Wednesday, November 7, 1984
Page 4
Daily Nebraskan
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Pu
blic
opinion polls destroy
e
campaigns
A h! It's over at last.
Zj All the media hype, all the weari
JL A. some candidates, all the yard signs
will shortly be out of sight, out of mind.
President Reagan will reign another
four years. Exon will serve in the Senate
for six and Bereuter may well be on hb
way to a life career in the House. Fricke is
our regent let's hope he keeps tuition
down and quality up.
Now we won't be told every day what
the polls are saying about the candidates.
Oh, well still get our weekly Harris and
Gallup polls on the state of the union or
the desirability of plastic trash bags, and
perhaps another Journal-Star poll on the
people's opinion of the Gov. Bob Kerrey
Debra Winger romance (more than 80
percent don't care!).
The polls are probably the most ir
ritating aspect of the campaign season.
What a small "scientific" sample has to
say at a given moment on a given day
becomes that day's top story. There's
little doubt the polls are well read we
all want to know what others are thinking,
but the play they receive in the papers
guile Pfflirtar
In August 1981, when air-traffic
controllers began their illegal
strike and the government an
nounced that they would be fired if they
did not return to work in a few days, a
journalist called a White House lawyer to
ask, "Why a few days why the delay?"
The lawyer laughed: "That's what the
president wanted to know."
George
Will
That was a defining moment for per
sons curious about the nature of Ronald
Reagan's appeal to the electorate. Hamlet
he isn't.
Reagan's action regarding PATCO
flowed from experiences with assistant
professors who told their students in the
'60s that students could violate laws if
they did so sincerely. In a sense, the '60s
ended in August 1981, buried by a man
whose political career owes much to Ber
keley students and their faculty mislead
ers. This election comes 20 years almost
to the month after the birth of the
so-called "free speech movement" at the
University of California at Berkeley. If
this election produces the first increase
since 1960 in the percentage of Ameri-
and on the air overemphasizes their impor
tance. In some recent letters to the editor, in
the DN and other Lincoln papers, several
letters have cited polls as reasons the
paper should endorse one candidate or
another, or cited polls as the reason
voters should side with the majority. That
is perfectly perverse lope and it's the most
scary part about the polls.
What the majority wants is not always
right. People should stand up for their
own beliefs and rights. Being in the
minority or majority should have nothing
to do with the way one votes. Often the
minority is right. (As was the case in this
election!)
Until the next election, polls will fall to
the inside pages of the papers and to the
last minutes of news broadcasts prob
ably where they belong.
So now we turn our eyes to our new
elected officials in the earnest but dubi
table hope they will lead us down the
best path, or perhaps up the best path.
It's time to settle in for cooler tempera
tures and blustery winds. Get ready for a
long winter.
to
cans voting, that will be a tribute to Rea
gan. He has refuted a familiar tenet of
American radicalism, the theory that
election contests between our temperate
parties do not matter.
Reagan has not been as radical as his
rhetoric sometimes suggests or as Mon
dale insists. However, his most important
achievement the shift of federal re
sources toward the military is so sub
stantial that, measured against the
achievements of other presidents, it pla
ces him among the most consequential
presidents.
Mondole tried to make much of the
"unfairness" of Reagan's consequences,
and failed. He seemed to measure the
fairness of American society solely in
terms of the domestic side of the federal
budget, and the incidence of taxation.
This strengthened the public's percep
tion of him as too fixated on government.
Anyway, in 1980 domestic spending mea
sured in today's dollars was $523.4 bil
lion. This year it is $523 billion. Reason
able people can differ about the equity of
spending patterns under Reagan. But it's
unreasonable to imply, as Mondale did,
that since 1980 the domestic budget has
become something Charles Dickens might
have dreamed up to torment Oliver Twist.
Regarding taxation, reasonable persons
can differ about the equities of the system
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pecioLliffiir for emmimrt
as modified by Reagan's cuts. But it is
unreasonable to suggest that Reagan has
seriously undermined the essential pro
gressivity of the system. Today the top 10
percent of taxpayers account for 50 per
cent of tax revenues and the bottom 50
percent pay just 10 percent.
So, part of Mondale's problem was that
Reagan has not been radical. But the
Democratic Party also has a problem that
should be called its peculiarity quotient."
