Middle-Class Americans May View the President’s Proposals as Too Modest : Reaction: Bush attempts to appeal to the broad interests of voters. But his pledges of swift action could fall short of soothing their worries.

WASHINGTON —  In a State of the Union address designed to serve as his election-year anthem, President Bush needed to be many things to many people Tuesday night. And in seeking to rouse a nation mired in gloom and increasingly mistrustful of his leadership, he offered both the rhetoric of determination and the promise of swift action.

“Let me tell you right from the start and right from the heart: I know we’re in hard times,” he declared, “but I know something else: This will not stand.”

He called for tax cuts and tax credits, less government interference with lenders and easier terms for borrowers, less money for defense and more for children, wider access to health insurance and more government aid for cities.

Yet to a middle-class audience squeezed by recession and uncertain about the nation’s long-term prospects, Bush’s proposals at nearly every step may seem too modest. And in a sign that he knows the national unease will persist, his blunt ultimatum to Congress to act by March 20 or face a political fight served as a preemptive plan to pass the blame.

“Of course Congress isn’t going to pass this whole thing,” one campaign official said of Bush’s ultimatum. “But now when voters sound off, we can make sure the President isn’t the only one who takes the licks.”

As an annual assessment of the union’s state before a joint session of Congress, the President’s speech was notable for a candor that acknowledged the depths of “our troubles at home.”

But the bond he had to forge was not so much with Democrats in the House and Senate, which were poised for partisan battle just as Bush was, but with voters like William Cope and Mary Kathryn Dawson.

Cope, a 40-year-old Indiana police chief, is disenchanted by the nation’s domestic troubles and the long wait for presidential answers. Dawson, a 30-year-old Texas bar manager, complains that even with two incomes, life in a recession is like “banging your head against the wall.”

In an informal sampling around the nation this week, these and other middle-class “swing voters” who supported Bush and Ronald Reagan in the past made clear that they intended to hold Bush to a high standard in the upcoming presidential election.

“He just doesn’t stand firm on anything,” Dawson said.

The President insisted Tuesday night that he felt such troubles “right from the heart.” But as he poured out his election-year cornucopia of proposals, it was unclear how much its most immediate reward--an executive order to reduce income-tax withholding--could make voters feel more flush.

Bush described the back-in-your-pockets plan as potential fuel for consumer spending. But it would put just $7 a week in the average voter’s pocket and not reduce taxes owed on April 15. In general, the speech offered more clues about the way Bush intends to position himself in his reelection campaign than about any broader strategy to recalibrate the nation’s course.

With appeals to family values and tax benefits for children, first-time home buyers and those without health insurance, Bush cast himself anew as a “kinder, gentler” candidate committed to goals central to most Americans’ domestic lives. Reaching out to minority voters, he struck a similar no-nonsense tone in condemning racial hatred.

And by opening his address with an eloquent reminder of what had been gained abroad, he returned to a role in which he is most accustomed. The end of the Cold War means that children must no longer cower beneath school desks in response to the “long, drawn-out (nuclear) dread,” he declared.

At a time when the nation’s attention has turned to matters at home, however, the outlines of his domestic programs made clear just how broad a spectrum of the American electorate his economic agenda must please. Despite the seeming invulnerability of his triumph in the Persian Gulf last year, Bush finds himself challenged by conservative Republicans as well as Democrats, and his grip on the crucial center is suddenly in doubt.

Yet among those who may have most to gain from his program are wealthy voters who can benefit from a sharp reduction in the capital gains tax--a reduction larger than originally planned because Republican conservatives had complained that a draft proposal was too modest.

And for all that he addressed, there was much that was missing from the perspective of the undecided middle-income voters his campaign needs most to woo. Across the nation, in conversations this week, voters like 24-year-old Paula Fugate, of Corsicana, Tex., spoke of the need to shift money from foreign to domestic affairs.

“One thing I would like him to say is he’ll take the millions of dollars he’s sending to Russia and spend it here,” said Fugate, a mother of three who quit her job as a grocery store checker when her salary could no longer meet the rising cost of day care. “There’s plenty that can be done here.”

Times staff writer Marilyn Yaquinto contributed to this story.