Editorials
CORRESPONDENCE Female Football Princeton, N.J. To the Editors: Is Michael Novak talking about the superbowl--or super-ball --mentality in his "Football for Feminists" [Nov. 1]? Is his...
...The longer this goes on, the more impossible becomes the American situation...
...His election may be a fluke, and have no implications for the rest of the country, whatever the old political slogan, "As Maine goes . . . etc...
...it is also a display of lack of confidence in current leadership...
...He raises the question of "consulting procedures" and "authorization...
...For national unity was the principal platform of the Conservative opposition in the campaign...
...Finances and food...
...The second thing is that it was not the idea of national unity which led to the Conservative defeat...
...They were much more obviously defeated than Labor was victorious...
...The fact is, the Conservatives, for all their claims to be the natural party to deal with the economic crisis, had no coherent economic policy to offer...
...One regrets, for example that so able a person as Governor John Gilligan of Ohio was turned out of office...
...If the Democrats' campaign rhetoric is true indicator, that may be understatement indeed...
...Second class postage paid at New York, N.Y...
...After all, "the use of physical tests tends to exclude women," and a good many feminists happen to be women (and some of us don't even subscribe to Ms., contrary to stereotype...
...190 CHILDREN'S ROOKS: Elizabeth Minot Graves 192 A SELECTED LIST: Eliz,theth Minot Graves 192 ILLUSTRATIONS: Front cover,/ower: From "Walk Together Chi/dren" (Atheneum) JAMES O'GARA: Editor JOHN DEEDY: Managing Editor RAYMOND A. SCHROTH: Associate Editor ANNE ROBERTSON: Editorial Assistant COLIN L. WESTEREECK, JR.: Movies JOHN FANDEL: Poetry BRIAN WICKER: Great Britain ALAIN WOODROW: Paris HENRY TEN KORTENAAR: Rome JOHN COONEY: Dublin EDWARD S. SKILLIN: Publisher JOHN BRUBAKER: Advertising Manager COMMONWEAL A Weekly Review of Public Affairs, Literature and the Arts...
...Come on...
...If the Democrats accomplish nothing as a party, the '74 elections will have positive effect if the strong Democratic showing prods President Ford at last into divorcing his Administration from Nixon's, symbolically and in fact...
...Certainly the elections raised up no Democrats as potential talent for steering the country out of the swamps of cynicism and clear of the ineptitudes that, among much else, have helped produce inflation and recession at the one time...
...The first is that whatever the "reds under the beds" brigade say, the Labor Party today is just as much the party of "national unity"--or, if you like, of the "silent majority"--as is the Conservative Party...
...To attack football . . . is not to help the cause of women...
...Two things seem to me to emerge from this irony...
...But Maine and Longley may be warning that the establishment parties must put their houses in order and begin to offer some new answers to the problems of the times or else face outright rejection from the electorate...
...If the Democrats are without program at the moment, at least the pressure is on them to devise and deliver a program...
...Indeed, just now it is clearly more so, since the electorate seems not to have been at all convinced that Mr...
...O.K...
...Heath has stopped being the advocate of confrontation politics (as he was in 1970) or has had a genuine change of heart towards the politics of "moderation" and "compromise...
...Commonweal: 179 The '74 elections were not without disappointments...
...The American political scene may never be the same again...
...5 would be a whole lot less significant than some of us would like to believe...
...But political parties have been consigned to death in the past in the United States...
...Foreign $17...
...And the Conservatives were clearly defeated...
...Nevertheless, Father Robert Egan, S.J., raises a point or two in an otherwise well thought out letter that require a response [Oct...
...Now there is a woman governor in Connecticut, a woman lieutenant-governor in New York, a woman State Supreme Court Chief Justice in North Carolina, a woman mayor in a city of more than a half-million population (San Jose, Calif...
...We prefer to see other forces at work, including a maturing of the electorate with respect to women's total place in politics...
...Copyright _9 1974 Commonweal Publishing Co., Inc...
...A strong Republican showing---even a holding of their own--would only have guaranteed more of the Nixonist political operation that has been the inheritance and the way of the Ford Administration...
...Women, of course, have been increasingly a part of the political landscape since the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment on women's suffrage...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 FROM ENGLAND WILSON'S SECOND CHANCE Harold Wilson has just made a post-election speech calling on the nation to unite in the face of the inflation threat...
...To the Editors: The prolongation of the Marlboro baptism case is not an event "to be devoutly wished...
...Still, the elections went, by and large, as they should have...
...10016 MUrray Hill 3.2042...
...Single copies 50r 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 000 THE NOV...
...To the extent that 1974 placed women in fact on equal ground with men in politics, the elections rate as historic...
...One other Nov...
