ANALYSIS
Texas primary vital
for Bush candidacy
By IRA R. ALLEN
United Press International
WASHINGTON — It may be too late, but the strategy George Bush
devised last summer to make himself the only Republican alternative to
Ronald Reagan finally has worked.
Denied victories in at least three primaries by the man he calls
“sanctimonious John Anderson” — now an independent candidate for
president— Bush has risen from an asterisk in the polls to the repository
for a sizable GOP antipathy toward Reagan.
Bush’s upset win over Reagan in Pennsylvania two weeks ago —
accomplished with $1 million, effective television and a new aggressive
ness by the previously mild-mannered Ivy Leaguer — resuscitated a
dormant campaign.
Yet it is hard to see how Bush, the former everything— CIA director,
U.N. ambassador, party chairman, congressman, oil wildcatter, war
hero and Yale baseball captain — can attain the highest goal in his
achievement-studded career.
He is offering the GOP experience and youth. At 55, he is 14 years
younger than Reagan and, he would have voters believe, far more
capable of dealing with complex issues.
Bush had told Pennsylvanians they “could turn the thing around
nationally” by voting for him. Now, as the price of his success, Satur
day’s Texas primary has taken on more importance than Bush wanted.
Reagan, who blitzed President Gerald Ford four years ago in Texas, is
still overwhelmingly popular in Bush’s home state. In recognition of
that. Bush had planned an “enclave strategy” — running in only a few
urban congressional districts. But now his yoyo fortunes will droop again
if he is blown away in Texas.
Throughout the 10-man Republican race that started last year, Bush
ached fora one-on tone test with Reagan.
When ht? got the first one, by agreeing with Reagan to exclude the
others from a debat^ in Nashp^t, N. H. * Bush let Reagan steal the show—
and perhaps the nomination — with the one memorable phrase from thie
1980 campaign — “I paid for this microphone, Mr. Breen.”
The episode showed Reagan a man of action and principle — he had
wanted the other major Republicans to join the debate at the last minute
— and Bush as a wavering excluder of his other challengers.
Bush lost devastatingly in New Hampshire and only recovered what
he now calls his “psychology” in Pennsylvania.
(Bush displayed his own stage anger, as Reagan had done two months
before, when he went before a state AFL-CIO meeting in Pittsburgh, a
mostly Kennedy-Democrat crowd. Talking about the possibility of apo
logizing to Iran, Bush roared, “Hell, no, we’re not going to apologize!
We’ve done nothing wrong.” He got a loud ovation for his effort.)
Until he lost to Reagan in Illinois in mid-March, Bush kept his
ideological image fuzzy. He avoided issue differences with Reagan and,
like Jimmy Carter in 1976, tried to appeal to both the right and left wings
of his party.
First he began hardening his line against Carter’s Iran policy, calling
for a break of diplomatic relations. Then he opened up on Reagan —
while still acting gentlemanly — pointing out wherever he could their
policy differences.
“The differences are not so much differences in philosophy, but
differences based on what I know is greater experience in national and
international affairs,” he told an audience at Penn State University.
“I believe those differences make me the best equipped to serve this
nation for two terms in the ’80s.”
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Washington Star Syndicate. Inc.
The Battalion
U S P S 045 360
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Editor Dillard Stone
Managing Editor Rhonda Watters
Asst. Managing Editor .... Becky Swanson
City Editor Rusty Cawley
Sports Editor Richard Oliver
News Editor Lynn Blanco
Focus Editor Rhonda Watters
Staff Writers Nancy Andersen,
Uschi Michel-Howell, Debbie Nelson.
Cathy Saathoff, Jana Sims,
Todd Woodard
Photo Editor Lee Roy Leschper Jr.
PhotographersLynn Blanco, Steve Clark, Ed
Cunnius
Opinions expressed in The Battalion are
those of the editor or of the writer of the
article and are not necessarily those of the
University Administration or the Board of
Regents. The Battalion is a non-profit, self-
supporting enterprise operated by students
as a university and community newspaper.
Editorial policy is determined by the editor.
Viewpoint
The Battalion
Texas A&M University
Thursday
May 1, 1980
Broder
Three messages from Pennsylvania primary
Sun
by DAVID S. BRODER
The Pennsylvania primary results carry
three messages to the Democratic Party.
