Positive Thinking
GOODMAN, WALTER
Game by walter goodman Positive Thinking Now that the winter of our discontents has given way to spring's anxieties, we must search out what comfort we can from the motions of the American...
...have met the Baker type at cocktail parties, the fellow who with much reflection and a great show of evenhand-edness manages to utter statements like, "I told the President if he's right, we'll vote with him...
...Remember Saint Wendell Wil-kie, the sometime utilities lawyer...
...He provided us with the most satisfying flop of the primary season...
...We also learned long ago that elections offer an opportunity for the airing of issues so that our democracy may function intelligently...
...Nor is the ascent of John Anderson the sole bright episode on the Republican side...
...If he's wrong, we'll vote against him...
...And would President Kennedy truly attempt to combat inflation by enhancing social programs...
...The primaries early identified the apparent winners and certain losers...
...Ronnie, finding himself running against an empty ego, turned positively avuncular...
...The reputed charm and intelligence and effectiveness and dynamism of this buccaneer must remain a mystery to those who have not been privileged to sit with him in the backrooms of power...
...He's in no condition for such public display...
...Jerry came across as human with the help of Betty...
...I do not mean only the flowering of his campaign...
...Many of these people are convinced they have gotten where they are through some inherent force of personality—best expressed to the world by jutting one's chin, waving one's finger, banging one's fist, and in general striding about in a fiercely determined way that bowls over one's underlings and wins the compliments of hangers-on...
...Only later, after some resolution has been achieved, for better or worse, can historians explicate and even pretend to "understand" them...
...But to return to the Republicans...
...And here, too, everybody can produce a favorite expert...
...Maybe it is just not the year for good old liberalism...
...Game by walter goodman Positive Thinking Now that the winter of our discontents has given way to spring's anxieties, we must search out what comfort we can from the motions of the American political process...
...Bush will not be an unfamiliar type to anyone who has spent time among our higher managers...
...May his support give Ronald Reagan all that he deserves...
...It is safer to be an historian than a statesman...
...One batch of economists plumps for wage and price controls...
...Let us give praise that Jerry has been spared the mortification of once again being led onto the public platform to commit his pratfalls...
...And the ecological tribe, ravaging forests of paper to cry down anathema on the word "nuclear...
...Jerry could not find 10 disciples...
...Both sides are trapped in their predilections, and given the economists' records in recent years, one might as well use tea leaves...
...Let's see now, isn't there somebody else...
...But one ought not be unpleasantly skeptical about the transformation...
...Having served for many years in the House of Representatives with no noticeable effect on that body and no special credit to himself, good John came forth late in life to redeem his party and warm the liberal spirit with a light from deep under the political bushel...
...Having ridden to victory with the help of President Ford's uncertainty about the location of Eastern Europe, President Carter has turned out to be a touch vague about the position of East Jerusalem...
...How is the poor voter, lacking a doctorate in missileology, to reach an informed opinion on an issue that may determine the fate of the world...
...A great problem, our greatest...
...Who to believe...
...The main accomplishment of George Bush has been to make Ronald Reagan look like a man of moderate habits and sunny temperament...
...Or take energy...
...Even if we shrug aside the pols and look to the experts, we find no message for the perplexed...
...He still cannot quite decide whether the President's position vis-avis the Russians is too tough or too soft...
...Glory hallelujah that the Second Coming was not forthcoming...
...Maybe he really didn't want the job until he was certain that he could not get it...
...If it comes to buying a used car, who would not choose Richard Nixon...
...What is left to the layman but to go by the wisdom of his favorite movie actress...
...One batch of senators can be counted on to vote for pretty much any treaty...
...Reporters go out of their way to get his opinion, and he always has one—the same one, about balancing the issues and so forth...
...let Rosalynn do it...
...The Bush performance spared Reagan the need to blow so hard...
...He proved that despite the cast-iron stomach of the American electorate, there is some stuff it cannot swallow...
...No sooner had he been declared a loser than his campaign gained energy...
...A little chap, in the race for a while...
...The miracle is more personal...
...Who can forget John Con-nally, much as one might like to...
...One dismaying marvel of American politics is how the most ordinary sort of creature can with a bit of luck and maneuvering turn itself into a specimen of note, a spokesman, a veritable Leader of His Party...
...But one must not be unkind...
...Traveling in Neutral Not only are such issues hard to resolve, they are damnably hard to comprehend...
...Jimmy has had to do it despite Rosalynn...
...We are plotting journeys in bad light with untrustworthy maps and so-so drivers...
...Paul, after all, was no kid when he was struck blind on the road to Damascus, and other sanctified persons also have spent time in the muck before journeying to heaven...
...If Jerry's penchant for bumping his head called up some laughs, Jimmy's determination to run a real marathon in the face of the camera had its share of pathos...
...But why pick on Baker when, marvel of marvels, there rising briefly from the golf course where he had been interred since 1976, with the revelation that he might just possibly be the GOP savior, was Gerald Ford...
...Can it be the intellectual klutziness...
...Anybody at all...
...As to that controversial Kennedy character, is Teddy insufficiently principled or insufficiently ruthless...
...Can it be that there are some kinds of crises so seemingly intractable that sensible people choose to make their marks elsewhere and leave the political field to those for whom the title of President, even with no expectation of glory, is sufficient attraction, degrade the office though they may...
...What is it about Jerry Ford that reminds one of Jimmy Carter...
...Another batch will assuredly vote against consenting with the Soviets...
...Having criticized his predecessor's many vetoes of appropriation bills, Carter has lately been promising vetoes of his own...
...But what is the voter to make of the campaign noises this time round...
...Still, Jimmy's achievement in the humanizing line is certainly greater than Jerry's...
...But this was meant (o be an optimistic piece...
...Both sides naturally have their scientists...
...But, then, neither can the President...
...If we began giving IQ tests for sainthood, there wouldn't be anybody left to worship...
...In any inventory of the miracles of the season, John Anderson must lead...
...Should the nation encourage nuclear power or ban it...
...in the company that he found himself, any decent smelling weed might have been taken for a rare blossom...
...Who is to be trusted here...
...Negative Results Most of us brought away from the schoolroom the idea that big crises call up big leaders in this country—Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt...
...In between there are some who will vote for or against, depending simply on what deals are available to them that week...
...Yes, Jerry Ford himself...
...Given his record of shifting policies and unredeemed promises, Jimmy would have been mad to venture out of the White House voluntarily and enter the primary marathon...
...And then there is salt, with its boggle of missiles and silos and warheads and verification techniques and the Pentagon knows what else...
...But perhaps that is the way most public issues seem at the hour that they confront the nation...
...Another batch assures us that the medicine is worse than the disease...
...So we look wistfully toward our leaders, to the one or another who has gained our trust by courage, candor, possibly a glimmering of wisdom...
...it is a mercy to all persons of sensibility...
...Remember Senator Howard Baker...
...But the chances are that his aura of blessed peace will dissipate during the campaign as he confronts God's chosen candidate...
...Thai is what we look for, and there facing us are Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan...
...The result is not heartening, yet there are bright places to be found...
...Another miracle—this one on the uses of adversity...
...Go, big John, take your pleasures among your bulls and gushers and your pals in the dairy industry...
...After all, it's spring...
...Again the sides line up—the power companies and oil companies, with dollar signs ever in their eyes, assuring us on the Op Ed page of the New York Times that what is good for them is good for the soul...
...Oh, yes, the Kennedy boy...
...Born again...
Vol. 63 • May 1980 • No. 8
