Page 2/The Battalion/Wednesday, May 25, 1983
opinion
What pollster can you believe?
by Clay F. Richards
United Press International
WASHINGTON — There are going
to be some rough times ahead for the
folks who make a living by taking political
polls.
Several times in recent weeks poll re
sults have come out and have either been
labeled false by the candidates involved
or proven false by an election.
In Philadelphia last week, voters in
largely white precincts were asked when
they came out of the polls if they had
voted for black mayoral candidate Wil
son Goode. Thirty-six percent of the
whites said they had.
Only trouble was when the votes were
counted Goode got 23 percent to 25 per
cent of the white vote.
Telling a lie to a pollster is nothing
new. The same thing happened last
November in the race for governor of
California, where black Los Angeles
Mayor Tom Bradley won the exit polls
but lost the election.
A Los Angeles times poll last week
showed Sen. John Glenn of Ohio had
pulled narrowly ahead of former Vice
President Walter Mondale in the race for
the Democratic presidential nomination.
Every other poll for months has given
Mondale a 2-1 lead over Glenn.
The poll was obviously wrong, the
Mondale camp claimed. Or Democrats
were only temporarily getting excited ab
out Glenn because he had just
announced his candidacy, they said.
A poll last Thursday by ABC and the
Washington Post showed President
Reagan’s approval record had bounded
to its highest level in 18 months.
Yet the poll was unable to explain
what events had triggered such a drama
tic and fast jump in Reagan’s approval.
The 1984 presidential candidates
already are spending huge amounts of
money on polling. President Reagan still
relies heavily on the polls of Richard
Wirthlin, the man who accurately pre
dicted the size of the Reagan landslide in
1980.
But for the public as a whole, the im
portance of polls is likely to decline as
their results become more suspect.
If voters lie to network pollsters when
they leave the voting booth, there will be
a decline in network projections of who
will win hours before the votes are
counted.
And the people are beginning to real
ize that the public will feel entirely diffe
rently about Reagan, or about the Demo
cratic presidential candidates, by next
May, so what they think now really isn’t
all that important.
Polling as a part of political life is here
to stay. Candidates are always going to
want to know what the people are think
ing about and why.
But it used to be that in an election
campaign the underdog would say the
only poll he cared about was the one
taken on election day. Maybe we’re com
ing to the point where that will be the
case.
MV SURROGATE - MOTHSR ALWAYS LIKEP MY
TEST-TUBE BROTHER BETTER,.,
Reagan inherited 200 years of policy
by Dick West
United Press International
WASHINGTON — President Reagan
has been subjected to a certain amount of
joshing for saying the policies of previous
administrations have made it more diffi
cult to reach some of his goals.
Typical of his critics is House Demo
cratic Leader Jim Wright of Texas, who
last week called Reagan “the biggest alibi
artist ever to serve in the White House.”
“Ronald Reagan says blame it on Jim
my, or blame it on Jerry, or blame it on
Lyndon, or blame it on Harry, or Zachary
Taylor or Millard Fillmore,” Wright told
the House.
No matter how far back you go,
Reagan is by no means the first chief ex
ecutive to feel emcumbered by his prede
cessors.
All U.S. presidents since George
Washington have been painfully aware
that someone had been there before
them.
Franklin Roosevelt inherited a worl
dwide depression that nurtured the
seeds of Nazism that led to World War II.
Harry Truman inherited the atom
bomb project that led to the Nuclear Age
with all of its attendant ills.
Dwight Eisenhower inherited a war in
Korea that led to “M-A-S-H” reruns on
television.
LB] inherited a domino theory that
led to the escalation of the light at the end
of the tunnel.
And so it has gone throughout history.
Every American president after
Washington has inherited something
that either bound him to policies not of
his making, or hindered his own policies.
Recall, if you will, some of the things
done by John Adams, our second presi
dent, with ramifications his successors
have had to cope with.
Fact: It was during Adams’ adminis
tration that the U.S. Marine Corps was
created. Now Reagan must resolve dis
putes over sending Marines to Lebanon.
Fact: Adams signed the first federal
forestry legislation. Anyone at all famil
iar with the controversy swirling about
Interior Secretary James Watt knows
what a headache public lands have be
come.
Fact: Adams was president when the
U.S. Public Health Service was estab
lished. Health care has been one of the
major issues confronting Reagan.