Daniel Seligman, who collects evidence
of social insanity (for his "Keeping Up"
column in Fortune magazine), asks an
interesting question. New York's police
department has an affirmative-action
program to recruit homosexuals because
(according to the notice posted in gay
bars) police officers must be "representa
tive of the community they work to serve."
Seligman wonders: How will the com
munity know the sexual orientation of
the person on the beat?
Backward reels the mind to the
San Francisco Democratic convention,
and its rules committee. Lord, how Demo
crats love rules. Professor Grant Gilmore
of the Yale Law School writes: "In Heaven
there will be no law, and the lion will lie
down with the lamb In Hell there will
be nothing but law, and due process will
be meticulously observed."
The Democrats' rules committee en
dorsed creation of a Fairness Commis
sion to fine tune the party's rules "as they
relate to the full participation in the
party process of . . . (all) members of the
Rainbow Coalition." The rules committee
stipulated:
"The Commission shall consist of at
least 50 members equally divided between
men and women, and shall include fair
and equitable participation of Blacks,
Hispanics, Native Americans, AsianPa
cifies, women and persons of all sexual
preference consistent with their propor
tional representation in the party."
- Now, tiptoeing, as delicacy requires us
to do, past the awkward question of what
the word "all" encompasses, we come to
this question: Who is to decree, and on
the basis of what research, what is the
homosexual portion of the Democratic
Party"?
Few voters know that Democrats, in
solemn assembly, do things like this. If
voters knew, Democratic candidates
would suffer even worse electoral re
bukes. Nevertheless, the Democratic Party
Tuesday lost its fourth of the last five
presidential elections. It would be rash
for Democrats to assume that this has
nothing to do with the fact that the party
is, as the work of the rules committee
suggests, a bit too peculiar for comfort.
1S84, Washington Post Writers Group
'Rising suns' need to shine for elderly
A
n 18th-century writer showed wisdom beyond
his years when he wrote:
"Let others hail the rising sun; I bow to that
whose course is run."
Since we are a university of supposed rising suns, this
may offend a few of you who are still naive enough to
think UNL courses will make you wiser than your elders.
It's an old truism that a child's first intelligent thought is
his realization that no matter how much he knows, his
parents are always ahead of him.
aasa
Mon
Koppelma
The aged minority can be easily forgotten during this,
the height of an election season. For the first time, we
have more to worry about than our allowances. We're
making judgments on who we want to lead our future:
on national, state and local government levels.
The people who were important to our past are put off
til next month ... or the month after. The elderly are left
alone with their accrued wisdom, as well as their stiffen
ing joints and failing health.
During the next few weeks, election hoopla will draw
to a close. Winter will set in and bring with it cold
temperatures, ice and snow that make every move a
major undertaking for the elderly.
So, my fellow rising suns, it's time to "bow to those
whose course is run." There is a lot of volunteer work
that needs to be done for those who cannot do for
themselves. You can work on an individual level, some
times for pay, sometimes for credit but most of all, for
the pleasure you will give an older person and the good
feeling youll get yourself.
If you are a member of a group a church group,
sorority or fraternity, dance or music class, for example
many centers actively recruit young people to teach
or entertain senior citizens.
The following is a partial list of services who would
appreciate volunteers or groups of volunteers:
Home Handyman Services, 2137 Clinton, 471-7030.
This service hires seniors (who dont want to retire) to
help less-able seniors care for their homes. But H.C.
Mahaffey, director, said there's an "awful lot of clean-up"
that needs to be done this fall. He's looking for able
bodied students to rake, trim greenery, sweep and do
minor maintenance. He also suggested forming snow
shoveling crews in neighborhoods to scoop for those
who cant or shouldn't.
Home Services far Independent Living, 2415
Sumner, 475-7511.
Bob Branchaud, assistant director, said his office
hires college students to do ofSce work, as well as to help
maintain homes of elderly by doing cleaning, cooking
and shopping.
"Our goal is to keep people out of nursing homes as
long as we can," Branchaud said. "Winter is especially
difficult for older people. Those who can normally do
their own shopping, for example, have to rely on taxis
and vans. We try and help out as much as we can."
Continued on Pass 5
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tv Hi ytr
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CHAIRPERSONS Niels Foley. 478-C275
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