An Immodest Proposal

...Could Congress make the reception of campaign funds contingent on appointing these officials...

...Or the states require it to get on the ballots...

...Would the administration ease up on affirmative action in hiring practices, as the AFL-CIO has argued is sensible, or would it push ahead as blacks, Hispanics ,and women have urged...

...But it was still more fascinating to note how all the genuine issues, set aside during the campaign so that we could concentrate on Panama ffeaties, Playboy interviews, and whether the Soviets really did dominate Eastern Europe, suddenly reemerged in the politics of Cabinet-making...

...What else was Gerald Ford's proposal for Puerto Rican statehood but the delayed spasm of a presidential candidate, one of those bright ideas a campaigner uses to score first in the evening newscast...

...I know the political scientists will prove it to be silly and hopeless, like abolishing the Electoral College...

...What should be the stance of the U.S...

...What would it do about the twin evils of unemployment and inflation--in detail, and not merely by catchword...

...Alperovitz, whose earlier studies of "atomic diplomacy" had a major impact in shaking up the standard version of Cold War history, has been directing an effort called the Exploratory Project for Economic Alternatives...

...We have even seen a breakthrough of sorts in the proposal that Gar AIperovitz be appointed to the Council of Economic Advisors...

...but .the wide backing of Alperovitz is already an indication that the thoughtful, democratic elements of Sixties radicalism have earned a place in the mainstream of American political discussion...

...After all, wouldn't it be more entertaining, as well as more informative, if we fielded not two players per side but entire teams for our political Super Bowl...

...How would a Carter administration actually steer the economy...

...What is required to maintain the symbolic commitment to racial equality and harmony that closed the Democratic national convention...

...Does Soviet weapons development call for a massive effort on our :part...

...How determined are we to restrain covert activities by our intelligence agencies...

...These included the Chairman of the House Banking Committee Henry S. Reuss, Senators Kennedy, Humphrey, and Gaylord Nelson, and no less than 45 other members of the House of Representatives...

...No one can maintain that these issues have yet been debated thoroughly, but the crosstalk about Cyrus Vance's nomination for Secretary of State, Zbigniew Brzezinski's for National Security Advisor, Harold Brown's for Defense, Theodore Sorenson's for CIA chief, Andrew Young's for UN Ambassador, and what to do with James Schlesinger, certainly has aired the contending positions far better than did a TV debate in which Vietnam was barely mentioned and armaments were discussed only as a lump budget item...

...What about White House power and the independence of the Justice Department...

...4 February 1977:70...

...but why not require presidential candidates to name their Cabinet and chief advisors by September 1 of election year, with the stipulation that these officials cannot be replaced, except for malfeasance or gross incompetence, until the new administration has held office for a year...

...toward the Third World--fraternal negotiator or Dutch uncle...

...And like a corpse that continues growing fingernails, the presidential campaign never stops at election day...

...Griffin Bell's nomination for Attorney General has put these questions squarely on the agenda...

...Would it lean to labor's demand for direct creation of jobs or to business's insistence on tax relief and investment incentives...

...Ralph Nader called the proposal a "litmus test" of Carter's openness to new ideas...

...These were politics in every sense of the word...

...Or perhaps the networks, who run the election in any case, could simply decree it...

...If the administration is sincere in its objection that Alperovitz simply lacked the technical economic skills demanded by the post, then it can readily find other similar candidates, like Lester Thurow of M.I.T...

...There was probably more public attention to the realities of these questions in a few weeks of rumors and rumblings over Charles Sehultze, AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL PETER STEINFELS Burton Lance, W. Michael Blumenthai, Ray Marshall and John Dunlop, than in months of electioneering...

...But real politics had begun weeks earlier with Jimmy Carter's protracted selection of Cabinet officials and White House advisors...

...The last act of the campaign was of course the Inauguration itself, a pageant necessary to balance the ballyhoo and acceptance speeches of the conventions, to close wilh due ceremony the long parenthesis of the campaign...

...To what extent have we acknowledged the calamity of Vietnam as the basis of a reappraisal of foreign policy...

...That is a palatable way of saying he has been researching the possibility of applying democratic socialist notions to American economic problems...

...Has d6tente been a snare and pitfall...

...Major interest groups-capital, labor, women, minorities, the military and the foreign policy establishmentmflexed their muscles, recalled old promises and new prospects, and were variously placated...

...All this moves me to a simple proposal...

...While the Carter team has rejected the idea of appointing Alperovitz, it .is worth noting that a broad coalition of Congresspeople and public interest lobbyists supported the appointment...