November 11, 1981

In every new Administration there comes a time, after the initial policies have been set out, when so much skepticism and political resistance develops that the President must aggressively defend the credibility of his program and his own leadership. With economic forecasts turning gloomy, Europeans jittery about American statements on nuclear warfare, the Israelis acutely nervous about the direction of Washington's Middle East diplomacy and Congress still balking at the economic program, President Reagan confronted that task today. In the public opinion polls, Mr. Reagan remains popular with the electorate. His surprising victory in the Senate 13 days ago on the $8.5 billion package for Saudi Arabia gave him a lift. But neither his popularity nor the Senate victory has restored his earlier legislative momentum or dispelled qualms and questions about his policies.

Apparent discrepancies have arisen about the background of a Republican National Committee official, John A. Kelly, who organized the ''National Ballot Security Task Force'' in the election for Governor of New Jersey. The discrepancies involve challenges to assertions in a biography provided by the Republican National Committee that Mr. Kelly graduated from the University of Notre Dame and from Fordham University's law school. And a spokesman for a national police organization, the Fraternal Order of Police, disputed the biography's assertion that Mr. Kelly had been an officer in the organization. The spokesman, Thomas Tague, said Mr. Kelly was ousted from the group in 1979 after admitting that he had misrepresented himself as a staff investigator for a Congressional committee.

LACK of time, lack of space, lack of expertise -all those are legitimate and often-heard excuses for not giving a dinner party. But in the coming festive season, not having a party is not always an option. So when pressed, the host or hostess will call in a caterer or stop in at the gourmet carryout in order to feed guests with a minimum amount of effort. For some people anything is preferable to the work involved in cooking the meal at home. That's why I thought I had reinvented the wheel recently. I had organized two bring-your-own-dish parties and each was an unqualified success. A few days later, however, I lunched with two friends who told me I had come late to the idea of a bring-your-own party. They have been sharing weekend dinner chores with their friends all summer at various retreats. But they have never done it in the city and neither was certain why. Another friend had an explanation. In the city, she said, it is as if there is an obligation to give the perfect little four-course dinner party. ''People here don't like to admit vulnerability and fatigue,'' she added.

New York City's welfare agency, warned that it may be penalized tens of millions of dollars in Federal funds because of inefficiency, has indicated that it would find it easier and less expensive to suffer the penalty than to correct the mistakes. The warning came from State Comptroller Edward V. Regan and the response from the Commissioner of the city's Human Resources Administration, James A. Krauskopf. Both are contained in a report released by Mr. Regan. Mr. Regan said the penalties, which could total $70 million over three years, would be imposed if the state and the city did not meet Federal requirements for reducing the payment error rate to 4 percent by September of 1983.

Leaders of the American oil industry predicted today that oil prices would stagnate for a year or more. The executives, who assembled here yesterday for the annual meeting of the American Petroleum Institute, said that this meant continuation of a trend that has seen the average price of a gallon of gasoline decline by nearly 5 cents since March, to $1.34. The predictions of price weakness come in sharp contrast to a forecast at last year's A.P.I. meeting by Dan Lundberg, a retail oil analyst, that gasoline prices might reach $2 a gallon in 1981. Nonetheless, oilmen suggested that the good news on the price front carried several worrisome implications: Pressure on refining and marketing profit margins might intensify, development of alternative forms of energy would likely be postponed and the prices of energy company stocks could not be expected to rise.