Tomorrow vening, President Reagan will face a national TV audience to give his State of the Union address. Hopefully, the president will attempt to shed some light on the state of disunion facing the nation that grew out of the Iran-contra affair.

eagan will address four major points about the affair in the annual speech. First, the president plans to reaffirm the contention that arm sales to Iran were intended to open relations with moderate factions in Tehran and not as an exchange for American hostages. Although this contention stands some ground, many people rightfully refuse to believe it. Therefore, such a statement will likely do little to quiet the Reagan headhunters.

Second, Reagan plans to admit there were some mistakes made in implementing the policy. That’s obvious, but the admission isn’t enough. The president also must come right out with the facts about who made the mistakes and why they were made.

eagan also will assume full responsibility for the policy’s failure. Although this action might be seen as proper, it might be too little too late. He should have accepted responsibility from the start.

Finally, the president will announce that he will take steps to ensure that such mistakes don’t occur again. This might be the heart of what Reagan must do to regain his credibility and have some sort of order in his final two years at the nation’s helm.

eagan must take this opportunity and set the record straight. At this point, there are some who never will believe the president and he can’t be concerned with them. Fortunately the president still has some backers who, while realizing the serious implications of the arms deal, also understand that this man will be our president, for better or worse, for two more years. Those are the people Reagan should gear his explanations toward on TV tomorrow.

The nation has a right to know what happened with this whole situation and Reagan can wait no longer to let us know. The situation has been blown out of proportion by the media and now Reagan can use the media to tell his side. If he fails in this opportunity, then he will deserve all the finger pointing that goes on while the affair is further clouded by all the accusations and innuendos that are flying around.