The Field Against Mondale

...Kirkpatrick, having lived down her reputation for frank speaking, is now fit for electoral office...

...Whatever one thinks of the man, he stands for the yearnings and frustrations of millions of blacks still straining against political barriers...

...If there is a coherent foreign or economic policy within that party, it remains elusive...

...Who knows what further disasters will befall Lebanon or El Salvador or the interest rate...

...Although the frequent comparison with Hubert Humphrey may be somewhat flattering to Mondale, it is apt...

...Mondale, of course, is running to win...

...He has no difficulty making alliances with labor, arrangements with big-city mayors, appeals to Social Security beneficiaries, ERA supporters, farmers, and most other groups that can fill an auditorium...

...He can be counted on not to say anything surprising...

...He appears to be running for the Vice Presidency...

...He shares the consensus on the need for an arms agreement with the Russians as well as for a cutback in military appropriations...

...The Old and the New But back to the Democratic primaries...

...The ever-fading Glenn, outside of his shortcomings as a campaigner, has the burden of defining "the center...

...he is like an astronaut who has lost touch with ground control...

...They are the romantics of this unromantic campaign...

...on foreign affairs, there is no inherent reason why they should follow Jackson into the camp of Yasir Arafat, wherever that happens to be situated these days...

...The idea of a good old-fashioned Democrat like Mondale reducing the Federal budget is an original one, but a conservative Republican President becoming the biggest budget-buster of all time is also a switch...

...Any candidate who must rely on this sort of issue to make a mark deserves the oblivion to which Askew has already been consigned by the voters...

...The Center and the Off-Center As to those centrists, Askew evidently believes that he can set himself apart by his opposition to abortion, and so he has...

...For all the foolishness of a campaign format that makes even sensible people seem silly (eight public men lined up on a stage and asked to confess how they became feminists), Democrats need not be ashamed of their show of talent...

...On foreign affairs, Reagan appears to be a bit puzzled by the disorderly events in the Middle East, because he has never seen a mo vie where the charge is sounded, the cavalry appears, gets stuck, gets decimated, and gets redeployed while the Indians take over...

...You must take a stick and hit him on the snout...

...Both mistrust American power and have a weak spot for our adversaries in the Third World...

...On domestic issues, blacks, excepting a few mavericks, remain united...

...One may lament that since the passing of Martin Luther King Jr., black America has found no better national leader than Jesse Jackson, but it is not for whites to choose black leaders, and the Democratic Party is learning in these months that it is going to have to accept as equal players those chosen by blacks...

...He would be identified with ecology and ^industrialization...

...He has the virtue and the handicap of being less committed to the old-line sectors of his party than Mondale (although he would not have spurned an advance from the AFL-CIO had it been forthcoming), and he seems brighter than Glenn, on whose centrist terrain he has been trespassing...

...They are able to invest their hopes even in a buccaneer like Syria's Hafez al-Assad...

...Not since Chiang Kai-shek departed the Chinese mainland has the word " redeployment'' been put to such satisfying uses...

...If only the whole world were Grenada...

...Should Mondale lose the election (an eventuality for which Hart may not pray in public), the Senator from Colorado could present himself as a still youthful elder statesman, a winning combination of wisdom and vigor...

...At the same time, he has voted for some arms bills and, being a senator from California, he is not about to nominate Arafat for the Nobel Peace Prize...

...In a campaign that is heavy on centrists, his objective appears to be simply to stiffen Mondale's liberalism —not an unworthy endeavor...

...The Democratic Party likes to have a Southerner on its ticket, and Hollings, who favors a limit on Federal spending and is not known as a champion of social programs, may reassure some voters about the Democrats' propensity for printing money...

...Hart is in the contest for purposes of exhibition, and it seems to be working...

...But then, the main obligation of a challenger is to snipe at the programs of the incumbent—which are at least as vulnerable as the Marines were at the Beirut airport—not to invite sniping by setting up camps of his own...

