COMMENT

...They don't bother to say why, though the rest of their article is devoted to persuasive documentation of what they accurately describe as "an exceedingly damaging tendency" among Democratic Administrations to lead the nation into wars and other catastrophic military adventures...

...By choosing to mount his effort within the Democratic Party, Jackson has foreclosed the possibility of mobilizing an effective constituency for the transformation of America into a different and better country...

...It's too costly for the United States to replace nuclear arms with conventional forces in Europe...

...As Richard Ryan, the Washington correspondent of the admirably free-wheeling Texas Observer, recently observed, "White atheist leftists who would be appalled by any other evangelist running for President on a platform of slogans are reduced to gushing teen-agers by Jesse's immaculate cool...

...This time, it was in search of new and improved short-range nuclear weapons...

...Pershing II missiles with truly European Euromissiles jointly produced and operated by France and West Germany...

...Apparently it didn't work well enough...

...H They subscribe, explicitly and implicitly, to the doctrine that it is the mission of the United States to impose its will on other nations, protecting resources for exploitation by American corporations and rolling back the tide of revolution wherever it rears its head...

...And the workers are fighting back by organizing unions and demonstrating at state cap-itols...

...The American Library Association is drafting a position paper warning its members against "hasty and punitive" policies, according to The New York Times—and warning, too, against creating "a false impression that the library no longer wants to serve children...

...The rest of us can then pick up where we were so rudely interrupted—doing the slow and tedious work of trying to build meaningful politics in America...

...Senator Paul Simon, described by some supporters as the "humane" Democrat in the race, has specifically rejected the notion of renouncing a first nuclear strike...

...Neither his campaign organization nor his Rainbow Coalition has any existence independent of Jackson's person and personality...

...Liberals and much of the Left seem particularly susceptible to the notion that we can cure whatever ails the country (and the world) simply by electing someone to sit in the Oval Office of the White House—a touching if foolish bit of naivete that may be a holdover from the Great Depression and the tendency to regard Franklin D. Roosevelt as the American Savior...

...What about those who haven't been picked up by closing time...

...But the fundamental problem with the Jackson campaign is that it is a Jackson campaign and nothing more...

...And they have no answer at all—except, perhaps, for some warmed-over protectionism—to the steady, inexorable decline of the U.S...

...What's more, as Diana Johnstone of In These Times reports, French and German military planners are considering "replacing the U.S...

...There are more caribou in Alaska than you can shake a stick at...

...whenever the Western Alliance faces off against the Soviets, nuclear weapons will be the puck...

...What sets the Democrats apart from the Republicans are such profound differences as "humanitarian" versus military aid for the hoodlums known as contras, and whether such aid should be administered by the Pentagon or the CIA...

...He has aligned himself with a constituency otherwise ignored in the campaign—the powerless and impoverished and disenfranchised...

...But the Reagan Administration doesn't care about all that...

...The pernicious concept that we are doomed forever to choose "a lesser evil"—though it becomes more difficult even to determine which evil is lesser— is alive and well in 1988...

...There are widespread predictions that fewer than half of the potential voters will cast ballots this year, and that the winner will receive his "mandate" from approximately one-fourth of those eligible to vote...

...Once again we are being told that any Democrat, no matter to what program he may be committed, would be preferable to any Republican (or vice versa...

...When the shouting dies down in Atlanta next summer, Jackson will not be the Democratic Party's nominee and his program will not be the Democratic Party's program...

...A survey in Los Angeles alone counts 1,500 to 2,000 unattended children using public libraries as their daily refuge...

...And park them right next to the washer-dryer...

...Missiles within a range of 300 miles were not covered by the INF agreement, so just as quickly as you can say "Ground Zero," the Pentagon was calling for the installation of such weapons in West Germany...

...Instead of concentrating on urgent organizing tasks, labor unions, women's-rights and civil-rights groups, and the peace movement squander their scarce resources on one or another candidate...

...What makes this inane process doubly depressing is the widespread assumption that running for office—and especially for the office of President of the United States—is what politics is all about...

...The refuge contains the calving grounds for a herd of 180,000 porcupine caribou and some rare onshore denning sites for polar bears...

...The full Senate has yet to vote on the bill, and the House has not taken up the issue...

...But," he said, "I have been persuaded by the facts that our policy choice must be to enable citizens to work without fear for the safety and well-being of our children...

...I paid good money to find out I was creasing my forehead incorrectly...

...Because he is the first black Presidential aspirant to receive serious attention in either of the major parties—and because there isn't the slightest chance that he will actually win the Democratic nomination—the corporate media have generally treated Jackson's candidacy with kid gloves...

