAYTOR: President Bush attempted to pass the football to Congress by giving them a March 20 deadline. . . . He was trying to say . . . if we don't score, then it's your fault. It's great that we put a man on the moon. It's great that we went over to Desert Storm and had success. And it's great that our farmers feed the world and they have for a long time, but it's kind of like . . . someone mentioned Michael Jackson and a song that inspired him, well Jody Watley had a song that said: "What Have You Done for Me Lately?"
It's not that I want the president to do anything personally for me, but I want him to get some leadership and lead us out of this recession.