Opinion
Page 2/The Battalion/Tuesday, June 12, 1984
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No solution
to DWI issue
One person killed by a drunk
driver is one person too many. That
point is not debatable. How to reduce
drunk-driving fatalities is debatable,
and there are no pat solutions.
Legislators are trying to help.
Tougher DWI have been enacted in
many states. Mothers Against Drunk
Drivers is increasingly visible in its at
tempts to save lives.
The drinking age has been a favor
ite target of those groups in the last
few years. In 1981, the Texas Legis
lature raised the drinking age from
18 to 19.
The latest move for a higher
drinking age — nationwide — is from
President Reagan and members of
the House of Representatives.
The House voted Thursday to
withhold a portion of federal high
way funds from states that don’t raise
the drinking age to 21. States that
don’t have a drinking age of 21 by
1987 stand to lose 5 percent of their
1987 interstate highway funds and
another 10 percent in 1988. This
measure smacks of blackmail, but it’s
the same measure used to enforce the
55 mph speed limit.
If it’s really a “national epidemic”
—as Rep. Bud Shuster, R-Pa. says —
then raising the drinking age isn’t the
answer. Much more is needed.
But there are no set answers. We
had five different answers from the
five members of the Editorial Board.
We unanimously support stricter
DWI laws and strict enforcement of
them. Our unanimity, however, ends
there.
Some members of the board be
lieve the age should be 21, no ques
tions asked. Others feel stricter DWI
laws are enough.
It’s an emotional issue and an issue
of safety. It’s also an issue that raises a
number of questions.
Statistics have been quoted in the
defense of a higher drinking age. But
one of the questions that must be
asked is whether DWI laws also were
tightened at the same time as a
higher drinking age was instituted.
Figures can be misleading when
more than one factor is involved.
A question of maturity also is
raised when you study legal ages for
other activities: 17 for R movies, 18
for voting and draft registration, and
marriage ages differ from state to
state.
Legislators have attempted to pass
open-container laws. In Texas an
open-container law was rejected, but
the city of Corpus Christi recently
passed its own open-container law.
Another aspect to consider — sen
tencing. A Brazos County District
judge said earlier this year that tough
laws don’t guarantee tough sentenc
ing.
Although there are no wrong or
right solutions to the drunk driving
problem, perhaps all the talk will
achieve one thing: awareness. That is
the key to eliminating the problem.
— The Battalion Editorial Board
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How Gary Hart
Could m Tto
Nomination
‘rip
. OPKCNW*
SCBmo T- MON DMT SUDDENLY CHANGES (WmPS.,
Smoke wan
that
/ I have come to realize
President Reapan. is right.
I hereby renounce. labor, the
poor, and rntnonties. bn i
to buy a Cadillac and
i ali-v
an alf white country dut
brewing at
35,000 feet
LIKELIHOOD : ASTRONOMICAL
By ART BUCHWALD
Columnist for The Los Angeles Times Syndicate
SCENARIO 2 : MON ONE MISSES HIS
FU6HT TO SAN FRANCISCO...
SCENARIO 3 - HART
PROMISES EVER/SINGLE
UNCOMMITTED DELEGATE
THE VICE PREStPENCV
SCENARIO A
...WlU'toU do IT,
IF NOT FOR ME,
FOR OUR NATION?
LIKELIHOOD : SLENDER. 1
LIKELIHOOD : VERY HIGH, 1
L1KEUHOOO : ABOUT AS HI6H AS
HART GETTING THE NOMINATION.
American pleasantries
confuse foreign people
By ART BUCHWALD
Columnist for The Los Angeles Times Syndicate
The trouble with foreign people in this coun
try is that they take everything Americans say lit
erally. I have a French friend maned Michel
Bernheim. I met his the other day on the street,
and after the usual chitchat about Paris I said,
“Give me a call some time.”
‘Hasta manana,’ and Americans say, ‘Let’s have
lunch,’ which in our country means, ‘Don’t call
me, I’ll call you.’”
The next day he was on the line.
“Bonjour,” he said, “It’s Michel. You said to
give you a call.”
“I did?”
“Qui, don’t you remember? I spoke to you yes
terday on Pennsylvania Avenue.”
“I didn’t mean for you to give me a call right
away. I was just finding a nice way to say goodbye
to you.”
“Then you don’t want to talk on the telepho
ne?”
Michel said, “I didn’t mean to bother you.”
