POLITICAL BOOKNOTES
POLITICAL BOOKNOTES Interpreting Elections. Stanley Kelley. Princeton, $8.95. This book on political polling fails to live up to its promise, but it makes one intriguing argument: the election...
...Although Kelley does not give a similar rating for Reagan after the 1980 election, he implies that voter commitment was no more intense toward him than toward Carter...
...Joan Didion...
...What’s good about Democracy is that Didion has the precious cultural pretensions of the upper-middle classes down to a tee in her portrayals of Harry Victor, the Kennedysque liberal senator who wants to be president, and his lovely, fragile wife Inez Victor, whose life of privilege has so robbed her of imagination she has “come to view most occasions as photo opportunities...
...In the end she does provide some common sense ideas about marrying-namely stop worrying about marrying up and get involved in a job you like, do volunteer work, develop your talents, and cultivate a variety of friends...
...Burns would like to restructure the government along more parliamentary lines...
...Third World babies threaten the Western standard of living just as much as First World babies do...
...The strength (or weakness) of the relationship between the electorate and the elected can be more important than simple figures on who won, and by how much...
...She also recommends finding the richest person at school or work and giving that person compliments: “You do such wonderful things with a simple scarf,” or “That flower arrangement comes from the palette of an angel...
...A valuable antidote to conventional courses in American government that delude students into thinking that the secretary of state is in charge of foreign policy...
...Timothy Noah Sex & Destiny...
...Rawson, $13.95...
...Sometimes they even write in crayon on our kitchen walls...
...But don’t read it expecting any revelations about democracy...
...Her hardcore gold-digging advice consists of suggestions such as, attend horse shows, or hang around the dock at private marinas...
...They divert precious time from our careers...
...Charles Peters The Power to Lead: The Crisis of the American Presidency...
...Teresa Riordan...
...Reproduction has become a way to have an orgasm and children are but a byproduct...
...The title of this book is a tease...
...For example, she questions the safety of the pill, only to later admonish the Japanese government for outlawing and thereby depriving women of a “safe” form of contraception...
...The reason Westerners are promoting birth control in these Third World countries, Greer says, is the same reason they’re having fewer babies themselves...
...Simon and Schuster, $13.95...
...Their sins are not only not emphasized in this book, they are seldom even mentioned...
...Macmillan, $17.95...
...Kelley’s data suggest that there has been a steady decline in the strength of voter commitment from Eisenhower’s election in 1956 through 1980...
...The developed world, according to Greer, has discovered a new religion: sex...
...The first commandment of this modern religion is “Orgasms Not Babies...
...Simon and Schuster, $17.95...
...Emily Yoffe The Other Side of the Story...
...But whatever patterns there were were weak patterns...
...In 1952,7.3 percent of those polled chose candidates in terms of the “lesser evils...
...Jody Powell...
...After references to Jane Austen and Henry James to establish her serious intent, Steichen spends most of the book explaining at dull length how “marrying up” means different things to different people and describing the style of living various degrees of wealth offer...
...Theodore Lo wi Caveat...
...Germaine Greer...
...Regardless, she makes a lot of credible challenges to the reasons we practice and promulgate birth control...
...Who needs ‘em...
...Powell’s indictment of Washington journalism is generally correct and well worth reading...
...It is a message that you may or may not agree with...
...Both proposals recognize that in an age when we ask more of our government than ever before, the system of checks and balances can be an impediment to our national welfare...
...Harper and Row;, $19.95...
...The victorious Eisenhower had a “credit rating,” Kelley writes, of 1.42...
...Greer’s major argument is that Western society is pushing its screwed-up Malthusian views onto underdeveloped countries, where babies are still made because they are wanted, not just because they are affordable...
...After all, even when we confront a landslide for a Reagan, or a Nixon or Johnson, we are really talking about the differences of a few percentage points which, when distributed uniformly across the country, can produce a revolution in House and Senate majorities and a 90 to 95 percent majority of electoral votes...
...Charles Peters Democracy...
...But his book is marred by his modest aptitude for self-criticism-the press was too cynical about Carter, but often the cynicism had understandable roots in the behavior of Jody Powell and his boss...
...The real problem is that it hardly matters as most of this novel is simply beside the point...
...They lower our standard of living...
...Westerners have become so Me-focused, so selfish, that children are barely tolerated...
...Such apparent landslides can wash awav fast where convictions of voters are weak...
...The landslide election of 1972 left President Nixon with a credit rating of 3 3 . Carter began his 1977 administration with a credit rating of .29...
...James MacGregor Burns...
...Mairi N, Morrison Marrying Up: An American Dream & Reality Why Some Make It Into the Inner Circle and Others Never Will...
...Joanna T. Steichen...
...They are, after all, parasites...
...This book on political polling fails to live up to its promise, but it makes one intriguing argument: the election of 1980 was a landslide produced by “weakly committed voters...
...Greer sometimes contradicts herself...
...If this doesn’t send you barreling down the aisle with a Rockefeller, Steichen offers instructive case histories of people who have married up written in a sort of Cosmo-with-a-Ph.D...
...It may be that there was a new conservatism, or a new militarism, or some other overriding concern in the land...
...By 1976, 20 percent were choosing candidates that way...
...style...
...Another is an end to the “separation of powers” restriction on senators and congressman belonging to a presidential cabinet...
...There is actually very little advice on how to marry up, and Steichen, a psychotherapist and widow of photograper Edward Steichen, has an edge of disdain for anyone who makes marrying up a quest...
...Didion’s point that liberal “do-gooders” are to blame for the problems in the Third World and that sensible conservative patriots like Reagan are merely acting to bail them out is not new...
...Alexander Haig...
...Read it for the travel tips...
...If Inez went there you know it must be divine...
...One of his proposals is a “team ticket” for president, senator, and congressman, under which they would run together as the president and vice president do now...
...Anyone who successfully follows this advice, however, runs the risk of becoming the object of someone else’s search for marital advancement...
...This book reeks of the reality of Haig’s anxiety and sweating palms over what the boys at the White House-mainly, Baker, Deaver, Meese, and later Clark-were doing behind his back and his continuing doubt as to whether he was really in control or not...
...Read Democracy for Inez...
...William Morrow, $15.95...
Vol. 16 • June 1984 • No. 5
