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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, DECEMBER
30,
1986
PAGE
19
Sen. Barry Goldwater told the WASHINGTON POST in his farewell
interview last month, Congress has increasingly come to
represent far narrower interests. When he was first elected in
1952, Goldwater said, members "put their country before their
district
or
their state," but 'the average member of Congress
today puts more importance on his district
or
his state than he
does on his country.. The declining ability of representative
government to act in the national interest is an ominous
development for a country that, like it
or
not, is locked in a
struggle with the Soviet Union....
If the Reagan presidency
is
unraveled, it might be the final
defeat of presidential resistance to bureaucratic
government.... There are other lessons to be learned.
A
country that flays itself before a world audience will not
b z
taken serious1 in w m a f m F e g x e s s
of
the size
ofits
gross d p z c o r m u m b e r of its warheads. We can
rationalize that we are giving governments of men a lesson in
the rule of law, but the lesson will be lost
in
the spectacle.
-
Most overnments refer to be stron er rather than weaker. The
EX
~XEZ I T
h e F e r c
+
ew ng u p A m e r i c a n a
triots....
"Europe Fears Rudderless Reagan Administration, Looks to Shultz to Steady
the Course" is the title of an article
in
the November
28
issue of THE
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, written by the
CSM's
fine Bonn correspondent
Elizabeth Pond:
The West Europeans are deeply concerned that the Iran fiasco
may destroy President Reagan's authority and leave United
rudderless
for
the c r u c i c e x t two
States foreign
But at t
e
same time, t h e y ~ r e ~ e a v ~ c o ~ c t i v e
W L f relief that George Shultz appears to be staying on as
U . S .
secretary of state. Asked in an interview about the
importance to Europeans of keeping Mr. Shultz
in
office, the
NATO
secretary-general, Peter Carrington, eloquently looked
toward heaven and made an imploring gesture....
F
A West German diplomat commented that if you remove Shultz,
"you remove the man who has the most competence and experience
in the Reagan administration in foreign policy. Shultz
understands East-West relations."
Concurring
in
his
colleagues' judgment, a British diplomat noted, "If he goes,
everything goes." And he continued,...'It's
---
not over
-yet.
It's just going down down, down."
-
-I-
-
For Europeans perhaps even more than for Americans, the six
weeks since the Iceland summit have been
an
emotional roller
coaster.... The Europeans were alarmed by
Mr.
Reagan's
impulsive summit target of abolishing all ballistic missiles in
10 years; for them this meant a casual willingness to give up
the nuclear umbrella Washington
has
held over Europe for the
past four decades--and to abandon Europe to the mercies of
Soviet cenventional superiority.