The American people gave Ronald Reagan one of the highest approval ratings of any president leaving office. After eight years of deficit spending, homeless citizens and government corruption, the United States still offered him a popularity rating of 68 percent upon his departure.

It is not too difficult to understand Reagan's popularity. Reagan is a popular and affable person. A former actor, he played well to television cameras and the nightly news -- an important quality in our increasingly image-conscious world. Reagan was an expert at taking the complicated question and diffusing it with either an anecdote or a simple (unrealistic), reassuring answer.

Such an approach, however, does little to address the difficult problems that our country faces. In order to benefit from the Reagan presidency, we must look behind the images and examine the hard facts. Let's review the Reagan years in three broad areas: the economy, domestic issues and competence in the administration.

1. A Jan. 11 USA Today poll showed the American public generally was satisfied with the status of the national economy during the Reagan years. Unemployment currently is at a 14-year low (5.3 percent), and inflation was held to a modest 4.4 percent in 1988.

Gains in these areas have come, however, at a tremendous cost. The national debt has skyrocketed in the last eight years, going from about $900 billion to about $2.6 trillion, or over $10,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.

The debt draws real resources away from domestic spending programs because of the interest payments that must be made upon the debt. According to the Dec. 1988 U.S. Treasury Bulletin, we spent $214 billion of the 1988 budget on interest -- a figure more than double the $92.5 billion deficit forecast in the 1990 budget.

Two hundred and fourteen billion dollars in interest is close to the government's total spending on all programs combined, excluding defense and Social Security.

This enormous debt makes it practically impossible for Congress to introduce any new spending initiatives on emergency programs (i.e., funding for AIDS research). The debt also erodes the confidence of overseas investors in the U.S. economy, a vital ingredient in our own economy which cannot be overlooked.

Were a significant number of foreign investors to lose confidence in our economy and suddenly pull out their resources, the United States easily could plunge into another Depression the scope of the 1930's.

In addition, while the unemployment and inflation figures are optically encouraging, they do not tell the whole story. The actual purchasing power of the vast majority of Americans has not improved much since 1980 -- and this includes the much-publicized 1981-82 tax cuts, which amounted to little for all but those in upper income brackets.

The spoils of the economic expansion of the 1980s have returned primarily to a small, wealthy minority of Americans. And unemployment, while at a 14-year low, remains unacceptably high for minority members. A Jan. 25 USA Today article listed black unemployment at 11.8 percent.

We also should recall that the definition used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to determine the unemployment figure includes only those who are employed or "actively seeking employment." Millions of disenfranchised citizens have given up hope of finding work and are not included in the statistics.

2. Reagan's treatment of many important domestic issues left much to be desired. His attitude on the homeless issue illustrates well the typical Reagan reaction to complicated domestic problems.

During a trip to the Soviet Union, Reagan was asked about homelessness in America and why it is such a problem. His response was to tell the story of the woman in Brooklyn who took her case to court and won the right to stay on the streets, rather than be forced to stay in a shelter. In an interview with David Brinkley, Reagan said the reason homeless people in America sleep on heating grates is they "want to be there," rather than in shelters.

Reagan probably is correct in saying some homeless people prefer to be self-sufficient, rather than dependent on a shelter for warmth. His responses, however, utterly trivialize the issue.

By his clear implication that homeless people "want" to be homeless, he reduces the issue to a non-issue, that homeless people are happy as homeless and that we can safely forget about them. According to the Congressional Report "Homelessness in America 1988," an estimated three million homeless people live in America today -- more than the combined populations of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh -- and the homeless rate is increasing at about 25 percent a year. As a nation, we cannot simply forget about these people and trivialize their plight.

3. While Reagan was a master at deflecting attention from important social issues, he has been unable to deflect attention from his top advisers and their actions. The Reagan staff has had an abundance of white men involved in improprieties and scandals.

Ed Meese, the Attorney General whose job it was to uncover corruption in this country, was so corrupt himself that he was finally forced from office. The National Security Council almost was able to embezzle $30 million in tax dollars and divert it to the Nicauraguan contras, although Congress had specifically forbidden it. In fact, the NSC admittedly attempted to become a "government-within-a-government," working to carry out Reagan's wishes, regardless of congressional approval.

This is one of the most despicable crimes of which I can conceive on a national level -- trying to undertake the wishes of the president without going through the traditional system of checks and balances on which our government was founded. But then, I guess this is the stuff of which "heroes" are made.

Given such a corrupt administration, it is rather ironic that so many people believe Reagan restored a sense of pride and patriotism in America. Such widespread corruption certainly does not make me feel more patriotic than I did in 1980.

Americans must demand more from the president than an administration built on images. We need a leader who will make the difficult choices among our scarce resources, who is not afraid to tackle tough questions and who can clearly see the consequences of his decisions. I can only hope that President Bush will prove to be more equal to this awesome responsibility.