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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MAY 18, 1984
well-connected Pole asked rhetorically. "A week?
measure of our independence from Moscow."...
PAGE 11
That's the
"You'll never� it, but this is adding to anti-Soviet feelings
among Hungarians," another East European source said.
"I just hope people won't think it is Poland's own independent
decision," a Polish sportsman said. "There is nothing we can do.
This is how everyone feels--helpless and angry. But (the govern
ment) can't break out of this. They have to do what they are
told. They can't step out of line. This is obvious to everyone
here."
American Politics--Little Room Left for Those Not Qualified
The long agonizing trail of American politics is finally winding through
the final state primaries and on into the national conventions (in July and
August). From there the campaign's final "playoff series" begins--heavily
televised campaigning for another 2� to 3 months up to the day of the
elections. The wearisome process caused Vermont Royster of The WALL STREET
JOURNAL (April 18) to wonder if it were not now virtually impossible to
attract the best candidates to the highest office of the land:
"A most wretched custom," grumbled old Cicero, "is our election
eering and scrambling for office."•.. You can't help wondering
what that ancient complainer would have to say about present
morals or the scrambling for office we witness nightly on our
television screens.
The multiplicity of primaries involving constant travel, the
practice of repeated personal confrontations on television,
leaves little !.£2!!! for carefully thought� and uninterrupted
talk that could really tell� what� candidate thinks on the
major issues of the day. That older kind of campaigning for a no
mination may be forevermore impossible.
This leads to a nagging question: With our present political
ways, could Franklin Roosevelt or Dwight Eisenhower have won his
party's nomination, that first necessary step to the presidency?
In 1932 Roosevelt hardly stirred out of Albany, leaving pre-con
vention politicking to Louis Howe and Jim Farley. For one thing,
he had a physical handicap. As a governor, he also hadn't the
time for cross-country campaigning••••
Once Dwight &isenhower let his name be put forward in 1952 he did
make several campaign speeches, but barnstorming it was not.•••
Eisenhower, too, had� strong sense of dignity that prevented him
from "scrambling" for office. Neither of them, I might add, made
personal assaults onhis rivals [ as have Walter Mondale and Gary
Hart].•.• And neither FDR nor Ike, I fear, would today make it
through the grueling contest a nomination race has become.
I
doubt if either would lower himself to such a scramble.
I also wonder whether under the present system� will see their
like again. Sitting governors are ruled outr they have too many
duties to attend to. Roosevelt was the last oner Mr. Carter and