“You didn’t bother me. I’ll tell you what. Let’s
check in with each other and have a drink one of
these days.”
“That would be great,” Michel said.
I was sweating out a column the next day when
the door opened and Michel stuck his head in.
“Now what?”
“I’m just checking in to see if you wanted a
drink.”
“Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“I can see that now, but I couldn’t before I
checked in with you.”
“I can’t think of anything to say, frankly.”
“But you asked me to call you.”
“You’re right, Michel. Look, Im terribly busy
right now. Let’s have lunch some time.”
“I would like that. When?”
“I’m not sure. Why don’t you give me a holler?
Two days later I heard someone calling my
name from the sidewalk. I opened the window in
my office and Michel was down below.
“Michel, you’re driving me nuts. You can’t take
everything we Americans say as gospel. The only
reason I said ‘Let’s have a drink some time’ is be
cause I wanted you to stop hollering under my
window about having lunch together.”
“All you have to do is tell me you don’t want to
see me,” Michel said in a hurt voice, “instead of
asking me to meet with you all the time and then
breaking the date.”
“What in the devil are you shouting about?” I
yelled down to him.
“You said to give you a holler when I wanted to
have lunch. How about today?”
“I’m busy today.”
“Well, when can you have lunch?”
“I’m not sure. I’m tied up for the next three
weeks.”
“Why did you tell me to give you a holler when
I wanted to have lunch if you were so tied up?”
I felt badly. “You’re right. I feel terrible about
the way I’ve treated you. Our problem is that
we’re so used to saying goodbye to each other
with a promise we’ll get together soon, that no
one in this country expects the other person to
keep it. We wouldn’t be able to get anything done
if we had lunch with everyone we accidentally
met on the street.”
“Michel, you’ve been around long enough to
know when an American says, ‘Let’s have lunch
some time,’ he doesn’t necessarily mean it. It’s a
pleasantry. You French say, ‘Au revoir,’ the Ger
mans say, ‘Auf wiedersehen,’ the Spanish say,
“I understand,” Michel said. “But if you
change your mind, you have my card and you
can call me.”
“I don’t have your card, Michel. That’s an
other thing you don’t understand. When Ameri
cans exchange business cards with each other,
they usually throw them away when they get ho-
Just when the airlines have started to
money they are faced with a new crisis. Ho*
you keep non-smokers from doing bodily
to smokers on airplanes?
There was a time when non-smokers satin
front of the cabin and just gritted their i«
when smokers lit up in the back.
But this is no longer the case. Non-smokefi
now becoming militant and the CAB is worn
that a full-scale riot could break out between
two groups while a plane is in flight.
Harvey Weiner, an airline consultant, haste
working on the problem.
“Our research indicates that cigarette smoit
are afraid to fly and that’s why they puff so®
on planes. The airlines can’t afford tolosetki
business.
“At the same time we’ve discovered non-s®
ers have a fear of cigarette smoke, and becomt
olent when locked in a cabin at 35,000 feet*]
cigarette smokers. The airlines need them
well. My job is to find out how to keep then
groups from killing each other.”
“That’s not an easy assignment,” I said.
“Everything I’ve recommended so far has
with resistance. The first solution I came up*?
was to have two flights going to each destinatio!
One plane would be reserved for smokers as
one for non-smokers. The FAA objected beaiB
it would double the amount of air traffic ini
skies, which could be even more hazardous
people’s health.
“Then I suggested that non-smokers only
permitted to fly on even days, and smokers
odd days of the week.”
“That sounds like a perfect solution. Who®
jected to that?”
“Frank Borman of Eastern Airlines. Hesa
the reason people fly is they want to get to (tie
destination as quickly as possible, and if theyk
to wait 24 hours for their day they would takell
train.
“Another idea I came up with wasfortheai
lines to divide the smoking and non-smokingsti
tions of the plane with a locked fireproofsief
door between them.
“That sounds reasonable.”
“The major airlines turned this one downk
cause it would mean adding an extra lavatory
board, which would displace two seats.”
“Airlines hate to use up space for lavatories
planes. So where are you now?”
“I think I’ve come up with a reasonable con
promise which may not satisfy the hardlinesmol
ers and non-smokers, but would at least prev
the two sides from resorting to violence. I’mpit
posing that every flight be manned with feder;
marshals armed with tear gas grenades. In
of a riot between the two groups the marshai
could quell it with tear gas before it got out®
hand.”
