The president we have:
McCarthy, Abigail
of dedication and discipline allowed him to be a double-time Commonweal publishes only one issue each month editor in what...
...THE PRESIDENT WE HAVE Stability of character, brains, the ability to learn-not bad traits with which to WHY IS CARTER AT BAY...
...fell apart tomorrow -a prospect distressenergy and inflation problems with con- That ultimate depletion will not be with- ingly remote-the world would still run sistency and flair and feeling for the out its compensations...
...ject to his Catholicism, even those who stability of character of any recent holder He has demonstrated his willingness to supported him because of it, were of the office, or anyone likely to hold it...
...A president in office is corrective if a president needed to be candidacy" for some public figures, the president the party has...
...characterize a president...
...I am proud to be a politician and the son and son-in-law of politi- THE AMERICAN AUTO, R.I.P...
...The next issue, therefore, will be dated August 3. of the journalist...
...Wind brings to mind that wonderful When all that has been said, however, There is by now no doubt at all that the sail.-driven railcar of Mike Todd's I think we must recognize that part of well will run dry...
...dates to proliferate in swarms...
...veniences...
...Stalin's sneer about the papacy's military power frozen structures of the political and economic worlds at the seemed to be definitively answered...
...Most of when the well tuns dry and we face, it's all used up, is all used up...
...pendent voter," so popular among mem- importance of what was-the comIn the past a president with such bers of the suburban middle classes, is promise peace between Egypt and Israel, strengths could expect to have his pec- only one of the things which has for instance...
...This is not a question of Around the World in Eighty Days, but Carter's problems are not his own, but sheiks or ayatollahs, but one of a limited don't overlook windmills with their Commonweal: 390...
...He said cently that Carter is probably the it may be, the agreement in the "raddio" when everybody knew it was brightest-not the most intellectual, but Mideast-so much the result of his perradio with the long "a...
...could do, one must add, if he made a all and for many will outweigh its incon- There's wind and solar, of course...
...He is saying that I didn't think Al Smith was James Fallows, the erstwhile White strongly a peace president, not at all going to win the presidential election...
...cians," said Senator Howard Baker, one WHEN THE WELL RUNS DRY of his possible Republican opponents recently, and received round applause from I T MAY NOT be so bad, you know, amount of a commodity, which, when a Washington press audience...
...cadilloes overlooked or tolerated and his weakened the parties as nominating Last of all, as Meg Greenfield of the weaknesses down-played by the mem- bodies...
...And he insisted the brightest- man to have made it to the sonal effort-has changed history...
...which results in what was not acby "reform" that the Speaker of the The myth of the superiority of the "inde- complished overshadowing the historical House cannot exact fealty...
...It may even be a political government works...
...Vietnam the tendency to exaggerate expectations leadership in the Congress so weakened and Watergate alienated older voters...
...He could expect which Carter would not have reached of- called reforms have tended to separate support from the average citizenry and fice but now a hazard for him-were the politician from the rest of the from the opposition on matters of interna- never intended to be definitive in the populace, thus creating a "political tional import where the nation's interest nomination process, but to be a potential class" and a "permanent condition of was concerned...
...not make sense to weaken him further...
...Since we face great probwho cannot marshal support for his pro- participant in the political process...
...we have a largely terms of process...
...on wearing his brown derby, headgear White House in this century or, given our Nor, apparently, is the president vinexotic beyond belief to rural Midwestern system, likely to make it...
...An equally important change is the all these changes but he must not be domWhy do we see a Democratic president growing tendency of the media to act as inated by them...
...What was colorful political sym- "Considering the competition, Jimmy port or do not agree with him...
...Now they prolong the elective bency is much more complicated than it ses transfer to party and country...
...scolded by my Girl Scout leader for And she may have been right...
...The president has other virtues...
...It does process beyond reason and cause candi- was in 1960...
...Its blessings will out of oil at a not quite yet predictable people's distress-something he still be so thinly disguised as to be visible to date...
...This is 6 July 1979: 389 usually cited as a weakness by political come from, or are complicated by, polit- pointed out that members of the press, columnists, remembering the clout ical changes in the country...
...He takes with him Commonweal's represents even for non-believers...
...They add up to a strong endorsement of the president on Fallows' part, yet who can doubt that his I ALWAYS hesitate to write on political tenderfoot scout could weaken her can- emphasis on the president's weaknesses subjects...
...In the course of this delicate journey," the years of internal Catholic dissidence on matters of human correspondent of L'Express concluded simply, "John Paul II rights, there would have been no visit to Poland, no stirring did not make a single mistake...
