The Good, the Bad, and the Imbecile
Duggan, Joseph P.
People who worked nearby would come in on their lunchbreak or after hours and sip a few brews, and reminisce fondly about the days when you could go to a different taproom every night for a...
...Or sometimes one of the bosses would have his softball team in for a party...
...Democratic leaders have chosen former Gov...
...The clearest evidence for this is that Byrd, for the second time in six years, is seeking reelection as an Independent...
...each of his three Senate terms he has won as an underdog...
...One major governor's race--that of Illinois--presents the likelihood of a party shift, but it offers a more interesting contrast of style and character than of ideology...
...Daniel Patrick Moynihan, sometime professor of government at Harvard, eloquent defender of world freedom as United States Ambassador to the United Nations, narrowly defeated Rep...
...For a long time and, to some extent, even today, supposed "obstacles" to exercise of the franchise were regularly deemed the culprit, the theory being that the problem lay less in voter apathy than in burdensome and occasionally sinister governmental red tape...
...Donald W. Riegle holds a slight edge over Republican Rep...
...Long before the chesty achievements of Elizabeth Ray, Riegle brought the confessional genre to political puff-prose with his published diary, O Congress/--a work that violated taboo and good taste across party lines...
...John V. Tunney faces a close contest with Republican S.I...
...Allow me to introduce a sampling: Regrettably, the most sensible Senate challenger is opposing the most sensible incumbent...
...People who worked nearby would come in on their lunchbreak or after hours and sip a few brews, and reminisce fondly about the days when you could go to a different taproom every night for a month and still not cover them all...
...route to the electionnight celebration...
...But despite his apparent advantages, Crane is said to suffer from poor campaign organization and may allow the flukish Congressional career of David Evans to continue at least for another term...
...Like Danforth, Lugar has moved to the right with the drift of his party...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator November 1976 23 critic of detente and is seeking to make capital of his rifts with the odious Mr...
...Democrat Rep...
...Needless to say, this topic is hardly the stuff of which headlines are made...
...To a degree, this perPeter .l...
...Over the years, though, he has become a party moderate and has won wide respect from Republicans and Democrats alike...
...I said, "But it's fine the way it is...
...but nonetheless it surfaces with a certain regularity throughout the campaign season, usually on slow days when there is little else with which to fill the third slot in the editorial page...
...Bella Abzug for the Democratic nomination in New York...
...Nixon, but does not seem to have made significant headway against Byrd's coalition of conservative Democrats and Republicans...
...Republicans hold high hopes of gaining the seat of retiring Missouri Democrat Sen...
...Yet there are other Presidential candidates afield worth remarking: Eugene McCarthy, who surprises with the occasional intelligent propositions that pop up from his grabbag of woolly notions...
...In the Old Dominion of Virginia, Harry Flood Byrd, Jr...
...Hayakawa, a political moderate, endeared himself to conservatives as president of San Francisco State College with his firm stand against radical violence...
...The Republican incumbent, James L. Buckley, elected as a Conservative six years ago, is imperilled by the heavy Democratic majority among registered voters...
...So watch it kid...
...Daniel Walker in the primary, may be remembered as the last and possibly most vulgar of the Daley machine lieutenants...
...Secretary of State Michael R. Howlett, the Democrat who upset Gov...
...U THE NATION'S PULSE & Peter J. Rusthoven Why People Don't Vote: An Unfashionable View This year, as in every election year, a given amount of media commentary is being devoted to the question of why an increasing percentage of eligible Americans don't bother to go to the polls...
...Joseph P. Duggan The Good, the Bad, and the Imbecile A critw's choice of the outstanding poktica/races this year~ As the 1976 ejection campaign limps into its final weeks, the televised debates have focused attention on the major Presidential contenders, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford...
...24 The Aiternat,.ve: An Amer.ican Specrat.gr November !976...
...Philip A. Hart...
...But the legendary Byrd machine no longer holds tight reins upon the state Democratic Party...
...Former Indianapolis mayor and Rhodes Scholar Richard G. Lugar has combined folksy manners with political sawy to build a wide lead over the incumbent...
...Burr Talcott's reelection margins have dwindled to 1% in recent years...
...Confident of regain...
...When Danforth won election in 1968 as Missouri's first Republican state official in nearly thirty years, he was young, liberal for a Republican, and considered arrogant...
...Talcott, with a reliably conservative voting record, is a prime target for defeat by liberal and environmentalist groups this year (Talcott holds the distinction of making the environmentalist "Dirty Dozen" list two consecutive years...
...Wilmer "Vinegar Bend" Mizell is remembered by baseball fans as the flame-throwing lefty who pitched for the St...
...Mizell lost in the Democratic landslide of 1974 to suburban newspaper publisher Stephen L. Neal, but has an even shot at regaining his seat this year...
...When I am in Cincinnati t always pay a visit to the taproom to have some free beer and find out how much (or how little) my favorite brewery has changed...
...Howlett has spent his carter hustling votes in the wards of Chicago...
...Sturdy, smooth-faced James R. "Big Jim" Thompson, the Republican contender, is the paradigmatic good-government type...
...But Hartke, despite a reputation for corruption, should not be ruled out of the running...
...But returning to the hill country of North Carolina, Vinegar Bend wound up from the right and won election in 1968 as a Republican in the Fifth Congressional District...
