Reagan Pledges Effort to ‘Change America Forever’

President Reagan told 3,000 of his top appointees Friday that he intends to “change America forever” in the next four years--and that, although his Administration played “great and beautiful music” during his first term, “from here on it’s shake, rattle and roll.”

The White House took over Constitution Hall, owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution, so Reagan could deliver a pep talk at the halftime of his presidency to his major appointees, including the Cabinet and his own senior advisers.

The 73-year-old President sought to light a fire under his appointees and assure them that, although he is a political lame duck legally barred from seeking reelection, he does not intend to ease up during his last four years in the Oval Office.

“There’s an understandable tendency when a second term begins to think that all of our great work is behind us, that the big battles have been fought and all the rest is anticlimax,” Reagan admonished his audience. “Well, that’s not true. What has gone before is prologue. Our greatest battles lie ahead. All is newness now, (presenting) the possibility of great and fundamental change.

“We can change America forever. That’s some great and beautiful music we’ve been playing the past four years--but the way I see it, from here on it’s shake, rattle and roll.”

The audience laughed and applauded. In all, it gave the President 16 ovations during the 17-minute address.

But in a rare switch for Reagan, whose oratorical skills have earned him a reputation as “the great communicator,” this was a speech with words far more spirited than the delivery. The President spoke calmly, almost in a monotone--reflecting the relaxed mood he obviously was in as he made snowballs and tossed them at a tree both as he left from and returned to the White House.

The most fiery speeches came from Reagan’s Cabinet officers and advisers, 19 of whom were seated side by side on the stage behind the President and spoke before he arrived.

Cites New Deal

Presidential counselor Edwin Meese III, nominated by Reagan to be attorney general, called on the Administration during the second term to “institutionalize the Reagan revolution so it can’t be set aside no matter what happens in future presidential elections.” Meese said the Reagan Administration should try to emulate, in effectiveness, the tenure of Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal policies, he pointed out, lasted half a century.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz said that Reagan may be regarded by historians as “a watershed” President because, with his conservative philosophy, he has changed the American public’s “way of thinking.”

White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III, awaiting Senate confirmation to become secretary of the Treasury, called on the Administration to deal with escalating record federal deficits “the right way--not by raising taxes, but by reducing growth in federal spending.” Baker in past years has attempted to prod the President into raising taxes to control the deficit.

No Program Exempt

Secretary of the Treasury Donald T. Regan, slated in another week to swap jobs with Baker, vowed that the Administration will “mount another dedicated, concerted counteroffensive on spending in the second term,” and warned: “No program or department will be considered exempt.”

Vice President George Bush preceded Reagan to the podium and spoke openly and glowingly of the Administration’s ostensibly secret aid program for rebels trying to overthrow Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government.

“Ours must be the hemisphere of the human spirit, democracy’s hemisphere. And that means our support for those in Nicaragua who are fighting the communist Sandinistas must go forward,” Bush said of the covert program, which Congress has cut off and the Administration is trying to restore. “It’s absolutely essential that we not abandon the (rebel) contras at this point in history.”

The President pledged that “we will be a friend of freedom everywhere and the foes of freedom will be our foes.” He added: “We must assure the survival and success of freedom in Central America. We cannot break faith with freedom anywhere. This is our heritage and our moral obligation.”

Reagan also promised to “continue to trim the size of government . . . and turn an unfair tax structure on its ear.”

But when the President declared that “we’re against abortion,” the reaction of his appointees reflected the sharp division of American society. Many in the audience cheered loudly while many others kept quiet.