...Romanticizing it doesn't help, either, aOAN DAR~AN O'Rourke Case Notre Dame, Ind...
...Both of these documents acknowledge the rights and duties of all those (Continued on page 197) NEWS & VIEWS: 17B CORRESPONDENCE: 170 EDITORIALS: ! 7 0 WILSON'S SECOND CHANCE: Bri.n Wicker 180 WASHINGTON REPORT: Oil f o r t h e S e n a t e ' s Lamps: SL~yphus 181 A FAREWELL: Abigail McCarthy 184 DIVORCE & REMARRIAGE: Michael True & James Young 185 VERSE: Byron V.zakas 191 THE SCREEN: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...Current problems and old Nixon names go hand in hand, right down the line...
...If this so proves, it could be the most positive development in American politics since the solidification of the two-party system...
...Simon and Butz...
...The American voter is usually not given to radical departures...
...His defeat is a loss at the state level, and also nationally since it depletes the already thin ranks of prospective national leaders--of whatever party...
...On the other hand, there was the amazing showing of women candidates, a detail, it is to be hoped, which translates to the establishment of women as a numerically significant and accepted segment of the political scene...
...The past was as foolish as it was chauvinist...
...Longley may turn out to be mere sloganeer, a visionary of sorts, a man without viable program...
...5 ELECTIONS The '74 bi-year elections are past, and the electorate has voted precisely as expected given Watergate and the economic upheavals: it turned thumbs down on incumbents--a very great many of them at least...
...women in some twenty seats of the House of Representatives, and a 36 percent increase of women legislators in 26 of 46 states holding state' elections...
...Now, either our ecclesiology acknowledges ecclesiastical structure or it does not, If not, we have an amorphous sect and no church (in which case anyone and everyone may do as they please...
...And since 22 November 1974:180...
...For theirs was a campaign pitched largely to superior (and perhaps hypocritical) virtue...
...It seems as elementary as that...
...A cursory reading of the General Introduction to Christian Initiation and the Introduction to the Baptism of Children contained in the New Rite of Baptism for Children would make it perfectly clear that "consulting procedures" and "authorization" are a substantial element of a proper approach to Christian Initiation in the church today...
...If the two-party system makes sense, so does two-gender participation in governing...
...If the suggestion is that their success is due solely to Watergate reaction, thet~ the showing of women is discounted as an aberration--in which case, Nov...
...Virtue without program can be politically meaningless...
...The Longley success may not be signal that the time is ripe for a third-party movement...
...except biweekly Chrlstmas.New Year's and June to mid-September, by Commonweal Publishing Co., 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...Printed in the USA and published weekly...
...The turn in political control is dramatic evidence of moral repugnance felt towards Watergate...
...Heath's campaign throughout envisaged, was not a call to unite around a policy but a call to get together to think of one...
...Analysts are predicting that, despite their substantial gains, the Democrats will not have an easy time developing coordinated program or effective responses to national problems...
...if so, we have some obligation to relate with pastoral prudence and sound judgment to basic norms of pastoral procedure within the church...
...But beyond that the election results may mean little...
...Only a tiny minority of monetary theorists, of whom Enoch Powell (no longer a Conservative Party member at all) and Sir Keith Joseph are the only well-known examples, actually presented a discernible alternative to the "social contract" which Labor had achieved with the unions...
...5 "because for some curious reason women seem less capable of evil in politics than men...
...Nevertheless, the astonishing victory of Longley ought to place professional politicians on guard: the mood of political dissatisfaction and distrust may extend in the grassroots beyond incumbents to the establishment parties themselves...
...Is his article really about football for feminists...
...They were defeated, not for what they said but for what they did not say...
...The nation now has an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress and more states in control of the Democratic party than at any time since perhaps the early New Deal...
...This is a striking irony, after the election campaign which finished last Thursday with a majority for Labor of three...
...15 a year...
...Maine is still only Maine--a political as well as geographic "outpost...
...Nor should it be...
...But always their participation, whether elective or appointive, rang of the exception to political rules...
...5 return should not be overlooked...
...The call for some kind of "National" or coalition government, which Mr...
...There is no reason why this could not happen again...
...Immediately, the shift in political controls promises nothing startling--not only because the top echelon of government remains unchanged, but also because the Democrats assume their ascendancy without concrete program for coping with the nation's problems, and even without impressive party or ideological leadership...
...US and Canada...
...This is the election to the Maine governorship of independent candidate James B. Longley...
...Columnist Max Lerner has speculated that the public voted so strongly for women on Nov...
...What a contrast the issue's intelligent and courageous opening editorial ["Women Priests"] makes with Novak's essay in trivilization...
Vol. 101 • November 1974 • No. 7
