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Y.o.u. took a 33% budget cut, but is still moving forward. We would
like to be able to reestablish national sports before track season
if possible, but that will depend on how soon our incomf� can stabilize.
Hopefully your encouragement to the teens will stimulate them to
continue their contributions as in the past. Maybe next issue we
can report some great news for Y.O.U. national sports.
--Ron Dick
ON THE WORLD SCENE
THE HELPLESS GIANT "There's a growing view that America is an
International patsy," complains Howard Baker, a Republican hopeful
in the 1980 campaign. Baker's comment cannot be dismissed as mere
campaign rhetoric. The U.S. is taking a beating around the world,
and its faltering image is very obvious.
The U.S., according to columnists Evans and Novak, suffered "humiliation
in Iran" and incurred "undisguised ridicule" because of its inability
to protect its embassy in Teheran and its ambassador from ignominious
death in Pakistan.
In Mexico, President Carter suffered through a humiliating public
dinner lecture by his host, President Lopez Portillo. Yet he offered
nothing public in response to the stinging attack, but only embarrassed
himself with a reference to "Montezuma's revenge."
As a whole, writes columnist Patrick J. Buchanan, America is seen as
a "perplexed and partially paralyzed nation led by a weak, indecisive
little man with not the slightest comprehension of the•..world we
inhabit."
The Wall Street Journal urged in an editorial for the administration
to "show some backbone somewhere." An official of the previous Ford
Administration intoned: "People have very little faith in us anymore,
and it's going to take years for us to recover our respect around
the world." But some of America's allies, it appears, can't afford
to wait so long.
Reports the U.S. News & World Report of March 5, 1979: "Growing
concern about Carter's lack of initiative in world affairs is driving
French President Vallery Giscard d'Estaing and West German Chancellor
Helmut Schmidt to discuss privately ways the European allies can fill
what they view as a serious "leadership vacuum."
The concern in Europe only confirms what Evans & Novak called "stark
new evidence of America's decline and the fears it has unleashed
among U.S. allies..."
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau