Reagan Ends Radio Talks on Upbeat Note

WASHINGTON — After 5 1/2 years as a radio fixture, President Reagan closed out his weekly series of five-minute broadcasts Saturday with upbeat reflections on the record of his eight-year term, which expires at noon Friday, and an affirmation of hope for the nation’s future.

“We shared a great deal together,” Reagan said as he began his 331st and last Saturday radio talk, delivered from the Oval Office. “For me it’s been a special relationship. Believe me, Saturdays will never be the same.”

Reagan, who began his career as a radio sportscaster, has skillfully employed radio to keep in touch with his political constituents. He used Saturday’s talk to extend a warm welcome to President-elect and Mrs. Bush, as well as to recall to his listeners how, in “moments of accomplishment and triumph, as well as crisis and heartbreak, we came together in this way.”

Tradition May End

Bush is not expected to continue Reagan’s tradition of Saturday radio addresses.

Looking back on his stewardship, the outgoing 40th President told his audience, “we have had great years and done much together.” He went on to catalogue some of the developments of the Reagan era in terms that might seem incomplete to some of his critics.

“The economy is booming,” Reagan said. “Long-festering social problems like drugs, crime have declined, and our educational standards are being dealt with; and for the first time in the postwar era, the Soviet menace shows some signs of relenting.”

The last development, Reagan said, will be heartening to Americans who have “lived through all of the brooding terrors of the postwar era” and will make them “hopeful that the next generation of Americans will not have to contend, as we did, with the nightmares of nuclear terror and totalitarian expansionism.”

Cites No Statistics

The President offered no statistics to support his contention that drug problems and crime were on the wane, and he made no reference to such downbeat problems as the budget deficit, unrest in Central America or the Iran-Contra affair.

Still-unsolved problems were mentioned, but not emphasized, by freshman Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut in the regular Democratic response to Reagan. He rejected the normal pattern of offering “constructive alternatives” and said he would instead “join with all Americans in honoring and appreciating his stewardship of the highest office in our land.”

Reagan ended his talk envisioning “the possibility of a new time in human history, when all the problems that so haunted the postwar world give way to peace and expansion and freedom.”

‘Story of a People’

He called the story of the last eight years “a continuation . . . of a far larger story, a story of a people and a cause, a cause that from our earliest beginnings, has defined us as a nation and given purpose to our national existence.”

The cause, he said, is the advancement of human freedom, and the quest for it “is the American saga.”

And then, as he has since the series began on April 3, 1982, the nation’s senior broadcaster signed off: “Thanks for listening, and God bless you.”