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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 16, 1970)
Democrats By Frank Mankiewicz and Tom Braden Washington Broke is the word for the Demcratic Party and yet it is not so much money it needs as men. Creditors are muttering angrily. The party still owes $8 million, $3.5 million of which is guaranteed by friends of Hubert Humphrey on "con tingency notes." Tha cost of operating the organization runs at about $1 million a year, and the big closed television ex travaganza, by which the OUR By ARTHUR HOPPE Once upon , a time a young man named Irwin gave up protests. He gave up protesting Vietnam, the draft, sexually segregated rest rooms and pigs on campus. "Ecology is the one true cause!" said Irwin nobly, just like most young people of the time. "I shall devote myself to making a more beautiful world." "Oh, my beamish boy," cried his happy mother, like mothers everywhere. "I knew you'd give up those silly demonstra tions and settle down to doing good." "Everybody's for ecology, son," said his proud father, like fathers everywhere. "At last we've found a common cause that will close the generation gap." And it did. Irwin joined the Students for Delightful Sur roundings. He spent his days spearing litter with a pointy stick. And his evenings circulating petitions demanding that Something Be Done. The older generation finally approved of the younger generation. Everybody was happy. BUT AFTER a year or so, Irwin and his young friends discovered that spearing litter seemed somewhat joyless. And circulating petitions seemed somewhat pointless. Nothing much got done. Oh, Congress passed a few bills. The corporations talked about ''corporate responsibility." The President said the local communities must do more. The local com munities said Washington must do more. And the 1972 Belchphume-8 had 16 chromcplated exhaust pipes. It was a best seller. So the air got smogglcr, the waers fouler, the litter deeper and the supermarkets more crowded. "These things take time, son," said Irwin's father nervously. "At least you're doing good, dear," said Irwin's mother uneasily. At 5.14 p.m. the following Tuesday, the SDS staged a lie- MONDAY, FEBRUARY former national chairman, Sen. Fred Harris, hoped to put a dent in the debt, grossed only $400,000. Moreover, current con tributors are showing a distressing tendency to earmark their contributions. They don't want them used to pay off old debts. Particularly, they don't want their money applied to the contingency notes provided by Humphrey backers, such as New York banker John Loeb, Minnesota businessman Dwayne Andreas MAN HOPPE in on the Pasadena Freeway. The resultant traffic jam, ex tending from Anaheim to Azusa eventually , had to be paved over. THE NATION was outraged. Editorial writers thundered: "No little band of radicals, no matter how just their case, has the right to.;;". The next day, the SDS blew up 16 dams ' to create wild rivers, toppled 42 oil derricks to promote clean beaches and booed every passing baby car riage in Central Park. The following week, they dynamited every sewer in Decatur, N.J., sabotaged the No Deposit Bottle Factory in Billings, S.C., and tried to burn down the heart of Los Angeles but they couldn't find it. YOUNG IRWIN, home on the 1 a.m., was confronted by his tearful mother. "Why don't you quit that radical SDS, dear," she pleaded, "and join the nice, respectable Sierra Club in stead?" "Those Uncle Smokeys!" snorted Irwin. "They just want to conserve the wilderness we've got. But we're going to make the whole country into one big wilderness!" "But, son, pleaded his father, 16, 1970 need moneyand men and others. At the current rate . of progress, the party will enter the 1972 campaign still owing more money than any political party in history. WHAT Tins MEANS in terms of the 1970 congressional and gubernatorial elections 1 s almost nil. State and local races have never depended upon national party support, and money for Democrats will be raised as usual on the basis of their own abilities and chances for election. But what "think of the innocent people you're hurting in this cause of yours." - "The great thing about ecology as a cause," said Irwin happily, "is that everybody's guilty." And with that he proceded to set fire to the family car, tip over the family barbecue and smash up all two-and-a-half toilets in the family's two-and-a-half-bath house. When he'd gone, his parents ruefully surveyed the wreckage. "I think I liked it better," said his mother with a sigh, "when he was only mad at the President, the university, the police and the Army." MORAL: The generation gap won't be closed until these ex uberant young fools grow old. Sir: Wednesday's literary review was per haps the most significant and worthwhile feature I have seen in four years' worth of Rags. Perhaps it could be expanded to re place your current crops of editorials which THE DAILY NEBRASKAN It means two years from now, when serious campaigning for . the Presidency begins, is another story. It means that in 1972 the Democratic candidate will have to come up with hard cash for hotel bills, airplanes, telephones, printing, supplies above all, for television time and for everything else that goes into a campaign and which previous campaigns have been able to charge. It means that the party's candidate may not get the ex posure that a major party candidate ought to get. It could even mean that the Democrats will choose to go through the motions with a hopeless loser as it last did with John W. Davis in 1924. IT TOOK A MAJOR depresion to pull the Democratic Party out of the doldrums of post World War I politics, and some such shaking of the national con sciousness does not now seem to be in store. One alternative to all this is to find a candidate with such an aura of victory about him that Democrats will be willing to pay anything they have to get on board. Since Chappa quiddick, that man has not been available, although it may surprise some to learn that Sen. Edward Kennedy is once again the party's chief drawing card. A second alternative is to RAPPING are not to your credit as journalists. Claud ius Shoniwa has already said more to the world than, at present rate, most of your editorial writers will say in a lifetime of professional journalism. John Janovy, Jr. Assistant Professor n " 1 hope that the Nixon Ad ministration falls on its face in some way which will make any good Democratic candidate a possible winner. THIS TOO does not seem to be about to happen. Sen. Fred Harris is proud of the effort he made as chariman to put his party on the road to convention reform, raise a little cash for his successor and form a policy council to speak out on the issues. But when the council got around to speaking last week, the sound was a barely audible "Me, too." Mr. Nixon has pre-empted the issue of environment and welfare reform. Most im portantly he has muffled them in advance on Vietnam. Until he proves what Democrats suspect that he does not in tend to follow through they are resigned to agreeing with him and promising to do more. Meantime, the party needs a chairman, and Rep. Charles Vanik of Ohio says he has received strong affirmative response to his suggestion that Kennedy in-law Sargent Shriver be drafted for the job. But a national chairman who is personable, energetic and independently wealthy might want to be a national can didate. Opposition to Shriver will come from those presidential candidates and their followers who have watched Shriver considering campaigns for governor or senator in three different states and who now fear he might try one in all 50. PAGE