The first is that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy
will not, in all probability, be able to over
take President Carter in the race for the
Democratic nomination.
The second is that Kennedy will prob
ably come to the Democratic convention
with sufficient strength to make him — in a ,
real sense — the arbiter of Carter’s political
fate.
And the third is that unless some accom
modation can be struck through the con
vention process between these antagonistic
figures, the Democrats have scant likeli
hood of winning in November.
Kennedy’s razor-thin victory in Pennsyl
vania kept his candidacy going, but he
needed a far more decisive win to cut into
Carter’s commanding delegate lead. The
President now has almost a 2-to-l advan
tage over Kennedy, and while that margin
is likely to dinimish somewhat in the re
maining six weeks of primaries and cau
cuses, an educated guess is that Kennedy
will arrive at Madison Square Garden with
roughly 40 percent of the delegates.
The question is what he can do — or will
do — from that position. Most speculation
centers on the possibility that he may try to
reverse the apparent verdict of the primar
ies and grab the nomination for himself.
The device that is talked about within the
Kennedy camp — and, on some occasions,
by the senator himself — is a challenge to
the convention rules that would have the
effect of releasing delegates from their pre
vious pledges of support and setting the
stage for a mass defection from Carter to
Kennedy.
Some observers believe that if Kennedy
has beaten Carter in the late primaries and
the President is trailing the Republican
nominee in the polls, such a mutiny could
be rationalized as a step back from political
disaster.
But the assumed conditions are specula
tive, and Kennedy — who lately has been
denying any interest in such a plot — is
probably realistic enough to know that an
incumbent President who starts conven
tion week with even a narrow majority of
pledged delegates should have enough of a
grip on the levers of power not to be mane
uvered out of renomination.
But that does not mean, necessarily, that
Kennedy and his delegates will go home
empty-handed — at least if he wants to win
the election.
Kennedy is running very well in states
like Connecticut, Massachusetts, New
York, Pennsylvania and Michigan, which
are keystones of any Democratic presi
dent’s Electoral College coalition.
The Kennedy voters in those states are
saying they are disinclined now to support
Carter against the Republican nominee. In
Pennsylvania, where Kennedy drew half
the vote, 36 percent of the Democratic vo
ters interviewed by ABC News said Carter
was “inacceptable” to them for a second
term.
Concessions on Carter’s part will almost
certainly be required to bring them back
into camp.
In other circumstances, Carter might
solve the problem by putting Kennedy on
the ticket. But their personal enmity and
Carter’s loyalty to Vice President Mondale
rule out that solution.
Logic, therefore, dictates that Carter
will have to yield to Kennedy in the plat
form and policy area in order to avert the
split that now threatens his own reelection
and the party’s future. And my impression
is that Kennedy deserves to be taken more
seriously than most now take him, when he
says that he craves that kind of “victory” in
the convention.
Kennedy expressed great bitterness that
he has been denied a “dialogue” with Car
ter on the future direction of the party, by
are ge
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Carter’s boycott of the election cant
The platform process at the conveil
the best device available to Kenne
forcing such a debate. Particularly
clear that he is not using the platfoi
simply to try to gain the nomil
himself, there is every reason
that he can obtain real concession
Carter on the economic and social
of a second Carter adminstration
would be the price for the Kenned;
gates’ acquiescence in the rei
the Presdient and their support in
eral election.
Indeed, as matters now stand
to imagine Carter being reelected
that kind of convention process
place.
(c) 1980 The Washington Post Cm
.■*'.< r -r t«
Dick West
Jean-Paul Sartre: Eulogy for a nebulist
by DICK WEST
United Press International
WASHINGTON — Obituary writers of
the world encountered perhaps their
greatest challenge last week with the death
in France of Jean-Paul Sartre.
To these poor souls fell the unenviable
task of trying to explain whatever it was
Sartre was getting at in his plays and books.
Whatever it was, it was pretty pithy, of
that you may be sure. Sartre’s forte was
none other than existence itself, a subject
almost as profound as the top spin lob.
Any obit worth its weight in newsprint
had to include at least a paragraph or two
summing up existentialism, the philo
sophical doctrine to which Sartre was
addicted.
