EDITORIAL
EDITORIALS NOW TOWARDS NOVEMBER Gerald Ford has picked his "Richard Schweiker," and some political pundits are declaring the 1976 presidential contest settled, with the Democrats as victors....
...The opinion polls, which recently showed the widest gap in history favoring challenger over presidential incumbent, have already begun to narrow now that Ford has settled his Reagan "problem" the bid for the nomination, if no other and can campaign head-on against Carter...
...If the Ford-Dole ticket has not predetermined the election, it has certainly driven home the ideological difference between the candidates and the two principal political parties for anyone who was unaware of the respective party platforms...
...The better candidate won the 1960 debates, for certain...
...that is big-business reliant, militarily chauvinistic, and pandering to reactionary instincts, as on school prayer and women's rights and, on the other hand, a political philosophy that sees government as an active, progressive instrument in coping with social and humanitarian challenges, that is aware of the age in which it finds itself, and that is sufficiently sensitive to at least question spending priorities, as for the military, so the country might think more realistically about better health plans, better educational systems, better housing, a better environment...
...Much can happen between now and November 2. The power of the incumbency is forever awesome, even in the hands of one so ordinarily inept as Gerald Ford...
...For some of these reasons, we would like to see Eugene McCarthy included in the arrangements...
...Yet there is no guarantee that the debates will not be turned into some kind of perverse forum by the participants...
...Allowing for generalizations, it is the difference between a political philosophy that, on the one hand, is avowedly conservative, almost in the McKinley sense...
...Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter himself considers the Ford-Dole ticket less strong than other Republican combinations he and running-mate Walter Mondale might have had to face...
...and no guarantee either that the maximum number of urgent issues will be raised and grappled with in a substantive way...
...The August 24 speech before the American Legion convention in Seattle, a masterpiece of forthrightness, would appear to indicate that there will be less of this shading tactic in the contest against Ford, and that is welcome...
...McCarthy has the head, wit and political intelligence for effective participation...
...The point is, as Eugene McCarthy was a positive political force then, so could he be useful catalyst now by adding insurance that topics are not ducked in the debates, and that questions raised will be meaningfully discussed...
...But Federal Election Commission rules make provision for independents...
...In this context, the campaign that Carter conducts will be interesting to watch...
...But television debates are not foolproof means for confrontation, and if the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates have any lesson for history, it is that optimism should be kept measured over them as vehicle...
...And with a claim on 5 to 15 percent of the vote, McCarthy belongs in the debates...
...But so also did his run at Lyndon Johnson in 1968, until it set American history on a new course...
...At the same time, we are not anxious to see the party platform slivered by ideological opportunism...
...One protection against this occurring would seem to be the television debates between the candidates providing, of course, legislative and other problems are worked out so they can indeed take place...
...The procedure worked magically, while producing some inevitable confusion on where precisely he stood on certain issues...
...But the fact remains that the outcome was settled less on contents than by cosmetics and camera presence...
...The Democrats, in a word, must guard against overconfidence born of their present lead...
...McCarthy's independent candidacy may appear to some as quixotic...
...In addition, the Democrats can rely on Robert Dole to be the aggressive, efficient gut-fighter of his reputation...
...There is probably small chance of the same thing happening again, or so we like to think...
...Even indomitable latter-day Republican enthusiast John Connally is reportedly so doleful about Republican chances that he turned down the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, believing it too late to mount a winning campaign...
...Of course, neither Republicans nor Democrats want him included...
...In the primaries, the Carter tactic on occasion, at least was to merely shade the ideological distance between himself and his principal opponent and thus extend potential appeal over the widest ground possible...
...It will close further, and could reduce to a tiltable few points by election day...
...We certainly do not wish Carter to commit political hara-kiri, as George McGovern did in 1972...
...To presume, however, that the contest is over but for the formality of the balloting is reckless...
...If ever the two-party system offered Americans a clear choice, and what the choice should be, it is this presidential year...
...For the country's sake, we hope he makes it...
Vol. 103 • September 1976 • No. 19
