Continental lovers
McCarthy, Abigail
went something like this: Don't screw around with Chase Manhattan, Jack. It doesn't really matter whether that succinct statement of reality and normal prudence among once and future...
...Campaigns should be their forum...
...That's one of the points about embassies...
...After becoming chairmafl~of the interstate commission he invited representatives of Canadian and Mexican national and provincial governments to a meeting to discuss their common problems...
...The prospect for continental cooperation, for example, springs from our need for oil and the pressure On our borders caused by the needs of the people of Mexico...
...The Shah was admitted, the embassy was occupied and the staff held hostage...
...He was careful to point out that this did not mean or could not mean one nation exploiting another, and, of course, it was useless to talk of a North American common market until the question of Mexico's need for emigration had been dealt with, Brown also gave his idea some practical testing...
...Candidates are rated according Commonweal: 712to their handicaps, fitness of mind and body, handling under pressure, backers, standing in the last poll, or showing in the last interview...
...Translate "poll" and "interview" as "race and trial" and you have a complete parallel...
...He thought that a North American continental common market made great sense for nations with common boundaries...
...He talked about it on "Meet the Press" and "Face the Nation" and Time magazine gave it space in its discussion of him as a presidential candidate...
...It is time to stop looking at our nearest neighbors as foreigners," he added and promised that, if he were elected president, he would work tirelessly for close ties, would invite representatives of Canada and Mexico to sit in on planning sessions at the highest level...
...And we clear it with the Saudis, who presumably would be much relieved to be relieved of a neighbor upstaging them as holier than anybody...
...The translation of the answer to that need into responsible public policy and practical program is what politics is about...
...But, no, the humanitarians were themselves so infatuated with their royal visitor, they couldn't quite imagine the Iranians not sharing their admiration and affection...
...As President Carter counted his options, he missed the most attractive: an offer to trade Rockefeller and Kissinger for the hostages and thus test the unflaggingness of their love for the Shah...
...In that speech Governor Reagan called for a North American continent--Canada, the United States, and Mexico--which would American continent--Canada, the UnRed States, and Mexico--which would be, he said, the strongest, most selfsustaining group of nations in the world in terms of food, resources, technology and undeveloped territory...
...All three shared a longstanding heritage of free government...
...Once we get them back or once the Iranians kill them, we withdraw all Americans from the country, go in big with all force available, hunt down and slaughter everyone connected with the occupation and extortion, hang the Ayatollah and the Shah together in the centi'al square--a two-for-one withguaranteed total coverage--occupy tile country, set up a friendly, a ve(y friendly, government and renegotiate the price of oil...
...Govern9r Brown expanded on the idea in his swing through ~e East in the spring of 1979...
...So long, OPEC...
...He had fallen off the win or lose charts...
...It was just there and everybody who counted heard it and jumped...
...ABIGAIL McCARTHY 21 December 1979:713...
...Because of the complexities and sensitivities discovered at the meeting he and his advisers began to speak in terms of an economic community of nations for fear that the larger idea might be lost in the thickets of custom unions and trade barriers...
...One might cavil here about one-party rule in Mexico but reassuring rhetoric does not allow for gradations in description...
...What we see in the press and on television day by day is a sort of racing form appropriate to the process, a result of the relentless daily scrutiny of the ephemera of the political process...
...All," however, seems a little overstated...
...Politicians with a breadth of practical vision are important to a nation in struggle...
...Creativity and long-range approaches to our problems are hard to measure in terms of contest and the space available on the nightly news...
...The basic reason for the ensuing stand-off was that both sides were completely correct in the denunciations each issued of the other...
...Such a common market for energy, trade and tourism would emphasize the strength and the resources of the northern hemisphere...
...But it was a forward-looking suggestion for a way out of our problems and raised hopes for the future...
...He was realistic about the need for open borders...
...The choosing of a president has become our national spectator sport...
...Meanwhile, on the day that Corporal Crowley laid down his life for his friends our friends at Chase Manhattan ran a double-truck, two full pages, ad in the New York Times to present a new scheme to eliminate the "float" we all lived on when young...
...The Chase Convenience Package," proclaimed the head and a parenthetical deck, "(Here's what's in it for you...
...FRANK GETLEIN I Of several minds: Abigail McCarthy CONTINENTAL LOVERS THE GOVERNORS OF CALIFORNIA S OON AFTER you read this it will be at long last election year...
...They could have saved their money...
...By the time an idea is proposed as a practical solution, it has usually had currency among theorists for some time...
...Such an accord would not be dominate4t ' by the United States, he insisted...
...It was probably only boredom with the familiar content of Governor Ronald Reagan's set speeches which induced a few of the commentators and columnists in the major newspapers to spend some time on the so-callednew material in his announcetnont speech...