“That might do it,” I said. “If the non-smoken
have the choice between cigarette smoke andtei
gas they’re not going to start any trouble.”
“I have one more idea if they won’t buy
federal marshals. The main cabin would belt
served for non-smoking, but we would have
trap door in the middle of the aisle so if someoK
wanted a cigarette, he could slide down intotk
baggage compartment and puff away to lit
heart’s content.”
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By DAVID S. BRODER
Columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group
WASHINGTON — Candidates view the presi
dential primary season as a torture course, test
ing them against each other. For party poli
ticians, the bottom-line question is simply the
identity of the person who will head the ticket in
the fall campaign.
Voters have a different perspective. For us, the
primaries provide clues to the character of a pro
spective President and the condition of the party
with which he proposes to govern.
What did we learn about Walter Mondale and
the Democrats from these months of travel and
travail? And what does that tell us about the com
ing campaign against President Reagan and the
Republicans?
The past campaign did not reveal “a new Mon
dale,” but it dramatically highlighted the central
paradox of his political character that had been
buried in biographical detail.
From first to last. Mondale has been pushed to
the top of his profession by the hands of other
politicians. At the critical stages in his career, Hu
bert Humphrey identified him as a prgtege, two
Minnesota governors appointed him as attorney
general and senator, and Jimmy Carter selected
him as his running-mate.
This year, it was the same. The first votes Mon
dale got for the nomination came from his col
leagues in the congressional caucuses last winter,
and the last came from other politicians on Capi
tol Hill and the state capitols, responding to his
phone calls for help last week. Without the sup
port of 307 of the 568 “super-delegates,” he
would still be scrambling to nail down the prize.
The paradox is that Mondale is intensely com
petitive and aggressive in his dealings with other
politicians — as Gary Hart found out to his shock
this spring. He is tough in the clinches. That
comes as no surprise to politicians of both parties
in his home state, who saw him maneuver his way
past other aspiring young men, or to Republicans
on Capitol Hill, who know him as an intense par
tisan. But the toughness of Mondale’s attacks on
Hart showed a side of his character the public
had not previously seen.
Politicians accept and respect those paradoxi
cal qualitites, because most of them possess them
to some degree themselves. In the inside world of
politics, there is honor and success awaiting the
person who builds alliances but pushes hard for
his own causes.
Mondale is the purest product of that world to
emerge as a presidential nominee since the public
began dominating the selection process through
the primaries. He is more truly a “politicians’ pol
itician” than the introspective Richard Nixon,
and far more of one than the incumbent or his
predecessor.
That is both his strength and his weakness in
the coming campaign. 1'he mass of voters who
will decide between Mondale and Reagan tend to
look for other qualities in a President. Those
qualities are eloquence, an appealing personality
and, most important, a large-minded vision of
the nation’s future.
They are qualitites the public sees in Reagan.
For Mondale to have a chance against the incum
bent, he must begin quickly to demonstrate that
he possesses them, too. Otherwise, his own strat
egy for the general-election campaign will almost
certainly rebound against him.
There is no secret about that strategy. Mon
dale hopes to win by mobilizing the base of tk
Democratic Party — the farmer-labor constitu
encies he grew up with at home, the blacks and
Hispanics, the elderly and the economically inst
cure, the peace groups and other progressivt
forces — directly through his campaigning, and
indirectly through the alliances he has built wild
their leaders and other politicians throughout to
career.
To mobilize their support, he plans an aggres
sive, close-quarters attack on Reagan’s leadership
and on Republican policies. It is an attack he will
launch with far more personal pleasure, and fai
less compunction, than he showed in cutting
down Gary Hart — and he was not at all inhibited
about that.
But unless Mondale establishes the “presiden
tial” qualities Reagan is already seen to possess
that strategy is almost certain to fail. If he is seen
simply as “the politician” kicking the shins of “(to
President,” then he will quickly be in trouble
Without building a sense of personal trust and
projecting an inclusive vision of the national fu
ture, he risks being labeled divisive.
That threat is underscored by the picture the
public has received of the Democratic Party in
the primary campaign. It is of a party facing foul
ways. Most of its traditional constituencies sup
ported Mondale. The blacks followed their own
course with Jesse Jackson. The younger, moreaf-
fluent voters looked to Hart. The Southern mod
erates and conservatives stayed on the sidelines
having lost their spokesmen and candidates
early.
The weeks from now through the mid-Jul'
Democratic convention will test whether Mon
dale can unite his party.