Viewpoint
The Battalion
Texas A&M University
Tuesday
June 2, 1981
^olleg
tion wi
1 busin
Slouch
By Jim Earle
“This is a typical case of a severe withdrawal from the regis
tration process. “
Spare the rod and
the machine
spoil
By DICK WEST
United Press International
WASHINGTON — Physically attacking an
inanimate object is widely considered an
irrational act, and maybe it is. Certainly
such antics rarely stand up in court as evi
dence of sanity.
Yet it was more than a perception offlaky
behavior that aroused public interest in the
case of a California man accused of shooting
a lawnmower that wouldn’t start.
There also was a vicarious thread run
ning through our reaction to the incident.
Who among us has never been tempted
to wreak mayhem on some malfunctioning
appliance? Let anyone totally innocent of
this base impulse cast the first golf club.
The Californian who confessed to gun
ning down his lawnmower was fined $65 for
discharging a firearm in a populated area.
Had he been booked on the more serious
charge of armed assault, the jury probably
would have ruled it a case of justifiable
mowercide.
The desire to inflict retribution on
mechanical tormentors seems to be part of
the universal experience. The unfortunate
part is not that we harbor such primitive
emotions but that we tend to stifle them as
not in harmony with reason.
I regularly play tennis with a man who
has one of the sweetest dispositions you are
even likely to run across. Tolerant, kind,
gentle, amiable — he is all of these things,
and more.
But let his tennis racket commit some act
of treachery and he flings it viciously across
the small society
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C) 1991 King Features Syndicate. Inc World rights reserved
6* A
Democrats should take lesson
[hose a
Bv DAVID S. BRODER
EASTON, MD. — If the Democrats are
not too proud to borrow from the opposition
— and with all their other problems, they
can hardly afford excessive pride as well —
there is an idea here eminently worth
copying. It is called the Tidewater Confer
ence.
Tidewater is a weekentl house-party and
unofficial issues seminar for Republican
members of the House and Senate and
elected statewide officials. It was started in
1978 at the urging of Sen. Bob Packwood,
who in the 1960s had launched a similar
venture for grassroots Republicans in his
home state of Oregon. The fourth of these
annual spring events was held here last
weekend at the Tidewater Inn, an Eastern
Shore resort-hotel that gives the meeting
its name.
It was, like its predecessors, a lively ses
sion. Quoting oneself is bad form, but the
judgment expressed here after Tidewater I
in 1978 has been amply confirmed: “Pack-
wood may have invented the best solution
yet found to a perennial and debilitating
problem for our political parties: Their in-
ablility and reluctance to discuss policy
questions.”
The problem is particularly acute for the
party out of power — which the Republi
cans were when Tidewater started and the
Democrats are today. “The real business of
a party out of power, ” the 1978 column said,
“is to prepare itself and its leaders for the
momeht when they are, once again, the
government. Packwood has found a
humane, relaxed format for addressing
those inescapable issues of government, in
an atmosphere that breeds collegiality and
consensus, not rivalry and diatribe.”
The format works so well that Democrats
barely need to tinker with it. The partici
pants are elected officials and their spouses.
They gather in a sports-shirt-and-slacks
atmosphere, unchaperoned by stall and un
inhibited by the workday distinctions of
seniority and rank. They meet over drinks,
dinner and a piano sing-along on Friday
night before they sit down at roundtables of
a dozen to start talking issues on Saturday
morning. The debates are lively and funny
— and, somehow, more agreements than
expected emerge.
Part of the secret is simply that a lot of
these folks are meeting dealing with each
other for the first time at Tidewater. The
House and Senate are separate worlds, and
Washington is far removed from the state-
house in Jefferson City, Des Moines or
Salem. Caricatures of right-winger or left
winger begin to disappear when an Orrin
Hatch and a Pete McCloskey, a John Rous-
selot and a Dick Snelling talk substantively
around the tables.
come and capital gains tax rates.’
consolidation of narrow federal c%
grants into broad block grants. Itadvof e dial
of stir
into
ninisti
Dr. Rc
iness r
of th<
The conviviality and consensus at the
first three Tidewaters were so striking —
especially after the civil war that had wrack
ed the Republican Party at its 1976 conven
tion — that most of us covering them
tended to minimize the import of the policy
statements.
Looking back now, you can see that Tide
water foreshadowed not only the new unity
of the COP but its philosophical direction.