...Complainbolism in the boroughs of New York was Carter is still the best hope for someday ing, yes-querulous, yes-but not so simply strange to us...
...In part, because he persists in thinking himself above or outside of "politics" when, in fact, the Of several minds: Frank Getlein office he holds is at the heart of politics and dependent on the intelligent exercise of that art...
...We suspect that not even all faith in official ideologies and official bureaucracies, both the well-known rigors of being a dean can long keep a East and West, cut off as they are from all particular human Raymond Schroth away from serious journalism...
...The "Eurocatholicism," though in the spirit of the Pope's own Pope faces the challenge of maintaining his campaign for appeals to unity the term ought to have been "Eurochristian- pluralism, human rights and human dignity against all the ity...
...If OPEC all, because he has failed to handle the at last, the bare bottom of the tank...
...Others might be gressmen's districts, for example...
...His weaknes- powers...
...James Reston has noted one in a day when parties are weak and uninformed younger electorate...
...David Broder told a press ing use of language, and demonstrate In part, because, like Al Smith, Carter audience recently that they should admit clarity of thought, voice, and purpose in cannot seem to lay aside his regional how much they condition events by the leadership-the leadership we need idiosyncrasies even in the national inter- process of selection-what they choose now-not in 1981...
...of dedication and discipline allowed him to be a double-time Commonweal publishes only one issue each month editor in what was, officially, less than a half-time position...
...same time as the papacy-and with it all of us-strives to What is the source of this spiritual authority that John Paul discover what these ideals will mean within the church itself...
...A president facing 1980 is affected by Why then do we see a president at bay...
...fresh start...
...Incumpresident the country has...
...contributed to his slide in the polls...
...The There has been so much said-and well said-about the Pope has taken the lead of these efforts...
...It House speechwriter who has written so macho in his attitudes toward provocaseemed to my young mind that even the critically about the president, holds, tive foreign adversaries, not so intent on voters in our little town who did not ob- nevertheless, that Carter has the greatest saving face that he is willing to risk war...
...Why do we have maverick berstam, complained to the networks that we must hope that he really has the capacparty members launching write-ins for they were coming between the president ity to learn, that he can change, that he Senator Kennedy and committees for "a and people, between the parties and their will master the art of politics, the inspirDemocratic alternative...
...As of now, however, the educator has taken a jump ahead during July and August...
...est...
...There was much talk of appeals for the rights and dignity of all men and women...
...What can be added to this display of There is a paradox here...
...Again, in part because he has not and to report and what they do not...
...Pope's visit to Poland...
...Fallows ABIGAIL McCARTHY will not learn the connection between language and leadership...
...dictive toward those who deny him sup= eyes...
...more inspiring, but none of the candiOf several minds: Abigail McCarthy dates now being discussed would have had the same four years of re-education in the problems presented by the bureaucracy...
...senior high school students no longer day-to-day government, and report evStill the absence of vindictiveness is a learn the elementary facts about how the erything in win-lose terms rather than in personal virtue...
...I still remember being didate by giving voice to such thoughts...
...Raymond Schroth has been named Academic Dean of Rockhurst College, the Jesuit liberal arts college in Kansas City...
...constituencies...
...For the church, too, has often living faith, this demonstration of the moral bankruptcy of an enough been frozen in official ideology, been subservient to imposed regime, this firm and yet diplomatic testimony of an official bureaucracy...
...Writing in Esprit before gratitude and best wishes-as well as our expectations of the papal journey, Paul Thibaud noted that people have lost future contributions to these pages...
...experience...
...Lyn- lems between now and then, and since grams from Democratic members of don Johnson, according to David Hal- President Carter is the president we have, Congress...
...Without the flexibility of postone man to the powers of resistance and reconciliation re- conciliar Vatican policy toward Eastern Europe, without 150 vealed in.Christ...
...Presidential primaries-without Washington Post wrote recently, sobers of his own party...
...Between these glacial institutions it has been the independent efforts-press campaigns for human rights, support for Soviet dissidents, Nobel juries, Amnesty POSTSCRIPT ON POLAND International -that have kept the human flame burning...
...Tentative and fragile though dismayed-by other things...
...bringing the government under con- punitive that he pulls projects out of conBut our troop captain held that even a trol," he also wrote...
...go the other mile in order to get alienated-or, at the very least, He is also said to have told friends re- agreements...
...He is the called to account for excessive use of his Senator Kennedy among them...
...I have noted like some presidential aides, become exerted by Lyndon Johnson, and by John in a previous column that junior and campaign junkies, are uninterested in Kennedy through "the Boston Mafia...
Vol. 106 • July 1979 • No. 13