...Making predictions about November in February is a bad gamble...

...An entertaining figure from a region where Mondale can use help, he might win that uncertain distinction...

...She may in time find herself somebody's running mate...

...Yet even if the end has been known from the beginning (except for the erstwhile opponent Mondale will find most useful as a running mate)', the exercise is instructive...

...It may not do any of them much good this year, but it cannot be bad for the country...

...the opposition candidate is a guerrilla, not a Marine...

...Should he gain office, he is likely to resort to the methods of yesterday to meet the problems of tomorrow—a prospect that has a lot to commend it, novelty in public affairs being much overrated...

...That is as it must and should be...

...Not only well-wishers of Baker will applaud the departure...

...Mondale speaks for the middle Left that has dominated his party—and for long stretches, the country—during the past half century...

...He is a commonsen-sical politician, with liberal instincts...

...Such a position is often reasonable, but rarely compelling...

...For the moment, on the Republican side, the sole announced candidate for 1988 is Howard Baker, who is leaving the Senate to dedicate himself full time to becoming President...

...The Democratic record, to be sure, is hardly attack proof...

...They combine sympathy for the underdog with a feeling that the East and the South have much in the way of wisdom to teach the West and the North...

...But the Democrats are at least being compelled to put themselves and what ideas they have on display...

...A Congressman is a hog...

...Hart's strategy has been to connect himself to the future...

...The presence of the Reverend Jackson on the primary platform is a notable event in American politics...

...McGovern, who is still capable of stirring the kinds of Democrats who vote in primaries, is a natural ally of Jackson...

...Having o'erleaped the recognition barrier this year, he will be around in 1988...

...Nothing so concentrates the political mind as being out of power, and this eight-man road show, though it has its ludicrous aspect, gives expression to the elements in contention for the soul of the Democratic Party...

...Nevertheless, they may yet have their turn...

...George McGovern is running on nostalgia, Jesse Jackson on color, Ernest Hollings on accent, Gary Hart on youth, Alan Cranston on good will, and Reubin Askew on abortion...

...This is difficult to do, and once done is not very dramatic...

...To judge by the television appearances of Secretary of State George Shultz and other functionaries, however, the Administration remains won-drously optimistic about the viability of its options...

...Cranston has been trying to find a niche for himself somewhere between Mondale and McGovern...

...Mondale is the sort of politician in whom Americans can find, if not inspiration, the comfort of familiarity...

...In any case, to take the center against McGovern is one thing...

...to take it against Mondale is to do battle with shadows...

...To speak economic truth in Republican circles in this election year, as Martin Feldstein, David Stockman and Senator Robert Dole have tried to do in their several ways, is to court displeasure at court...

...He plays the political game with such care that he often vanishes altogether into the mists of his equivocations...

...Hollings speaks in senatorially stentorian tones for the New South, or the seminew...

...It puts one in the dim light of being sort-of in favor of this and kind-of opposed to that...

...The Democratic aspirants agree on the desirability of a balanced budget, and all promise to reduce military spending and increase taxes, two actions that Ronald Reagan resists on principle, although rumor has it that after November he will relax his principles regarding a tax rise...

...Jeane Kirkpatrick, having already explained to the nation that the Grenada incident was a "rescue mission," returned to explain that the bombardment of Moslem positions near Beirut by our naval guns was required for the safety of the Marines then in the process of being, yes, redeployed...

...John Glenn would run on the center if he could find it...

...One wonders how much time he will be spending on Senate business in the next four years...

...Still, with time there will be more major black players in American politics than Jackson, and not all of them will be champions of the Palestine Liberation Organization...

...The puffings of that great Democratic leader, House Speaker Tip O'Neill, who reads the polls and adjusts his opinions accordingly, attests to the perceptiveness of the 19th-century Cabinet officer who told Henry Adams:" You can't use tact with a Congressman...