...On a recent visit I took a fastidious friend with me who made a wisecrack about how seedy the taproom was...
...Louis Cardinals in the 1950s...
...Buckley is also recognized as a leading Republican advocate of environmental legislation...
...Almost 82% of the voters cast ballots in the election of 1876, when Tilden won the popular vote but lost to Hayes in the Electoral College...
...Thompson has earned his reputation as a racket-busting Federal district attorney, packing Daley cronies off to prison...
...Danforth, patrician heir to the Ralston-Purina fortune and an Episcopal priest, is from a family prominent in American education...
...Buckley is stressing his record against liberalized abortion laws as well as his support for independent schools...
...Hayakawa, the tweedy, Japanese-American semanticist...
...Hayakawa, whose uncommon campaign speeches include ample quotes from such as Irving Kristol, is running well in the polls at present, but at age 70 he may not have the stamina to sustain a vigorous Campaign...
...And anyway, the price is right...
...His brother William heads both Washington University and the Danforth Foundation, and John himself is a trustee of Yale University...
...His opponent, Leon Panetta, served in the Nixon Administration as civil rights assistant to the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, but was fired from that position reportedly because of his adamant stand in favor of busing...
...His stand against federal aid to New York City may also cost him support there, but has won him admiration for holding to principle...
...Marvin L. Esch in the contest to succeed retiring Michigan Sen...
...Stuart Symington...
...Rust/aoven t~5 an Indianapolis attorn...
...We just come here to drink beer, and we don't care if it looks like a dump...
...The Democratic nominee this time out is former Chief of Naval Operations Elmo R Zumwalt, Jr...
...Crane is the brother of Illinois' popular conservative Congressman, Philip M. Crane...
...California's Sen...
...Usually you will find only employees slouched around the counter, telling lurid horror-stories about the less safety-conscious days when unwary newcomers like your narrator were always falling into vats or getting a shirtsleeve caught in a whizzing conveyor belt...
...The League of Women Voters, in an elecuon-year paperback called Choosing the President, speculates that as many as 75 million adults--or a full one-half of the votingage populace--will stay home this November 2. Usually, recitations of these figures are accompanied by prescriptions designed to reverse the steady decline in turnout, since the average editorialist is likely to view that decline as "disturbing," "alarming," or worse...
...Lester Maddox, the sallow Southern-fried chicken tycoon whose house specialty was Jim Crow...
...Hearnes is, by his party's standards, a conservative, having led his delegation in support of Henry Jackson at the 1972 Democratic National Convention...
...Catholics, who gave Buckley crucial support in his first election, are seen to be the swing vote in this contest between Irishmen...
...Jerry Litton, perished with his family when their private plane crashed en...
...I even remember one night when I came in off the night shift and found the place teeming with rookie cops drinking, playing cards, and feeling terribly wicked for imbibing while in uniform (even though they were officially off-duty...
...Tunney's weakness as an incumbent was reflected by the difficulty he had in fending off a primary challenge from former SDS leader Tom Hayden...
...The most startling upset of 1974 was the defeat of Republican old-timer Bill Bray by a 28-year-old parochial school teacher, David W. Evans, in Ir~diana's 6th Congressional District--now the southern suburbs of Indianapolis, once the domain of the Ku Klux Klan...
...And there are also contenders for state and Congressional office who are notable sometimes for good sense, sometimes for mountebankery...
...Warren E. Hearnes to seek the Senate seat, but he is the decided underdog against the state's attorney general John C. Danforth...
...Democrats remain in shock and disarray since the winner of the divisive party primary, Rep...
...After a Reds game the taproom would become more boisterous as reeling fans stumbled in and stationed themselves at the chrome udders...
...By 1972, however, a mere 56% bothered to make a choice between Richard Nixon and the e• professor from South Dakota...
...ing the seat, Republicans this year nominated David Crane, whose professional practice combines psychiatry and law...
...Zumwalt has spoken out lately as a strong Joseph P. Duggan is assistant managing editor of The Alternative...
...In 1900, 73% of the electorate handed McKinley his second win and Bryan his second loss...
...In Indiana, another young Republican moderate hopes to topple three-term Sen...
...Vance Hartke...
...He said that if they spruced up the interior decorating they could rent it out for parties and make more money...
...Though Howlett bubbles with public optimism--his latest and to date most remarkable pronouncement is that Jimmy Carter will have to run on his coattails--Thompson is considered far ahead...
...idealistic Roger MacBride, the Libertarian Party nominee from Jefferson's Virginia...
...is expected to retain the Senate seat he and his father have held for more than 40 years...
...Esch, a middle-of-the-road veteran of five terms, does not enjoy the wide recognition of Riegle...
...Originally elected as a Republican, the liberal Riegle switched parties in 1973 in a move greeted by mixed reaction from both caucuses...
...Kevin Phillips and Paul Blackman, in an American Enterprise Institute study on Electoral Reform and Voter Participation published in 1975, provide an up-to-date account of the downward trends...
...You're paying for the atmosphere...
...While denying that my own motivation in writing on this subject rests on a similar dearth of alternative topics, I think a word or two on what is commonly called "voter apathy" may not be out of place as the American electorate prepares to select a President, Such discussions inevitably begin with the statistics, and the statistics are certainly revealing enough...
...In the lush farmlands and rugged beaches of central California's 16th Congressional District, eight-term Republican Rep...
Vol. 10 • November 1976 • No. 2