...Whether from true hubris or simple fatuousness, the Rockefeller-KissingerVance-Carter act of humanitarianism wasn't even done huggermugger, as it could easily have been: he goes into medical seclusion in Mexico, arrives at Newark at 3 a.m., is driven to the uniquely equipped and staffed New York hospital in a Chevrolet, registered falsely as a rich rug merchant, swathed in facial bandages, the heavy armed guard is maintained at his Mexican hideaway to chase reporters, and everything is 9 tickety-boo...
...He painted continental cooperation as a restorative remedy for American strength and confidence...
...The death of Corporal Crowley while covering the retreat of the American staff in the Islamabad embassy was not the direct result of the RockefellerKissinger initiative, but the links are quite legible if you look...
...Now I hold no brief for Jerry Brown, or any other candidate...
...Reagan's plan for progress was not much more specific than that...
...Good political ideas have their source in raw need...
...The progress of their ideas should be the stuff of the nightly news...
...Machiavelli, of course, worked from reason and psychology uncluttered by the humanitarianism that led Kissinger to the Christmas bombings, the incursion into Cambodia, and many, many similar human rights initiatives...
...One can address the raw need head on and call for continental petroleum sharing as did candidate John Connally-with a hint, it seemed, of "they're got it...
...He was just back from the meeting of the Interstate Oil Compact Commission, a commission drawn from the oil-producing states, where he had been elected chairman...
...Contrariwise, there is no doubt at all that the Shah is everything the Ayatollah says he is: long time and wicked oppressor of the people, big-time looter of his country's wealth, supported in his oppression and his looting by the United States, most notably by Kissinger and Nixon and, in the private sector, by David Rockefeller and your friends at Chase Manhattan...
...The resources of this continent would be used for the common good of all its people...
...Without question, one of the fundamental principles of international relations, not to mention international law,-was violated when the Iranian government, insofar as there can be said to be one, not only did nothing to relieve the occupied embassy but gave its blessing,9 literally, to the occupying force, making it, in effect, a government agent...
...There is no doubt in my mind that the Ayatollah is also correct in saying many of the embassy people are spies...
...They can hardly object in View of our complaisance toward their periodic invasions of their assorted colonies in Eastern Europe...
...Like Jimmy Durante, Jerry Brown has a million of them and if one can work its way into the Republican front-runner's program, they are ideas to reckon with...
...Or, like the California governors one can enlarge on the possibilities and seek for advantages for those whose need is less--in this case, Canada--thns building a true hemispheric policy...
...Among the ones who heard it and didn't jump were the ones who didn't count, namely the entire staff of Iranian experts at the State Department...
...They brought him in like Joe Duveen coming up the harbor on the Berengaria...
...Governor Brown elaborated on this idea before a Los Angeles press conference on December 12th in 1978...
...Once people began thinking in terms of hemisphere they would see their strengths rather than their differences...
...Reagan's proposal bore a skeletal likeness to the concept advanced by Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown, Jr., present Governor of California, in a speech to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco on the 20th of October in 1978...
...If the military replies that this is manifestly impossible, we renegotiate our whole policy of drunken spending on military equipment and personnel useless when you want them...
...First of all, we would not seek to dominate and secondly, our neighbors would not allo'~v us to do so...
...Because it is a spectator sport, it seems to invite less and less participation and, therefore, fewer and fewer people vote--but that is another story...
...I'm afraid it was because, in the meantime, Senator Kennedy had announced and Governor Brown, for all intents and purposes, was fading from the form sheets--or at least from the forefront of the consciousness of the press...
...It didn't have to be...
...What they said was, if you let the Shah in, the embassy will be occupied, the staff held hostage and possibly some of them killetl...
...But solutions to our national dilemmas are more important to us than the current poll standings of would-be presidents...
...He echoed clarion calls of the past: on the basis of such cooperation we could "serve notice on friend and foe alike . . . that we are prepared for the long haul...
...It was no accident, he said, that these three nations are so strong potentially...
...It seems that we have been on the way forever...
...we want it, and we will have it...
...The experts were ignored, just as other experts were ignored in re China one time...
...Serious issues get little attention and ideas--if the candidates have them--almost none at all...
...He suggested a common market of the North American nations which could be, he thought, "the most powerful trading group of nations in the world...
...It doesn't really matter whether that succinct statement of reality and normal prudence among once and future corporation lawyers was actually spoken or not...
...it was clothed in conservative rhetoric intended, no doubt, to reassure his core followers...
...We were learning that elsewhere in the paper...
...For the dwindling band of journalists who still believe that Old Nick Machiavelli probably had a better grasp of statecraft than Henry Kissinger-- with the single exception of the ancillary art of bamboozling the press--it is easy to see what the Florentine would have advised his Prince: "We continue efforts to save the hostages...
...When, as predicted by the professionals, the Shi'ites hit the fan, the humanitarians were astounded...
...Naturally, this is cleared with the Soviets first...
...Historically few ideas have been wholly originated by one person...
...Yet, at the time of Governor Reagan's announcement in early November, no one seemed to remember that Brown had made such a suggestion or to see the similarity to Reagan's "new" hemispheric policy...
Vol. 106 • December 1979 • No. 23