The first conference in 1978 adopted re
solutions anticipating the major themes of
the Reagan administration. It said that
“government alone cannot solve our social
problems-without an unacceptable burden
upon the taxpayer and an unacceptable loss
of personal freedom.” It called for “substan
tial permanent reductions in federal
an increase in defense spending “in tit
of mounting Soviet military aggres
ness.”
Do the Democrats need suck a
where their quarrelsome officeholders
socialize and converse? The qiie e uni'
answers itself. On the day the latestlBade w
water ended, Haynes Johnson
Washington Post reported — afl
viewing many leading Democrats
agreement with the observation ofB
McPherson, the former Lyndon Join $7 j n
aide, that the Democratic Partyisai
rennial happening.. .a label without
ante. “Wouldn’t it be better if we tal
each other?” Sen. Daniel PatrickMon
(D-N.Y.) asked plaintively.
Of course, there are risks inassei
officeholders who share a common
label but differ on almost everything
Back iu 1978, Rep. John J. Rhodes oft
na, then the House GOP leader, said,
first reaction (to the Tidewater ideal
‘Why do we want to stir up that
mess? But Rhodes came to Easton
the first 50 pioneers — and saw
worked.
The Tidewater Conferences have
underwritten by the Republicanseni j] K , j
and congressional campaign committa , q c) ]] (
an annual cost of less than $3,000,Old a [ e
millions of dollars Republicans haves [The p
in the last four years, as they have in lirmar
ever closer to becoming the majority; tin foi
in our government, no money hasB^ 11
better spent.
Democrats are free to profit
example.
the court. Or into the net. Or again the
backstop. Or, as happened one memorable
evening, into the overhead lighting fixtures
of an indoor tennnis facility.
As a result of this harsh discipline, he has
one of the most dependable tennis rackets I
know of.
I, by contrast, belong to the permissive
school of racketowning. I indulge my racket
scandalously. At times, I have let it get
away with murder, so to speak.
In consequence, 1 have a tennis racket
that is perfidious, unpredictable and a total
ingrate.
But there is more to machine retaliation
than keeping implements in line. I am con
vinced my friend’s good-natured attitude
toward his associates is possible in large
part because he vents his hostility on his
racket.
There is a lesson in this for all of us.
It is said the tremendous amount of vio
lence in American life is a sign of a “sick”
society. Might it not also be a sign that we
have become too docile in dealing with
machines?
We let ourselves be mechanically humi
liated and frustrated without striking back.
Then, when finally we reach the breaking
point, we exercise our resentments on our
fellows rather than the source.
Shooting, rather than kicking or smiting
the offending rnaching, may be a bit ex
treme. But no man who pumps six revolver
bullets into a balky lawnmower can be all
bad.
Stuck
ition
atre
['he c
e 25-:
Bizz
athy
sare
ition,
The
iuncif.
The
msorc
tors ai
illiam
egist
rid'
15.
Government control is problem
Editor:
The main thrust of‘liberalism’ is that our
capitalist society has been a failure, and that
government should take control in order to
protect the ‘poor’ and needy.’ This theory,
called Keynesian economics, is responsible
for our current economics, is responsible
for our current economic troubles.
Every president since Roosevelt has
embraced Keynesian economics. The re
sult has been high inflation, high taxes, and
lowered productivity and growth. Burden
some regulation has made making a profit
unprofitable. Businesses are being driven
into bankruptcy by unfair tax systems.
Yet every time there is an effort to repair
the damage by returning to a capitalist
syste, ‘liberals’ cry out about the ‘poor’ and
‘needy, and manage to scuttle; the attempt.
We do not have a capitalist system now.
We have a quasi-socialist/collectivist sys
tem that drifts and stalls and shudders from
every shortage or surplus that comes along.
Such a system is far worse for the ‘poor’ and
‘needy than capitalism could ever be.
No ‘liberal’ is a sworn enemy of capital
ism. They claim to be improving the system
when they pass legislation that dam#
These people live in a world whereef l 1111
and opportunity have the same meanis ^«lyo
mediocrity. Their time has passed, fp
President Reagan and his eeonomitL’
is the only one that reflects the f
Keynesian economics in favor of capita
and freedom. I urge people to supped
in his efforts to turn the countryaro^
David Fl«
Warped
By Scott McCullar
The Battalion
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