That unquestionably was the sternest
test of expository powers since the death of
Albert Einstein made obligatory a para
graph or two summing up the Theory of
Relativity.
Did Sartre believe he existed? Or was he
convinced that life was illusory, like the
clams in a cheap bowl of clam chowder? I
confess that after reading maybe a half
dozen Sartre obits I still am not clear on
that point.
He presumably spelled it all out in such
books as “Being and Nothingness.” But I
could not deduce from the synopses
whether Sartre was coming down on the
side of “being, ” or whether he was leaning
toward “nothingness.”
If “nothingness” was his bag, I must say
he didn’t make it sound very inviting. I’ve
had more fun peeling turnips than Sartre
appeared to derive from “nothingness.”
It is all very welj to say that Sartre viewed
human existence as “being-for-itself,”
whereas the existence of inanimate objects,
such as gum drops, he characterized as
“being-in-itself. ”
But what does that tell us, really?
It seems to tell us that when Sartre said
the human goal was “to become the cause of
one’s own existence,” he was advocating
some sort of self insemination program.
Whatever it was Sartre was driving at,
there is no doubt his philosophical outlook
was a powerful influence on our times. He
planted the metaphysical seeds from which
grew whole new schools of playwrights,
novelists, essayists and trombone players.
If, for instance, the “New Wave” movie
you saw last night struck you as being
loaded with nothingness, chances are the
producer was paying a debt to Sartre.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument
that Sartre was right when he penned such
lines as “existence precedes essence.”
Where does that leave us?
By way of an answer, I leave you
three quotations that I once cli]
still have pasted over my desk:
“To do is to be” — John Stuart Mi
“To be is to do” — Jean-Paul Sart
“Do be do be do” — Frank Sinatr-
Letter
Shisa: Not Mom’s, but not bad
Editor:
For some unexplained reason, it seems
to have become very fashionable to criticize
the management, service, and food quality
of Sbisa Dining Hall over the past few
weeks. Granted, any college campus in the
United States will have its share of students
complaining about food quality, but the
majority of colleges also have a mandatory
board system. Sbisa was one of the first
dining halls in the country to offer an op
tional board plan. Therefore, those stu
dents who insist on complaining must be
doing so for complaint’s sake, for they are
not forced to eat at Sbisa. Everyone who
eats there makes the decision to do so inde
pendently.
Another decision which students at Sbisa
make is exactly what sort of food they prefer
to eat. The managers of Sbisa are required
to serve two main courses, a vegetable, and
a starch. Even the vast array of desserts is
not required to be served. Sbisa is told to
supply one dessert, no more. That is a far
cry from the average 40-45 varieties of de
sserts offered. The fried chicken, pizzas,
Reuben sandwiches, soups, hamburgers,
french fries, cold sandwiches, salad bar,
yogurt, ice cream, danish pastries, do-nuts
and several other items at Sbisa are served
only because the management of Sbisa does
try hard to make its customers, the stu
dents, happy.
The student who eats at Sbisa on a seven-
day board plan spends an average of a little
more than $1.80 for a meal which costs
Sbisa a little over $2.50 to prepare. Try and
find an economics major who can explain
that! If nothing else, the management of
Sbisa should be commended for going so far
beyond the call of duty with so much below
the call of economy.
The latest letter to The Battalion discre
dited Sbisa’s supervisors as coffee-drinking
loafers. Sbisa employs one supervisor per
75 employees, while the national food ser
vice average is one for every six emplf
Along the same lines, while Sbisa
more students, by far, than DuncJ
Commons, they employ fewer peopt
student fed than either of the othfl
food service institutions on campus
In closing, permit me to make two
vations: 1.) Sbisa is no more than
sized restaurant—and who wouldni
tired of eating at any restaurant for 10:
in a row, 3 meals per day?
2.) No one ever said that Sbisa’s
would taste like that which “Momusf :
make.” If you want “Mom’s
there’s only one lady to see, andii
prefer “Home cooking,” there’s
place to get it.
Lewis M. Kir:
(Editor’s note: This letter was acco:
nied by six other signatures.)
Thotz
By Doug Grafoifi