James Madison, the fourth president,
created a precedent of sorts by permit
ting the national debt to climb above the
$1 million mark.
To James Monroe, the fifth president,
fell the honor of presiding over the na
tion’s first financial panic.
Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th presi
dent, received the first Chinese diploma
tic delegation.
And so it went — each president con
tributing another ingredient to the policy
hash that has given his successors indi
gestion.
Reagan, as the latest in the line, has
had it tougher than most.
It having been nearly 200 years since
the end of George Washington’s second
term, almost two centuries of presiden
tial policy decisions have piled up on him.
If the origin can be pinpointed, the
date might be April 25, 1/98, during the
aforementioned Adams’ term. That was
when “Hail Columbia” was sung in a
theater for the first time.
U.S. presidents have been catching
“Hail Columbia” ever since.
The Battalion
USPS 045 360
Member ot
Texas Press Association
Southwest Journalism Conference
Editor HopeE. Paasch
City Editor Kelley Smith
Sports Editor John Wagner
News Editors Daran Bishop, Brian Boyer,
Beverly Hamilton, Tammy Jones
Staff Writers Scott Griffin, Robert
McGlohon, Angel Stokes,
Joe Tindel
Copyeditors .... Kathleen Hart, Tracey Taylor
Cartoonist Scott McCullar
Photographers Brenda Davidson, Eric Lee,
Barry Papke, Peter Rocha
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NEW£~ NEA
Crumbling Capitol
debate continues
by Don Phillips
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The Capitol is
falling. The Capitol is falling.
Well, not really. But a big chunk fell
off the West Front of the Capitol a couple
of weeks ago, and the sound of the crash
hardly had died before an old battle was
renewed: whether to replace the West
Front with an extension or to repair it.
With the possible exceptions of war
and peace, and congressional pay raises,
few issues stir such emotion.
There’s a good reason for that. The
West Front, which faces the Mall leading
toward the Washington Monument, is
the last of the historic building’s original
faces. Over the years, the rest of the Capi
tol was extended in three .directions, but
not west.
George Washington laid the corner
stone (now missing, by the way) for the
Capitol in 1793, and the vast majority of
Americans who have ever lived likely
have viewed the West Front.
The British came running up those
steps and apparently entered the Capitol
during the War of 1812 through a West
Front door that is believed by Rep.
Joseph Moakley, D-Mass., to now be a
window in his Capitol office.
Demonstrations — the unemployed in
the 1930s, civil rights and antiwar in the
1960s, farmers and others in the 1970s —
have been a stock in trade of the West
Front. President Reagan was inaugu
rated there. The list could be endless.
For years, the West Front has been in
disrepair, awaiting a decision whether to
repair or replace it. There was even talk a
decade ago that it might collapse under
something no greater than a sonic boom,
and giant beams were used to
columns.
Talk of imminent collapse
the early 1970s when a bombbfo
an out-of-the-way rest room in
Front. The building didn’t evt
much less fall.
But a few weeks ago, a (
chunk of sandstone worked
the debate that had died down
years began again.
Capitol architect George Whitt
to enclose the wall behind a38-f(
ble-covered extension, which
vide 79,000 square feet of usabltl
for offices and tourist facilities. 1
the cost of the project at about
lion — $929 per square foot.
The proponents of expansion
powerful ally — House Speaker '
O’Neill, DMass. — and a billtoa]
the extension has been cleared
legislative subcommittee of the
Appropriations Committee.
But the opponents are determi
preserve rather than add, and the
far from over. Among the deitii
tions witnessed by the West Front
in its favor, held in mid-May.
The issue cuts across party
gional lines. Even staff members
porters divide on the issue. I pet
think it would be an affront to hi
hide the old walls that haveseenso|
of it. There’s too much bureaui
this town now to encourage more
adding space for it.
The Capitol is a monument
promise, but there can be nocoin|
on this issue. Unless, of course
wants to propose tearing out l
and building downward.
Diving board use question^
Editor:
I have two questions directed at the
swimming pool folks.
1) Why, when one of the low diving
boards is broken, can’t average Janes, like
myself, use the other low board? You
know the one I mean — the new and
expensive one. The board is strictly re
served, nay guarded, for that elite i
of diving team members andspeT
ving class students.
2) Who paid for the newbojlf
would be nice for Fexas A&M's'l
team to do well, but not at the i
expense of others.
Becky Kruppenh
Berrys World
©1983byNEA, Inc.
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