...But libraries, hit extremely hard by the Reagan Administration's elimination of most of their Federal aid, cannot resolve this dilemma...

...Nor should they be constrained by the political atmosphere created by the treaty...

...Besides making the celebration of the INF treaty look foolish, these developments point up one of the central obstacles to nuclear disarmament: NATO and the Western Alliance...

...No Place for Children Public libraries have a new problem that cries out for solution, but far too many are handling it in ways that bode ill for children...

...Since The Progressive is a publication that attempts to address serious political questions in serious terms, we have come to detest these quadrennial popularity contests which make it all but impossible to conduct a rational discourse about issues that matter...

...His proposal would cost $250 million a year and offer incentives, in the form of block grants to states, to expand public and private day-care programs...

...The percentage of the voting-age population taking part in Presidential elections has declined steadily for decades, falling to 53.1 per cent in 1984...

...Unfortunately, many libraries are responding with new rules that discourage use of the facilities by children...

...And because his rhetoric is closely attuned to a radical critique of American institutions, the Left, too, has exempted Jackson from the close scrutiny to which it subjects other candidates...

...Librarians cannot know...

...COMMENT the Progressive Cult of Personality Bruce Babbitt, chronicling his aborted campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination in a recent issue of Newsweek, told how he responded to his lackluster performance in the season's first televised "debate": "I did what any candidate in my position would do: I hired a consultant...

...Gorbachev is not Hitler, and the Soviets are not about to sweep across the continent...

...And many children are bored and unruly, disrupting services for others who are there to use the library...

...And yet they do...

...NATO Go Home Two months after the signing of the Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) treaty in Washington, D.C., the Reagan Administration was back out on the nuclear trail...

...And costs can, and should, only increase...

...Some have barred those unaccompanied by an adult (or in some cases a teen-ager) from using the library at all...

...The safety of the children—and therefore the question of libraries' liability—is also a worry...

...It's not much, but it's better than nothing...

...Inevitably, it becomes difficult to distinguish among the minnows that swim in such murky waters, so the political campaign focuses on such Jack Kemp, deploring Vice President Bush's use of a line from John Lennon: 'That's embarrassing, to have a Republican talk about "give peace a chance...

...With the exception of Jesse Jackson (about whom more in a moment), none of the major-party candidates in the current competition offers any significant deviation from those policies: 1 They endorse, explicitly and implicitly, the idea of a "strong defense," clinging stubbornly to the fatuous idea that squandering hundreds of billions of dollars a year on the machinery of death somehow makes America more secure...

...Throwing the baby out with the bath water is no answer...

...When a well-meaning columnist suggested that Nader ought to run for President, he observed that his candidacy would serve no useful purpose: In the absence of a powerful national constituency committed to change, anyone in the White House—including Nader—would pursue essentially the same policies that have been, with only minor variations, consistently pursued by every President in our time...

...They deserve the higher wages they want...

...And they say it's even worse in the summer, when some parents drop the kids off in the morning and pick them up at dusk...

...The consultant, Michael Sheehan, taught me to do 'eyebrow pushups' to 'open up' my face and tried to keep me in the mood by repeating, 'Bruce, you're so happy to be here.' I had my doubts, sometimes, but darned if it didn't work...

...Many salaries hover at, or barely above, minimum-wage levels...

...Not before...

...In fact, a growing number of Americans have concluded that the process is so meaningless that they would rather not vote at all...

...America's new majority party, the nonvoters' party, is not composed of "bad citizens" who are too apathetic to cast ballots...

...Are the adults who lead children away the right adults...

...And though he has edged toward the major-party mainstream since his initial campaign in 1984, he still comes closer than any other Democratic candidate to articulating an alternative program for America...

...But there is reason for hope: Even so benighted a reactionary as Senator Orrin Hatch, Utah Republican, has noticed something is wrong...

...As long as the United States is joined at the hip holster to Western Europe, no significant nuclear disarmament will be accomplished...

...economy...

...Eugene V. Debs dealt devastatingly with this curious logic when he said, almost seventy years ago, "I'd rather vote for what I want and not get it than vote for what I don't want and get it...

...His opportunism, his anti-Semitism, the seamier aspects of his Operation PUSH, his occasional lapses into clumsy demagoguery have, for the most part, been politely ignored...

...Michael Dukakis and Richard Gephardt, among others, pushed up their eyebrows more persuasively and managed, therefore, to survive the early elimination rounds...

...And so the Administration and Republican Senators have pushed a bill through the Senate Energy Committee to permit petroleum development in the refuge...

...There is no logical reason for it: Moscow is not Munich...

...He is simply reinforcing all of the unfortunate misconceptions that frustrate the organization of a new and powerful movement for change...

...But you can't fault the Administration for lack of effort: From day one and James Watt to the present, it has left its greasy mark...

...Librarians have good reason for concern...

...White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, explaining why the contras need more military aid: 'What happens is, when you get short on bullets, you fire your gun less.' momentous questions as Bob Dole's nastiness, Gary . Hart's sex life, Paul Simon's quaint bow ties, and George Bush's adenoidal platitudes—not to mention Bruce Babbitt's misplaced eyebrows...

...Alone among the major-party candidates, the Reverend Jesse Jackson has addressed critically important issues in terms that set him apart from his rivals...

...Should librarians leave them out on the streets...

...With a bit of luck—and the perseverance of environmentalists—this latest attempt to defile our national wilderness will fall flat...

...Arctic Blast During his last year in office...

...oil companies do...

...President Jimmy Carter established the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on a 1.5 million-acre coastal plain in Alaska...

...That otherwise sensible people manage to care passionately about such a silly process defies comprehension...

...H They defend, explicitly and implicitly, the drive for profits as the logical and proper engine of all human enterprise, including health care, housing, and other critical needs that have been shamefully neglected or exploited by the private sector...

...They rub up against it and they have babies...

...Senator Albert Gore, touted as the Democrat most likely to succeed, wants to outhawk the Republicans...

...The Alliance must be severed...

...These are requirements that NATO has identified prior to and independent of the INF treaty," Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci told a Munich audience in February...

...Day-care providers are probably the most unfairly compensated professionals in our society...

...A dozen years ago, Ralph Nader offered a much more astute analysis...

...No matter that, by the Department of Interior's own estimates, there is less than a 20 per cent chance of finding economically recoverable oil on the refuge...

...There will be an election nonetheless, and someone who outshines his rivals in the personality sweepstakes will be elected...

...The millions of voters he has managed to inspire will have no place to go on Election Day, and the likelihood is that they'll stay home...

...Two admired and respected friends of The Progressive—John Kenneth Gal-braith, a member of our Editorial Advisory Board, and Stanley K. Sheinbaum, a generous supporter of this magazine and many other worthy causes-begin a recent piece for The Washington Post's oped page with the assertion, "The authors of this article intend to vote for whatever candidate is selected by Democratic voters...

...Librarians across the country report that the same kids show up after school every day and stay for hours until a parent picks them up after work...

...Those of good quality are out of the economic reach not just of the working poor but of the middle class...

...Usually responsible citizens divert their attention and energy to the thankless and pointless task of boosting the fortunes of career office-seekers...

...A $2.5 billion bill to do just that is pending in Congress and has 187 sponsors in both houses, though no one expects it to pass...

...The problem is that parents, strapped for cash and unable to pay the high price of child care, are turning libraries into baby-sitting services...

...So it goes as America meets the challenge of selecting the next Leader of the Free World...

...He has his own bill, introduced with the comment that he wished parents would take care of their own children...

...Jackson has challenged the militarization of America, the assumptions of super-powerhood, and the profound injustices that are now all but taken for granted in our society...

...Not one to miss a belligerent opportunity, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told NATO, with crystalline logic, that "it is totally and utterly absurd to separate out the modernization of nuclear weaponry from the modernization of anything else...

...Vice President Bush, defending the Alaska pipeline: 'The caribou love it...

...For a year and more out of every four, the daily newspapers and the nightly newscasts offer sports coverage in the guise of political reporting, delivering box scores, the latest Las Vegas odds, and "color" stories on the foibles and peccadilloes of the competing athletes...

...No matter that the drilling and attendant build-up would turn the refuge into the New Jersey turnpike...

...Birds and animals don't contribute to election campaigns...

...It provides sanctuary to musk oxen, arctic fox, and grizzly bears, and it is a crucial gathering spot for migratory birds...

...Its origins lie in the grotesque inadequacy of child-care services in this country...

...It consists of many persons who have concluded, for the best of reasons, that the choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee isn't much more meaningful than the choice between a Big Mac and a Whopper...

...Only after the United States or the European countries themselves come to recognize these realities can genuine nuclear disarmament commence...

...I tend to frown when I concentrate, which made me look unhappy on TV...

...The nation simply must recognize that it will have to subsidize day care for low- and moderate-income families...

...For one thing, baby-sitting is not their job...